The Great Pop Culture Implosion

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1

I just found a pretty great article (by comedian/writer/actor Patton Oswalt) that deeply explores the rapid expansion of popular culture through the exploitation of geek culture.  I’m pretty sure this is what the esteemed Dr. Ian Malcolm was talking about when he famously stated, “What you call progress, I call the rape of the natural world.”

The video above is kind of a lite version of the story he’s telling, but Patton’s full article is definitely worth reading.  Although the constant barrage of nerdlore reference gives this thing a Clockwork Orange–esque linguistic learning curve (consider this blog post a warm-up), if you can get past that it’s chock-full of interesting ideas.  The highlights being:

• the “otaku-fication” of America and its weak and temperamental obsessions…
  
  
• the assimilation of nerd culture into widely-consumed media (“The Lord of the Rings used to be ours and only ours simply because of the sheer goddamn thickness of the books”)…
  
  
• how having “Everything That Ever Was—Available Forever” (or “Etewaf”) via the internet does not bode well for the creative process, and
  
  
•  the concept that “before we can start to rebuild geek culture, we first have to destroy it” as he maniacally proposes a Mad Max-style do-over.

Although to be honest, the man might just be remembering the 80’s a little too fondly.  My buddy Lion-O and I talk about that all the time.