I think some people would call it 'life imitating art imitating life, etc.' which is fine and good--it worked for centuries past--it's just becoming too circular. Youth today are as needy and gullible as yesterday, but a new trend of distrust for its previous generations has created a vacuum, filled by anything and everything they encounter in the media storm that inevitably accompanies technological advances of modern times. It's a perfect and hospitable environment for any virus to take root, making pop culture a machine, mass producing turds in an exploitative system of 'values for the simpleton'. They appeal to the lowest common denominator, and millions of would-be betters end up reaching for the low hanging fruit. It's a grading curve, conventionalizing stupidity and scaling back society as a whole. People think the problem is our politics, but it's been seeded so much deeper in the woodwork for decades now. The next generation will be drooling retard babies, everybody will ask why and nobody will remember the reason.
That's an interesting but cynical take, part of the "gen X/Douglas Coupland/lego" thing was about derivative culture being re-appropriated with a staunch distrust of everything that came before it. Cynicism, sighing a lot, being nostalgic for things that didn't even really happen etc. That right there brought some innovatively derivative things to the cultural forefront, "grunge", Beavis and Butthead, Tarentino etc. in the big cultural 3.
Something I REALLY hate is transforming aspects of culture into new mediums. Fucking hate it. The example that comes to mind is the comic book "Preacher" which could be the greatest and most innovative comic of all time, definitely transcending the medium etc. and now Seth Rogan decides he's into it and is going to try to write a script for it as a TV show that's "true to the original." I can't think of one good reason for doing this. It's trying to bring something great into the mass consciousness but it's a hackneyed, inorganic way of doing so. Let good things remain good things and don't mix mediums ffs. I dunno, that's kinda off topic.
"Lowest common denominator" is a phrase that's used a lot in reference to TV but its for good reason. I'd say that "status quo" is a better term for describing the appeal to mediocrity and how "everything is alright, everything is automatic" matt good style if you know what I mean. Of course TV presents an image of the world that's less than accurate but it seems particularly disingenuous to masquerade it as "reality" when it obviously isn't and nobody has a problem with this because it's displaying the same qualities as the "fictional" tv programs so they end up equating reality with reality TV and fake Reality tv with Reality, eventually fakeness with reality. Who was it who said "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes?" imagine how surreal that would be if everyones 15 minutes of fame revolved around the blurred line between what's real and what's fake, not actually being able to tell the difference once the 15 minutes are over. That 15 minutes of fakeness is now engrained in everyone and everybody is acutely aware of it and as a result, the collective consciousness strays further and further from what's Real and what's "real."
I think a "libertarian" culture is the answer. Allow people to say "fuck" ,full penetration and livestream terrorist beheadings etc. Making people acutely aware of the good and bad things in the world will raise the amount of knowledge people have on the subject and open doors that aren't opened yet. I was listening to an interview with Wanda fucking Sykes on the radio the other day and the interviewer kept bringing up how she was the first black gay woman to do X, Y and Z and I almost punched my car. Thanks for pointing out this should be weird you status quo representative, I hope you get replaced by a machine that calculates what should be edgy at any given time. Nice job referencing non existent boundaries that not even Wanda Sykes gives a fuck about pushing because she's an artist, not a cultural watchdog. Ugh, I could go on, my methylphenidate wore off a little bit ago so I'm kinda rambling and incoherent, sry, don't even read