The main driving force behind popular culture is mass attractiveness, and it is produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno calls the cultural industry. Heavily influenced in modern times by the media, this collection of ideas permeates the daily lives of people in a given society. People like to feel part of a group and understand their cultural identity within that group, which usually happens naturally in a small, somewhat isolated community. It may seem obvious that there are a multitude of cultural differences between societies in the world.
Both academic facts and news are modified through popular broadcasting, often to the point of becoming blatant falsehoods. Popular culture is often expressed and disseminated through commercial media such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, publishers, and business-managed websites. This generation came of age in the turbulent 1960s, a decade that saw the civil rights movement, Woodstock, the counterculture movement, and the Vietnam War. The last quarter of the 20th century saw the development of a global popular culture made possible by mass cultural consumerism, telecommunications technology, and the growing importance of diversity and multiculturalism.
The term popular culture refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in society in general. The time interval between the introduction of material culture and its acceptance by immaterial culture. The enormous size of the adolescent baby boomer generation contributed to the strength of popular culture and to the special character of American culture in general, and consumer markets and television programming (and other media) prepared to serve the new demographic. Cultural items that require extensive experience, education, training, taste, insight or reflection for their full appreciation rarely become elements of popular culture.
It creates currents and whirls, in the sense that a small group of people will have a strong interest in an area of which mainstream popular culture has only partial knowledge; thus, for example, the electro-pop group Kraftwerk has had an impact on mainstream popular culture to the extent that they have been referred to in The Simpsons and Father Ted. It distinguishes between “primary” and “secondary” popular culture, defining primary popular culture as a mass product and secondary popular culture as local reproduction. Technology is also responsible for the dissemination of material and immaterial culture that contributes to globalization. Popular culture, which emerged in the United States during the 1960s, grew out of diverse desires for international unity, the recognition of non-Western cultures, and the expansion of world economic markets.
Unlike subcultures, which function relatively well within society in general, countercultures can actively challenge society at large by developing their own set of rules and norms with which to live, sometimes even creating communities that function outside of society at large.
