Upon my arrival to Yahoo to check my email to get my mind off this week’s loss against the Giants, I was blown away by the first headline that was present in Yahoo’s “news stream”. While there are many important things going in the world at this point in time, it is sensible to think that the top headline should be something political and/or intellectually relevant? For what may or may not have been a surprise, the answer to that question was a most definite NO, rather I was looking at a headline that reads as follows: “Emma Watson faces off with fashion twin”. To sum up the article, all that needs to be known is that the popular ‘Harry Potter’ actress wore the same apparel to an event as another actress of similar age, THAT’S IT. There was no altercation between the two actresses on anything whatsoever, hence the absence of an actual “face off” as was indicated in the article’s title. The question of WHY is this news immediately comes to mind, but unfortunately, that same question can easily be answered just as quickly as it can be asked. The easiest and most convincing way to answer this question is by looking at the comments board directly below the text of the article. And unfortunately for the state of the public, it’s way too easy to see that far too many people just eat this stuff up.
Now the bigger question to all of this is, why do people eat this stuff up in the first place? There are so many more important things going on in the lives of just about everybody alive on this planet that warrant (or should warrant) much more interest than what two celebrities are wearing on any given night. Does it make people feel better about themselves to feel as though they are “involved” with these popular culture higher-up’s? Do they think their opinion actually matters in the grand scheme of things? To keep things as open-ended as they are in reality, there obviously is no clear and sensible explanation to explain why any one person or group of people feel so strongly about these “issues” as they do, all I know is that this widespread caring for situations as stupid as this one scare the life out of me. If the feelings towards situations like this are this strong now, imagine how bad it is going to be 10 years down the road? I guess popular culture really has taken a strong stranglehold on our American culture, it’s just a shame it’s taken root in all of the wrong areas.
