Watching 'Jersey Shore' might make you dumber, study suggests

[iverglas]

3. that's actually really interesting

Gotta work now but I shall click later.

Someone here pointed out to me a while back that one reason USAmericans collectively are so ignorant of, and take so little interest in, anything outside their own backyard is the sheer density of USAmerican culture. I think that's very true. Why go looking for anything else when there are 30 things right in front of you clamouring for your attention? Missing-blonde-girl-children stories on CNN, Jersey Shore and a thousand clones on the other channels, US politics and news and views and music and movies and video games and every other corner of "culture", fully occupied.

I find the same is true of many Brits, for instance. Their culture is also very densely occupied, although there is more space than in the US, partly because of the US cultural industry's decades-long drive to export and control foreign markets.

Living in a smaller economy / population / culture like Canada, every aspect of culture is thinner on the ground -- well developed and diverse, just not as dense. We look farther afield for information and entertainment. But I've never looked to Jersey Shore.

And interestingly, at least some years ago, stats showed that Law and Order, for instance, which was, at least then, reasonably intellectually challenging, got much higher ratings in Canada than in the US, even though we had access to pretty much all the same US content as was available there, plus Canadian content. We just weren't subject to the same pressures, and the same collective representation of what that culture is, as people actually living in the belly of the beast; we were a step removed and able to pick and choose more carefully, I'd think.

This is why I react to people saying "oh, I don't watch that television nonsense" with rolling eyes. I watch a lot of television. There's enough available that actually stimulates my brain, rather than dulling it, to make me quite happy.