“To put simply, popular culture helps to both reinforce and question our understanding of who “we”—both as individuals and as members of a civilization—are and what we should strive to become or accomplish” (Bezio). Dr. Bezio’s last sentence really resonated with me because she didn’t explicitly say this here, but it’s hard to identify popular culture when it is here. Only when it passes and becomes part of history is when we can evaluate and help question our understanding. I do have a question. are trends a part of popular culture since they are popular at the time or does popular culture have to be like a popular shift in thinking?
Taking a trend like the ALS ice bucket challenge, this was a trend because million of people dumped a bucket of water on their heads in support of helping ALS and this is a time where we got together as a collective group of humans and tried to make an impact in the word through the power of social media. However, there are some trends like the cinnamon challenge/tide pod that killed some people and that shows that our members of society need to be more alert and tighten up their actions.
Popular culture shifts all the time and after it becomes popular, it is history and in my opinion the faster we can evaluate the mistakes or the good things, the better off society will be.
I liked the way you talked about positive social media trends like the ALS challenge, but also discussed negative trends too with their potential consequences. It really shows the fact that social media and other forms of pop culture are far more than a past time. One interesting point that Bezio made in her writing was that there is a disconnect between what we think is influential and what actually influences us, and I felt like you highlighted that well.
To answer your question, in my opinion, popular culture does include trends. I think this because popular culture could be music or stories, but it could also be clothes or actions or words/slang. I think that a trend fits in the definition of popular culture because it is popular in nature with society and also is something that can become history.
I find it interesting that you included the ALS ice bucket challenge within pop culture. That just shows that pop culture can be a variety of topics and used in many different ways. I also think that trends are a part of pop culture. I don’t necessarily think that pop culture has boundaries and it can be used in many different ways.