As a Boomer I got separated from mass culture when I started college (well, one had better abandon mass low culture for something better -- ideally , richer and more fulfilling -- once one starts college). As I graduated from college I found that the mass culture had gone from Boomer-oriented to X-oriented. What happened? The pop musicians quit pretending to stand for any noble purposes in life or became old. OK, I found Haydn's string quartets much richer than the pap of the time.
Usually it is age 48 when the TV networks lose interest in most people. By then one either has no brand-name loyalty or is so capricious that one is beyond convincing. The only elderly people that the networks want to reach are the rich -- the ones capable of buying high-value insurance policies, financial securities, high-end marques of cars, or foreign travel. The networks get horrid ratings from golf, but they still air it. Its viewers are 'high-end', unlike people who might watch such bilge as COPS or The Jerry Springer Show.
But you can look at being aged out of the market for advertising in a good way: you are no longer being hustled. Are you tired of people trying to convince you that if you don't have the most expensive cellular phone that you are something of a freak?
I admit it -- at age 61 I am old, even if I still have a nimble mind and excellent mobility. I am old because there is much to which I cannot relate, and I see nothing wrong with being unable to relate to it.
Usually it is age 48 when the TV networks lose interest in most people. By then one either has no brand-name loyalty or is so capricious that one is beyond convincing. The only elderly people that the networks want to reach are the rich -- the ones capable of buying high-value insurance policies, financial securities, high-end marques of cars, or foreign travel. The networks get horrid ratings from golf, but they still air it. Its viewers are 'high-end', unlike people who might watch such bilge as COPS or The Jerry Springer Show.
But you can look at being aged out of the market for advertising in a good way: you are no longer being hustled. Are you tired of people trying to convince you that if you don't have the most expensive cellular phone that you are something of a freak?
I admit it -- at age 61 I am old, even if I still have a nimble mind and excellent mobility. I am old because there is much to which I cannot relate, and I see nothing wrong with being unable to relate to it.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.