Cult Corner: The curse of constant curation

Anyone who occasionally reads my column over the last four years has enough evidence as my psychiatrist to diagnose me with ADHD. I’m a hyperfixator, and I’ve come by my knowledge of pop culture naturally. I hop from one thing to the next at the rate of about every six to 18 months. The fixations often overlap, one dovetailing into the next. As one fixation flame wanes, another brightens.

There’s a particular high with a new fixation, like brushing hands with a crush. There’s so much to explore. Once I’ve settled into something, the self-inflicted work begins. I task myself with becoming an expert, or at least having the appearance of an expert. I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room;  I just need to seem like one of them. Why? There’s a villainous, yet fictitious, pop culture snob who lives in the back of my head.

“Oh you don’t know that B-side is actually a cover song?” they’d theoretically chide, should I be caught slacking on ’60s garage rock expertise. “Guess you haven’t made it to episode 138 of ‘Dragonball Z’ yet, have you?” No, imaginary pop culture snob who haunts my dreams, I have not.

Of course, having been called out by this entity that doesn’t actually exist means I can’t buy that Dragonball T-shirt at Walmart because some real Dragonball fan might talk to me and learn that I’m no expert in the minutiae of a fictional universe that began in 1986, has experienced multiple incarnations and is still going today. And, should I buy the shirt at Walmart, do I have any fan credibility at all?

Who cares?

There’s a scene in the movie “High Fidelity” where the sullen record store owner protagonist, played by John Cusack, yells at his employee, played by Jack Black, to turn down “Walking on Sunshine” as it blares through the shop. Black gives in after several shouts from Cusack, but protests that it was only the beginning of his carefully curated Monday morning mixtape. Cusack’s response:

“I just want something I can ignore.”

I’ve often wondered how people can listen to the radio, having no say in what comes next: maybe a terrible song, something unfamiliar or, worse yet, a commercial. The need to curate my media-consuming experience has driven me since I walked the aisles of the local video store in the late ’80s. Cable TV turned me into a professional channel surfer as I kept the remote close at hand, ready to click away at the first hint of an ad break. Today, the endless menus of countless streaming services play the same role.

I’ve come to find the constant curation exhausting. This doesn’t mean I don’t love deep dives into niche facets of pop culture, but maybe I don’t need to don the pressure suit and scuba gear and head for the ocean floor on Day One. I’ll take some time paddling around on the surface, then maybe wade out when I feel like it. Besides, the little bit of “Dragonball” and “Dragonball Z” I have read/watched taught me this: Hard work and good friends are what’s most important. That’s a simple truth that’s taken me years to even partially understand. And sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with simple, comforting truth delivered by a half-watched TV show in the background.

Thompson, VHS.D, holds a doctorate of cult media in pop culture from University of Maine at Castle Rock. He delivers lectures on movies and other pop culture topics under the moniker Professor VHS. Find him on Instagram as @professorvhs and more of his work at professorvhs.substack.com.