Why Pop Culture is Junk and My Sister Will Never Support Me in my Senility
A new study to be published in Science had songs rated by two groups of participants. One group rated the songs 'blind' - with no information about what other people thought of it. However:
In the social influence group, participants were provided with the same song list, but could also see how many times each song had been downloaded.I'm sure this applies to culture in general and explains the popularity of such worthless tombs as "Life of Pi" and "Ulysses". It also explains why you should immediately visit mp3.com.au and download my sisters latest track which is doing well on the jazz/blues charts.
Researchers found that popular songs were popular and unpopular songs were unpopular, regardless of their quality established by the other group. They also found that as a particular songs' popularity increased, participants selected it more often.
- sheikh X at 7:28 AM
3 Comments:
thats some funky blues. cool.
Somebody has stolen my handle...
So, if I understand this correctly, the quality of your sister's song will decrease in direct inverse proportion to the number of people who download and/or vote for it. I for one will not be downloading this song, out of deference to your sister's skills and quality as an auteur.
Since when is Ulysses popular? I hadn't heard that. I had heard that in some select circles it was recognized as a masterpiece. More popularly, and especially among the ignorant and uncultured it is seen as opaque and even unreadable.
ulysses - well the modern library readers selected it at number 11. the editors, presumably more susceptible to the social pressure effect, put it at number 1.
Post a Comment
<< Home