09-22-2008, 01:28 AM
I don't disagree. But the explosion of choices in consumer culture and brand association and micro-consumer identity and all that is a lot more pervasive and fragmented than it was back then. The industrialized consumer age didn't really develop until after WW2. Before that, there was a Sears & Roebuck catalogue, and the radio. Before portable transistor radios and Elvis combined to popularize a division between teen music and adult music, there weren't many distinguishable differences between what different generations listened to. Bing Crosby sold hit records for nearly thirty years.
Which isn't to say there weren't a lot of sub-genres and subcultures flourishing below the radar of white mainstream pop culture. But it's fair to say there was, during the cold-war age of conformity, much more of a homogenous mass media pop culture than there is now. The website appears to make fun of how some people define themselves increasingly by their brand choices in a self-aware, self-mocking, ironic way.
Which isn't to say there weren't a lot of sub-genres and subcultures flourishing below the radar of white mainstream pop culture. But it's fair to say there was, during the cold-war age of conformity, much more of a homogenous mass media pop culture than there is now. The website appears to make fun of how some people define themselves increasingly by their brand choices in a self-aware, self-mocking, ironic way.