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Living under a rock has its benefits
You should try it sometime.
Comments
"ignorance is bliss" is and always has been a bad idea in terms of "Rules and concepts to live by", though.
[I AM A HUGE FAGGOT]
See, you can always just not post in threads about "modern trends" if the "bickering" really bothers you, but to claim you're interested on media and not even care for a second about modern trends smacks of both nostalgia faggery and selective obliviousness.
Yeah, that doesn't really sound like living under a rock.
Yeah, but then you're just using other people's judgments rather than you're own.
I'm going with Juan on this one. Media can't really be separated out from its own peers significantly. Certainly there are different styles, technologies and demographics, but a big part of what you consume is how it relates to other media. Even by having a concept of "mainstream" and avoiding it, you legitimise the concept of a relationship between what you consume and what others consume, engaging in the first step of comparative analysis.
Ergo, there is benefit in experiencing some of the mainstream, if only to have a better idea of where your tastes stand. And frankly, some previously obscure or subcultural stuff has become very mainstream over the past decade. Gaming has exploded, and The Avengers of all things was a box office hit. I study a martial art that has been dead for hundreds of years, primarily because I was exposed to it indirectly through Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings.
The relationship between mainstream and obscure/subcultural isn't a dichotomy, but a continuum, and it probably couldn't be graphed linearly. Plus, the mainstream isn't all bad -- in fact, a big part of nerd culture is a celebration of what once was mainstream, and the film industry has taken up that attitude whole-heartedly. There's a multitude of little complexities and special rules that apply to the consumption of media via a plethora of different disciplines, and it's much too interesting and varied to get stuck exclusively in the mainstream/not mainstream dichotomy.
I wanted to cringe, but then I remembered my reason to get into martial arts was that girl able to beat me up.
Look, I don't self-consciously pursue stuff based on whether or not it's mainstream, as it were. That's not where I'm coming from at all. I check out whatever's interesting, and that's it.
Here' what I'm trying to say here: if mainstream media is the source of so many of society's ills, if violent news coverage encourages violence and Game of Thrones is sexist, then I don't think it's unreasonable to divorce yourself from that, so as not to be supporting a system that perpetuates those things.
But what if you enjoy Game of Thrones regardless of it being sexist. What should stop you from watching it if you enjoy it, even though it contains misoginy, racism and so on
Again, I don't subscribe to the idea that just because someone reads/watches/plays something objectionable that they'll become more racist/sexist/whatever because of it.
I also find it important to mention that even though Game of Thrones features misoginy, it hardly counts as misoginist.
That strikes me as similar to saying that reading Sherlock Holmes stories will make people go out and commit crimes.
I'm reminded of a Grant Morrison quote where he says that kids understand the divide between fiction and reality better than adults because adults will start asking stupid questions about how things work whereas kids get that things work that way because it's not real.
@DonZabu How does what you're describing count as "living under a rock"? You're not really avoiding exposure to the world.
The expression isn't used just for outright "No contact with the universe" hermit, yannow.
Well, being picky about what you watch/read/listen to isn't exactly living under a rock.
Not under the definition you're using, but the expression is normally used whenever somebody's not in contact with popular culture, too.
Well, not watching the same movies as your peers is not the same thing is not watching movies, period. And so on, etc.
Just saying.
Yes, but my point is that you're nitpicking on a colloquial expression with...well, no real point underlying said nitpick