What cultural phenomenon would you erase from history?

Greyling

For me it would be The Simpsons. I'm in my mid 30's so it has been there almost as long as I remember. I'm sick to jayses of hearing references to it brought up daily.

Honourable mentions for Donald Trump and Father Ted.

lc180

'Artisan' Donut shops

Ipso

Line dancing, twin cams

Try_harder

Diana, Princess of Wales

Doltanian

Communism

Cookie_Monster

twitter

Mr. Incognito

The internet

AllForIt

Sport, constant and never ending. Especially team sports. Only team sports actually.

padd b1975

Satellite/multi channel TV.

frag420

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

The internet

Irony....

Greyling

AllForIt wrote: »

Sport, constant and never ending. Especially team sports. Only team sports actually.

The lads would be in bad shape if there was no sports to talk about. Most of my relationships with other men depend on the inane dissection of what happened in a field in Liverpool or Ballsbridge at the weekend.

MikeyTaylor

The Trump presidential campaign.
The X-Factor. (In fact any "reality" show!)

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Social influencers.

Mutant z

Hillary Clinton.

Mountainsandh

The cult of competitiveness, and the paradoxical way children's education is approached atm.

A Pint of Goo

Western liberals hatred of free speech.

endacl

The suffix -ery for things that don't end in -ery. As in 'eatery'. It's not an eatery. It's a cafe with notions. You knob.

If you open an 'eatery', you'd better have the jacks marked as the ****tery. You'd still be a knob, but at least you'd be a consistent knob.

endacl

A Pint of Goo wrote: »

Western liberals hatred of free speech.

Oh yeah! That's a good one!

The importation of US TV's over-simplistic and reductionist binary view of nuanced topics! People with a juvenile black-and-white worldview who use the word 'liberal' to describe people who respond to their over-simplistic and reductionist binary view of nuanced topics with nuance.

Yer Da sells Avon

endacl wrote: »

The suffix -ery for things that don't end in -ery. As in 'eatery'. It's not an eatery. It's a cafe with notions. You knob.

If you open an 'eatery', you'd better have the jacks marked as the ****tery. You'd still be a knob, but at least you'd be a consistent knob.

Absolute knobbery, that's what it is.

pleas advice

memes, in their original definition.

Outlaw Pete

Probiotics.

K.Flyer

Facebook

Ipso

Conspiracy theories.

foxy farmer

Fair City.

worded

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

The internet

It’s Tinternet

worded

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Probiotics.

With lactose added

I farted non stop for 3 days

Minderbinder

Mountainsandh wrote: »

The cult of competitiveness, and the paradoxical way children's education is approached atm.

Please elaborate on your point.

I don’t think competitiveness is a phenomenon or a cult. It’s a natural thing and essential to our survival.

worded

Minderbinder wrote: »

Please elaborate on your point.

I don’t think competitiveness is a phenomenon or a cult. It’s a natural thing and essential to our survival.

I remember as kids myself and my sisters laughed at how competitive we were, the sibling rivalry..... but I laughed longer

AllForIt

endacl wrote: »

Oh yeah! That's a good one!

The importation of US TV's over-simplistic and reductionist binary view of nuanced topics! People with a juvenile black-and-white worldview who use the word 'liberal' to describe people who respond to their over-simplistic and reductionist binary view of nuanced topics with nuance.

That's exactly what I was just thinking.

Sam Quentin

Slavery.

Wanderer78

Minderbinder wrote:

I don’t think competitiveness is a phenomenon or a cult. It’s a natural thing and essential to our survival.

Competitiveness is indeed natural, but the type of competition that is most common nowadays can only be described as 'hyper-competitiveness', this is in fact man-made, and in fact is highly destructive for the survivability of all species including humans

freshpopcorn

Modern feminism!

Irish Guitarist

The Wire. I didn't find it either particularly bad (or particularly good) but what annoys me about it is the smug fans who somehow think that being entertained by a fictional story makes them intelligent. If you want to maintain the writer wrote an intelligent story that's one thing, but thinking you're special because you 'get it' and other people don't is ridiculous. I can see someone quoting me now and replying "well actually it wasn't fictional, it was written by a former cop and based on real cases... blah blah blah". No, it was fictional. Some of the characters in Eastenders were based on real people the writer knew from market stalls in London. Does that mean Eastenders isn't fictional?

Reaction videos. The original ones with kids genuine reactions are one thing but now YouTube is littered with idiots reacting to all sorts of nonsense. "Irish People Eat Doritos For The First Time". Fuck off. There's no way they haven't tried a bag of Doritos before. "My First Time Hearing The Beatles". Either you're lying about that or you're an idiot. Either way why would I want to watch someone listening to a Beatles song and making inane comments? Why would I choose to do that over just listening to The Beatles? More importantly why the fuck would I support you on Patreon? There seems to be a lot of young black men doing this lately. I think they expect hordes of people to be amazed at the novelty of a black lad listening to music that isn't rap.

Any form of entertainment that 'takes on Trump'. Give it a rest. Just concentrate on entertaining people. And no American comedian has ever told a funny joke about him. "He's orange, wears a wig and grabs pussies!!!" Oh my aching sides.

AndyBoBandy

Religion.

tringle

Facebook

Peppa pig

Alcopops

quintana76

Islam.

s7ryf3925pivug

Outside context problems

Fr Tod Umptious

Rugby

Lord Glentoran

Irish Country Music.

Mountainsandh

Minderbinder wrote: »

Please elaborate on your point.

I don’t think competitiveness is a phenomenon or a cult. It’s a natural thing and essential to our survival.

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Competitiveness is indeed natural, but the type of competition that is most common nowadays can only be described as 'hyper-competitiveness', this is in fact man-made, and in fact is highly destructive for the survivability of all species including humans

I don't think the thread was intended to go very deep into a topic, but yes, like Wanderer, I think there is a type of competitiveness that is closely linked to this narcissism we're all well aware of around us, and that is not the healthy, survival kind of competitiveness.

Be stronger, be faster, be better, be more productive, rise above the rest, achieve more, buy more, never stop ---ing, stand out, blend in, etc...

We are urged to both conform, and compare ourselves to our peers, and simultaneously, to detach from the group and make our mark or stand out : age group ("generation ..."), neighbours, classmates, colleagues...

In my job, although it involves humans so there are plenty of variables, I am urged to produce statistics and compare mine.

Sport, not just for its own sake, but for the competitive aspect of it, is promoted from Primary School and held as a holy grail, a healthy way to live (look at the running threads on here).

It is seen as a good thing when parents train and urge their children to compete in dancing, sports, talent shows, music... I have a child with exceptional talent in one area, she is attending classes and learning all the time, but we view competition as just one experience that is part of the overall learning process, and not a priority; I have lost count of the number of people urging to enter her in one contest or other, as if it was the be all and and all of that activity, as if it can only be sanctioned when it is assessed and compared to others' achievements.

It's not good enough to be interested in something, it has to be officially bench marked against others, and suitable rewards have to be clocked up. Actually people think you're silly or weird if you have no interest in these rewards. Picture a child with an ability in say, singing. They would be expected and urged to take part in talent shows, or if not keen on that, to at least get thousands of viewers on youtube, or even to go onto TV programs, like the little one from Cork who busked but whose family weren't too keen on the competitive aspect of it. It became an oddity, enough to be writing articles about her, and she ended up on the Ellen show ... Someone with talent with no interest in clocking up widely agreed benchmarks !

I'm thinking of the world of advertising but also social media, bloggers, influencers, life coaches, and in general, people, and the conversations to be heard in parents' circles, in schools, in work places.

And while all this is going on, and the children respond accordingly with more narcissistic tendencies as they grow, we simultaneously and confusingly reward with "certificates of achievement" that acknowledge participation more than achievement. We're sending mixed messages, and it's no wonder that new generations are confused and vulnerable.

facehugger99

Selfies.

Samuel T. Cogley

Religion

Enochwasright

Greyling wrote: »

Most of my relationships with other men depend on the inane dissection of what happened in a field in Liverpool or Ballsbridge at the weekend.

The thing with arsenal is they want to walk it into the net!

Enochwasright

quintana76 wrote: »

Islam.

I feel ya! But the guys that have said "religion" have the right answer, yes Islam is being more of a pest today but none of the religions have covered themselves in glory.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Competitiveness is indeed natural, but the type of competition that is most common nowadays can only be described as 'hyper-competitiveness', this is in fact man-made, and in fact is highly destructive for the survivability of all species including humans

Hmm. My niece keeps getting medals for coming mid race. I don’t think we live in a competitive age.

gmisk

The overuse of the work 'like'.

Franz Von Peppercorn

New atheism.

gozunda

Humans and vegan zealots

But not necessarily in that order ...

Wanderer78

Mountainsandh wrote:

Sport, not just for its own sake, but for the competitive aspect of it, is promoted from Primary School and held as a holy grail, a healthy way to live (look at the running threads on here).

Our educational system is a prime example of a hyper-competitive system, whereby the ultimate aim is to create an exclusive society rather than an inclusive one, I do believe this has been done largely unintentionally, I.e. we ve kinna fooled ourselves into thinking this is good for our society, but it is in fact highly destructive in many ways.

Naturally I would ultimately blame economic theories such as neoclassical theory for the creation of such things, which I suspect was originally created by individuals that posed personality traits such as narcissism and may in fact have posed far more complex personality disorders such as sociopathy etc, therefore promoting these kind of behavioural issues widely in society, i.e. we must all behave in this manner in order to survive, or so we believe, effectively creating a kind of group think and herd mentality that's actually highly destructive for our species and planet.

Wanderer78

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote:

Hmm. My niece keeps getting medals for coming mid race. I don’t think we live in a competitive age.

Disagree of course, but you do make a valid point. There will always be an element of inclusivity in society, or at least I hope there always will be, but I do believe there is plenty of evidence to support my claims of hyper-competitiveness in society. I do believe that when world leaders and politicans mention 'competitiveness', they actually mean 'hyper-competativeness'. It's becoming clearer, that power, wealth and control is becoming more concentrated as a result of this thinking, you must put on your macro head to think in this way, this is potentially very dangerous for the survivability of our species and planet.

razorblunt

The Kardashians, easily.