Sunday, May 13, 2007

RE: Lists

This entry is a response to This blog. I would have simply replied in the comments page, but it looked too cluttered.

University of South Carolina:

Top Music

1 Jack Johnson
2 Coldplay
3 Rap
4 John Mayer
5 Sublime
6 Bob Marley
7 Country
8 R&b
9 Led Zeppelin
10 Dave Matthews Band

this is actually a pretty accurate description of the crap you'll hear pumping from dormitory windows on campus at USC--when people include genres rather than bands, it generally implies that they have no idea what they like and just listen to the party mixes that other students build. when it says "rap" in particular it means they like songs that include words such as "fuck" "hos" and "playa hata". people who can actually list off particular rappers they like (my favorite is Del the Funky Homosapien) express at the very least a conscious awareness of what they're listening to. The students who list off Coldplay are, in fact, the Children of the Corn.

Top Movies

1. Wedding Crashers
2. The Notebook
3. Old School
4. Anchorman
5. Fight Club
6. Blow
7. Pulp Fiction
8. Love Actually
9. Scarface
10. Garden State

Okay, so i've never seen The Notebook and know nothing about it, so rather than do an iota of research, i'm going to ignore it. lets see, two are Will Ferrell movies...that says something about the overall maturity level of students these days, but actually only 3 total are toilet-humor comedies. Balanced with 3 violent films and 3 that typically women would enjoy (my flatmate just told me the Notebook was a sad love story), throw in some drugs and scantily-clad women, and you've got the typical moviegoer in south carolina. Interesting to see that Moulin Rouge, Romeo+Juliet, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari didn't make it up into the top 10--I guess the pretentious theatre crowd is smaller than I thought.

Top Interests
1. Music
2. Shopping
3. Reading
4. Movies
5. Sports
6. Travelling
7. Football
8. Running
9. The Beach
10. Dancing

Well, what do you expect? you send them to college to become model citizens, and what do they do but become stereotypes. I can't believe some people's interests are actually shopping. Way to do what the economy and the media demand of you. Music is moot, movies means reality TV, sports means football, i'd imagine running actually means drinking, and if there's one thing i know about USC, its that people do not dance. They grind. that's not the same. "the beach" means drinking and having sex with strangers in Myrtle Beach, a cultural life that could have been grown in a petri dish (or behind a refrigerator).

this one's hands down my favorite:

Top Books
1. the Bible
2. Harry Potter
3. To Kill A Mockingbird*
4. The Notebook
5. 1984*
6. The Great Gatsby*
7. The da Vinci Code
8. Catcher in the Rye*
(* indicates required reading for high school english/Freshman Reading Experience)

So, we've got a children's series, 2 stories people "read" by watching the recent film (ooh, look--its based on a book! i'm cultured!) 4 stories that are required in school, and yes, that pillar of western culture, the book that's killed more people than history can account for, that badly-interpreted collection of fibs, lies, guesses, and the occasional misunderstanding... THE REASON I LEFT THE SOUTH....the Bible. yep. South Carolina. home of the illiterate. land of the brainwashed.

Top TV
1. Family Guy
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. South Park
4. House
5. Friends
6. Lost
7. CSI
8. Desperate Housewives
9. The Office
10. Seinfeld

Of these i've actually watched 1, 3, 5, and 10. In the past year, i've watched 1. I'm out of the loop. not helpful.

So basically, what it looks like is people list as their favorites exactly what the mass media tell them to enjoy. I'm surprised there aren't any reality tv shows up, but many of them are short-lived. We've got for the most part entertainment that is canned, labeled, and sold to the masses like some HD version of opium. We've got listed the only books most people have actually read, because they were required to pass a test at the end, and interests so vague its no wonder nobody has anything halfway interesting to talk about. ("hey, do you like music?" "why yes i do!" "lets hook up!")

In short, i believe Facebook has told me an exact truth about the common interests of the majority--they're...common.

2 comments:

Ben said...

This is very cool. I want to collect more of these, they are an interesting insight into the herd identity of different universities.

Ben said...

hmm. comparing the two I'd say that UKC students have slightly better taste and are quite a lot more pretentious.