3
Everyone's Still a Cultural Philistine
One of my biggest expectations for college was meeting people who shared my passions for comedy and films and music. I mean, college radio was where the cool stuff got played, right? Student filmmakers and college cinemas flourished on every campus. I thought that once people hit college, they magically became more sophisticated.
Well, there was a college radio station and student cinema aficionados at my school. There were freaks and artists, but here's the thing I didn't realize: The people who see the demanding movies and want to talk about them, the people who search for obscure music and study the nuance of the classics, will always be in the minority. They're the freaker artistic fringe. College, like most of society, is filled with bland people whose favorite author is John Grisham, favorite movie is Forrest Gump and favorite band is the Spin Doctors. (That's the '90s version of being obvious and boring. Today it would be, oh, I don't know, Stephenie Meyer, Love Actually, and Coldplay.)
I went to college at the height of grunge, but the best way to get an audience (and women) was to play really bad, extended jam hippie funk or join (God save us all) an a cappella group. Yes, just like Andy Bernard on The Office. I can't tell you how absolutely spot-on that character is. My campus was flooded with guys just like that. But no one except me and my freaker friends called them tools. And we did. Over and over. And it was fun. But most people didn't, because most people were just like them, minus the ability to sing three-part harmony to Billy Joel songs while smiling.
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