by Kai Deniri

Created on: April 17, 2010

My little brother Tom and I have this conversation on occasion, about people who "steal" others' cool tastes in stuff, especially music.  But it can happen in literature, movies, philosophies, fashion, practically everything in popular culture.  He had a friend who heard about a band he'd liked for years called Paramore.  A week later, this friend was the major authority on Paramore, wearing Paramore insignia like a company logo, flaunting his fanaticism as if he's taking credit for the band's very existence, maybe even for the existence of good music in general. Who could explain why this is annoying?  The phenomenon of feeling "stolen from" when someone else likes a band you like after you've liked it for way longer is a childish yet expository reflection of the extent to which Americans use creative products of pop culture as integral parts of their character and substance as an individual.  Pop culture has become fused with, or even substituted for, a whole generation's manifestation of the self.

Think about some of the people you knew when you were 19 or 20.  Try to remember things about them, but notice how much or how little is not actually about them.  In earlier times when people lived a little closer to the bone, that last thing you'd remember about someone was what music they liked, unless the person you were remembering was a sax player or a professional pianist.  My grampa describes all his old friends like this:  Bobby who played shortstop in the baseball league, Eddie with the curly hair who married the sister of that magistrate, Jimmy so-and-so who lost a tooth but won a fight down at that bar in north Scranton.  My parents remember their friends like this: Dan who played for Pitt, Margie who went to Ireland,  Richie the firefighter.  

I remember Jami with her Abercrombie obsession, Jason who "got me into" Flogging Molly and Alkaline Trio, Jen's Justin Timberlake craze, Lea's closet full of Gap merchandise.  Now, I could also tell you what these people do or did for a living, where they went to school, and some crazy story about them...but the easiest and most accessible thing to remember them by is their obsessions.  I even remember some people by their obsessions with other people I know, like that sweet girl Jess from my dorm who talked about virtually nothing else but a bio major named Leo from her hometown whom she followed to our college.  Other generations would

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