Is this the end of Amercian culture?

Gone, changed, or however you want to say it. I just don't like the average sight I am seeing every day! Of corse, when you get into the big cities, then you see their own unique culture and everything like that. I live in Madison, which even though has a pop. of 250,000, has been often nicknamed the "Kremlin of the US."

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What I was mentioning is that corporations are shaping national culture, but not local american culture.

 

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LOL:roflmao:
i'm sure that would go down well...lol

 

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I think a very strong can be made that you are listing American Culture. And it is not simply the individual stores with their tacky aesthetics that is american but the business ideas behind them: franchises, mass production, extreme pragmatism, kitsch, demeaning outfits, and so on. It is one part of American culture and where these 'values' can lead to good things, this is what happens in excess. Where you have down-to-earthness and a lack of pretension you open the door for kitsch. Where you have pragmatism, you open the door for mass production. I see these (admittedly horrible) companies as very american. Hyperamerican. Like GI Joes with enormous muscles and no sense of irony.

 

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I disagree.
A pragmatist is only interested in the end results.
If the results are negative, the path is wrong.

 

If the results of interest are money.....

In a sense I do not disagree with you. I am not making an attack on pragmatism, I am saying that cultural tendencies that are positive or even neutral can lead to problems when made extreme. I think the real roots of pragmatism in American Culture are a kind of what gets the job done banalness, that in many instances is preferable to European practices where one must spend time and money showing that this is civilization, we are special, there is a sacred dimension and so on. But when taken too far this 'pragmatism' - which is really like a character trait from which philosophical pragmatism and kitchy mass production can both spring from like that species from which the apes and humans sprang - can lead to some of the phenomena the OP was bemoaning.

 

Off topic, but this is what I find a major problem in research these days.

Negative data which goes against expected outcome is not published for fear of funding potholes. Which means that a lot of research gets buried and is not reviewed. To me, this is WRONG. Negative data is information and it is important to put it out there so people don't repeat the same procedures or figure out why the actual outcome is different from the expected.

This aspect of research has been a major disappointment to me as a scientist wannabe.

 

Well said.

 

Tis true - Americans are best on the rebound - I'm hopefull for this. Right now i'm with One Raven, everything is shit. Cheap, Plastic, hyped up, shit.

 

Um, notice the title of the thread. the point being the cheap, plastic, hyped up shit is very american. The thread started disingenuously implying the culture around you was somehow not of american origin. bullbologna. Plastics have one great, redeeming value and that is they don't break like glass.

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My plastic laptop (designed in U.S by AMerican company) is made of plastic not wood. Last year fell of desk, flipped over landed on hardwood floor and it still workey.

 

Whats so funny is that when once it did break i called tech support and sure enough where was i calling INDIA. It was not really support because well i couldnt understand him, And what i would like to know is are there any Indians named Joe? I really dont think so, was he lying to me or what?

 

Terrible what this world has come to. Ter rib bull.

 

Yea, I remember reading somewhere on slashdot that those indians working in support have their westernized call names like Joe, Bo, David, etc.

 

Yeah, it happens all the time too. You get a female and you hear 'hello my name is Cindy' but i dont really mind helping some poor family in Calcutta or Bombay.

 

Vastly less likely than a individualized cafe with the peculiarities and nicities of an individual. That there will be Starbuckslike cookie cutter cafes is more than likely.
People will miss the work of individuals more than they will the sterile franchises. They can always go to another sterile franchise.

 

But really how many coffee houses were around before Starbucks and dunkin donuts? There are still small cafes and sandwich shops all over the place. You have to admit starbucks was a stroke of genius.

 

Starbucks actually helps small businesses a lot. For example, let's say there is an obscure coffee house, and then, a few months after they open, a Starbucks moves into town. This is widely publicized and so everyone goes there before work, to loiter, etc. but then, the Starbucks gets busy and therefor the lines get long (Cappuccino takes fucking forever to make), so the people look for another place and find a little "homey" coffee shop and decide to try it...

I know this from experience.

 

Perhaps, but this is not the case everywhere...

Yes, I do support smaller corporations as well as large, respectable, corporations. But as many people can be exploited by large corporations as well as the seemingly "unlimited power" that capitalism has granted it. Currently, corporations such as this are a disease of this earth, as all they do is buy and consume more and more of our culture for their own selfish gain. If life is to be improved here in america (or the rest of the world for that matter), people must see what capitalism has done to our culture. If most of the people in this world have the least bit of sense in them, we must abolish the power that all of these "imperial" corperations hold against us.

 

Capitalism IS out culture; it is those tiny corner shops or even wal-mart. Capitalism is everything America has, is, and probably always will be.