This IS the Original Purpose of This Blog

1. All “advanced” human cultures are a hive.

Our culture exhibits many characteristics that are found only in hive animals, including exclusive dependence on large scale harvesting and agriculture, individuals who represent replaceable parts in the society, rather than indispensable contributors, being awarded our means of sustenance by the culture overall rather than producing our own means for survival individually or in small groups, and living space that is both organized & regimented and awash in masses of other individuals with which we have few or no dealings.

1.1. The economy is the queen of the hive.

All of our work goes toward the benefit/growth of the economy. It sends us signals to entice us to work, called "money," "advertising," and "peer pressure," though encoded culturally rather than chemically. Thus, it occupies the role of queen.

2. Humans are psychologically unsuited for this lifestyle.

The only other animals known to live in hives are those with unintelligent, indistinct individual automatons. Just on its face, this seems like an unlikely or unsuitable lifestyle for a highly emotional, individuated, opinionated species like Homo Sapiens. Quite logically, humanity, for nearly all of its history, lived in various variations on family, pack, tribe or troop structures. In simplified, metaphorical terms, we grew up living one way and don't really know how to live in this other way. The formation of groups, cliques, fandoms, subcultures, political parties and gangs, each variously positive or negative, is an attempt to return to our native cultural structure by creating new tribes to replace those that were destroyed by the rise of the human hive.

3. Popular culture as a distraction

Regardless of any arguments about its quality as a whole, or that of any of its respective elements, popular culture's primary function in today's society is to distract us from the hive nature of our modern life, and to advertise and normalize it through fiction and semi-fiction in which salaried or wage work figures heavily. Its secondary function is to serve as an outlet for tribal tendencies via the formation of fandoms and subcultures, which may divide further into 'ships or cliques. Any other function may be valuable, but is certainly tertiary from a cultural standpoint.

3.1 Definition of popular culture

Politics, fashion, hobbies and sports also fall under the heading of The Distractions, because they serve the same primary and secondary functions.

3.2 Relative popularity of The Distractions

The Distractions can be grouped by their popularity, and this popularity will correlate very strongly with the potential commercialization of the particular distraction. Television, movies and music have the highest commercialization potential:  people pay for them, they are easily accompanied by advertising, and they are easily used to normalize the hive lifestyle.  There is actually a social stigma attached to not following these things.  Conversely, think of fanfiction:  one needn't pay to read or write it; advertising potential is minimal; unscreened individuals retain creative control, meaning the message can deviate significantly.  This sort of Distraction has a social stigma attached to it.