Culture

I commented recently that Twitter, Facebook, and other internet applications are the new unifying media in a time when television is becoming more fractionalized. I called these applications culture, noting that they give us “a much thicker commonality” than television ever did. I think, though, that my characterizing FaceBook as “culture” struck some as profane. Alongside the great arts of poetry, painting, music and architecture how could anyone consider the crass exchange of cyber-cocktails, digital Easter eggs and viral bra colors to be culture?

I do. Culture is that which binds us. It is our shared reference points. It is our currency for communication. I think of an immigrant new to our language struggling with idioms. She would not have a chance of knowing what, for example, a phrase like “pooh-pooh” signifies. In contrast, anyone raised in America (at least in my generation) knows that a person “pooh-poohing” something is “sneering at” it. We know what it means because we swim in that same culture.

Or consider this crossword clue I encountered last week. The clue was for “grant with grammys.” The answer was a three-letter word that turned out to be “amy,” which I recognized because I live in an American community that shares a common knowledge that Amy Grant is a grammy award-winning country singer and that a “grammy” is a an award, not someone’s elderly relative.

Those common reference points are becoming much more numerous and pervasive with the spread of the internet and of social networks in particular. They are creating a “thicker commonality” where more people share the same knowledge. A few years ago most of us might have shared an interesting newspaper article with a friend at lunch where, now, we share it with dozens or hundreds online and many of them share it again. Sure, much of what is shared electronically these days is inane but so was the TV content of past years that is now our common touchstone. Much of that TV content, that which was of the least interest, that which did not go “viral” in our national conversation, has slipped from sight but those references that spread and were shared, like those to Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Dowdy, persist. We recognize, for instance, a reference to Mr. Rogers changing his shoes when he comes in the door. We know the meaning of “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!” or “Beam me up, Scotty.” And, fear not, you protectors of high culture, many of these, too, will be culled out of culture as memory fades but they are, nonetheless, culture, now.

In the same way, even though Twitter and FaceBook have a very low threshold for quality, how can we help but be part of a world who now knows who some Scottish matron named Susan Boyle is? The internet for better or worse has brought us a common language that did not exist a few years ago? For better or worse, we somehow know what is meant if someone says “BTW, IMHO, that’s TMI, biotch.” Hopefully these are examples of culture that will fade but they ARE culture.

Culture is the touchstone of commonality wherever humans congregate, whether it is crass or refined. Mozart was thought to be crass in his time. Many of Shakespeare’s references are bawdy and profane. Who knows? The future may look back with reverence on our graffiti taggers and, in the mean time, we all can share a common culture that is shrinking our world and our differences. Time will shake out the trivial and leave the great works for generations to come.