One cannot always choose one's friends and environments. There are indeed friend groups that would not be available to someone who has not watched Star Wars, or Jersey Shore, or what have you.
There's no one item, no short list, of essential works that define the threshold between effective and ineffective cultural participation. But there is a compounding social effect for each movie/song/book/etc. someone doesn't know. Each additional water cooler conversation that one cannot join, and each additional movie reference missed, is one step further away from those friends. At some point, people stop trying to communicate with someone who doesn't understand them.
Beyond mere socialization and entertainment, popular culture forms the behavioral and memetic vocabulary with which people communicate. As an example of how isolating cultural non-participation can be, consider how difficult it is for escapees from fundamentalist religious communes to integrate into society. That is the extreme end of a spectrum, and each decision not to participate in one's local popular culture moves one closer to that extreme.
I'm not saying piracy is right; I'm saying that the choice not to consume is inextricably linked to a whole lot of other choices, including whether to participate in society at all.
Given all that, it is unconscionable for Hollywood et al. to wield the amount of power they have demonstrated in the provisions in leaked TPP drafts and other laws and treaties.
There's no one item, no short list, of essential works that define the threshold between effective and ineffective cultural participation. But there is a compounding social effect for each movie/song/book/etc. someone doesn't know. Each additional water cooler conversation that one cannot join, and each additional movie reference missed, is one step further away from those friends. At some point, people stop trying to communicate with someone who doesn't understand them.
Beyond mere socialization and entertainment, popular culture forms the behavioral and memetic vocabulary with which people communicate. As an example of how isolating cultural non-participation can be, consider how difficult it is for escapees from fundamentalist religious communes to integrate into society. That is the extreme end of a spectrum, and each decision not to participate in one's local popular culture moves one closer to that extreme.
I'm not saying piracy is right; I'm saying that the choice not to consume is inextricably linked to a whole lot of other choices, including whether to participate in society at all.
Given all that, it is unconscionable for Hollywood et al. to wield the amount of power they have demonstrated in the provisions in leaked TPP drafts and other laws and treaties.