No Trivial Matter

"R: We could play at questions.
 G: What good would that do?"   --Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

Pop culture fascinates me, sports captivate me, science intrigues me, history teaches me...because of these things, like many modern adults, I have accumulated an enormous stockpile of varied and only loosely organized or connected facts.  I admit this knowledge means I can hold my own in a fairly wide range of trivia questions and quizzes (to this point, I cited my "Sporcle" addiction in a previous entry--I have taken every quiz that has tumbled onto my phone since the day I installed the app, and that means hundreds of them--don't judge me too harshly), but as fun as all that is, it's not exactly "Useful Life Skills" for $200, Alex.


It's no accident that the coming-of-age period for my generation saw the gaming explosion of Trivial Pursuit and a thousand variations.  We're all brimming with these facts and needed some place to use them, so endless games, contests, and quizzes siphon them off just enough to keep our brains from popping under the pressure.

The main culprit behind the exponential growth in trivia--both the creation and distribution?  Television.  I know, always blame the TV...I hate that too.  But think about what TV did for EVERYTHING in the late 20th century: created a new litany of entertainment programming each year, established a parade of star performers, brought older movies back into our lives, presented historic events as they happened, showed sports events and grew sports leagues--and then was able to repeat those feats on a basic level by showing them all over again and on a more complex level by doing it constantly through the passing decades.  The television world poured out facts and details galore as it created an enhanced and shared experience unlike any other in history.  While the concept of the "zeitgeist," or "spirit of the times," was centuries old as an idea, TV found a way to create and shape the zeitgeist--and change it all over again in short order.


I have suggested to others that those in my age range (let's just say 36-46 for the sake of argument) are trivia's "Greatest Generation."  There are exceptions, of course, both older and younger, but follow me for a moment...in the 70's & 80's, when this group was growing up, you could still see nearly all the touchstone programs dating back to the early days of TV as repeats--with weekends showing old movies, themed from Tarzan to Abbott & Costello to the Marx Brothers to monster flicks (and in Tampa, that was "Creature Feature," hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer...say it out loud, you'll get it).  Stations had no qualms about running actual (gasp) black-and-white programming in their otherwise color line-ups when it came to I Love Lucy, The Addams Family, and so on--heck, several shows transitioned from b/w to color, so if you wanted to show all the episodes you had no choice.  Plus you had the new programming to take in, of course...and Saturdays ran plenty of cartoons, and cable was juuuust getting started, and MTV actually ran videos and... (pause for a moment--really, I'm not trying to sound like a grumpy old man, honest!).


Then there's the music.  Forgive the fact that disco invaded the formative years of these youths and consider the cross-generational impact--the parents of these "GenXers" (always hated all variations of that term), the Baby Boomers, were the fans of the early days of rock and roll and all the trappings that went along with that.  So while soaking in the punk-alternative transition along with the hyper-synthesized infusion in pop music, these kids had a backdrop playing in the home of the Beatles, the Stones, and Elvis.  While still attuned to pop music, this group would see alternative become mainstream, watch rap become hip-hop, and see the coming and going of concepts like grunge, gangsta, and emo.


Sports?  I won't dwell on it, but the lifespan of this group and the Super Bowl--same time period.  Massive expansion and media exposure for athletics--with more to take in all the time.


Yep, in addition to the standard exposure in school to the wide world of history, literature, and science, the GenX crowd had a perfect opportunity to take in the breadth of 20th century and early 21st century pop culture: a trivia gold mine...time to point that Imperfect Compass in all directions--or spin it for your next turn in Twister.

Armed with that concept, now we have to take in this one: although you'd think that the potential for more and more growth in this area was likely, we have surpassed saturation--the internet and mobile devices have changed how we experience content forever, satellite TV and radio have fragmented and multiplied content delivery to a degree that defies containment.  With that, it is impossible to take in all the new content being generated now, and nearly impossible to soak in all the pop culture content past.  Our kids will learn and do amazing things, but they're probably not going to be trivia stars.

So as years go by, just as with history, we will find music, movies, and TV all abbreviated to shorthand versions--details will be lost, and the beauty of the trivia right along with them.  Shame, really.  Trivial Pursuit, anyone?



My Choice Song for the Post: "I Know What I Know" - Paul Simon
  (a nearly-nonsense number from "Graceland", this features a chorus that says "I know what I know, I'll sing what I have said, we come and we go, that's the thing that I keep in the back of my head"...sounds like a decent metaphor for our respective trivia libraries)
My iPod's Choice via Shuffle: "Ice 9" - Joe Satriani
  (the iPod apparently wanted a counterpoint to the lyric-heavy Simon, so we get a classic instrumental guitar groove from Satriani)