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Dr Iron Arc

Dr Iron Arc

Into the Unknown
Feb 10, 2020
18,423
There was actually a South Park episode about this called Raising the Bar.

American society seems to have given up since channels like TLC (The Learning Channel) had the audacity to put on reality programming and pass it off as educational. Since then our standards, aka 'the bar' has been brought so low. Maybe that wasn't the sole cause but it's certainly when I first noticed it. Pop culture has certainly degraded in a lot of ways from there since then. This combined with overall lower faith in almost every existing institution whether through scandals or systematic abuse has caused so many Americans to just give up. Many (but not all) younger people are watching society degrade around them but know they are powerless to do anything about it whether it's environmental destruction, economic collapse, or increasing societal degeneracy. Complaining isn't going to help anyway since well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em (even ironically if you have to). If you can't join 'em, make empty complaints about 'em.
 
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StringPuppet

StringPuppet

Lost
Oct 5, 2020
579
Whoredom is encouraged among young women, the music is degenerate (just listen to the lyrics. It's worse than the 2000s)

The way I've heard it explained is that women want to be able to express their sexuality after being told they shouldn't for decades, but I guess not everyone sees it like that. What effects do you think this "whoredom" has on society?
 
Brick In The Wall

Brick In The Wall

2M Or Not 2B.
Oct 30, 2019
25,159
This seems like a very large stereotype. I'd pose a different question. Why do most people have the herd mentality, regardless of culture, geography, or upbringing?

The answer is simple. Most people work very hard just to eat and have a roof for themselves and or their families. So they're too tired to think about the real issues or questions in life.
 
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Weather

Weather

Student
Oct 18, 2020
152
I think the issue with popular culture in America is that it has stagnated since the early 2000s. Our culture hasn't developed -- at least not in any marked way -- in twenty years.

I play a game with my children when we're driving somewhere (pre-Covid, back when we used to go anywhere); I would play them popular and rock music from various times and see if they can identify when it's from. Every decade is identifiable, by and large -- you know what each decade from the 40s through the 90s sounds like. But then you hit the 2000s until now and everything sounds the same, sometimes recycling old sounds, sometimes just generic. You don't hear anything and say, "oh, this is obviously the mid-2010s." It's the same for most other cultural aspects. Fashion? Literature? Movies? Same, same, same, coupled with recycled material.

Horkheimer and Adorno wrote about the culture industry -- popular culture is that which can be mass produced so everyone can consume it in order to make folks passive so that, in part, they don't question their economic conditions; this focus on the calculation of material interests in the culture industry results in a loss of creativity. So, is it degenerate? I don't know. But it is stale because people have become quite passive with easy access to entertainment (think expansion of the internet and introduction of smart phones). The culture industry, and popular culture by default, just don't have much work to do.
 
RainAndSadness

RainAndSadness

Administrator
Jun 12, 2018
2,072
I would appreciate if we could avoid loaded terms like "degenerate XY" in a community that consists of marginalized people. Many of us suffer from mental and physical disabilities in this forum. We were called "degenerate" in many societies not too ago and actually, even killed for that. The nazis back in the 1930s developed the term "degenerate art" and "degenerate music" explicitly for such purposes. And given the very similar examples listed in this thread to describe such "degeneracy" in modern times, I'm sincerely concerned. I'm gonna lock this thread due to the history and context of this term and how it's used in this thread, while also referring to the Weimarer Republic. We all know what came after.

Please keep in mind that we don't need division like that in a forum that consists of so many struggling people.
 
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