{"id":6340,"date":"2010-11-16T01:37:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T09:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=6340"},"modified":"2010-11-16T01:37:29","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T09:37:29","slug":"cultural-literacy-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/cultural-literacy-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Literacy 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Proust.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-6342\" title=\"Proust\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Proust-300x242.jpg?resize=300%2C242\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Proust.jpg?resize=300%2C242&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Proust.jpg?w=546&amp;ssl=1 546w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today I mentioned something about <strong>Beth Ditto<\/strong> to my husband and he interjected: &#8220;Who&#8217;s Beth Ditto?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This triggered a pointless and irritating argument about What Most People Know and What Most People Don&#8217;t Know. I felt defensive, like he was implying I knew too much trivia from spending time on the&nbsp;\u00a0 internet. I do in fact know too much trivia from being online. But I felt strongly that Beth Ditto is a certified pop culture figure at this point, and it&#8217;s not my fault I know about her.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t wait to prove that everybody knows who Beth Ditto is.&nbsp;\u00a0 I asked my sophisticated teenager who knows nearly everything about everything.&nbsp;\u00a0 Except Beth Ditto. I asked the hip looking tattooed girl who had just cut my kid&#8217;s hair.&nbsp;\u00a0 She never heard of Beth Ditto.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t give up. We kept arguing about what makes someone well known or what makes them a pop culture figure. We agreed that&nbsp;\u00a0<strong> Kanye West<\/strong> and <strong>Kim Kardashian<\/strong> are two people one HAS to know about, despite all efforts to not know.&nbsp;\u00a0 Then we went to a school meeting where the speaker mentioned some guy from <strong>American Idol<\/strong> and all the parents laughed knowingly, except for me and my husband, who never heard of him. I whispered in his ear: &#8220;Beth Ditto.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What do you think about cultural literacy in 2010? Is it more important to know what a hashtag is, or who Blondie is? Is it good or bad to know about <strong>Lara Stone<\/strong>&#8216;s wedding dress? Are you disappointed when you meet someone who seems cool but never heard of your favorite movie? Should everyone be able to know what &#8220;Proustian&#8221; means even if they haven&#8217;t read any Proust?<\/p>\n<p>And what about Beth Ditto??<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I mentioned something about Beth Ditto to my husband and he interjected: &#8220;Who&#8217;s Beth Ditto?&#8221; This triggered a pointless and irritating argument about What Most People Know and What Most People Don&#8217;t Know. I felt defensive, like he was &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/cultural-literacy-2-0\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[547,912],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-1Eg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}