Many people who have a great deal of time on their hands due to the leisure nature of many societies today engage in a large amount of random musings on our popular culture. There are so many things going on in society today that would make our grandparents blink their eyes in surprise that there almost isn’t enough time in the day to catalog them all.

As an example, how many people living back in the 1940s would understand or even be able to use a computer as it is designed today? To them, the word ‘computer’ meant a machine in a huge room that cost many millions of dollars. They are completely normal to us and we even use what are called ‘computer skins‘ to decorate them, though it’s a sure bet that our grandparents would have no idea what the term meant.

And when it comes to personal health and fitness — or at least giving the appearance of personal health and fitness — how many of our grandparents out there would even be familiar with the term 6 pack abs? It’s probably a good guess that not many of them would think of a six pack as being much more than something beer or soda was carried around in rather than something done to buff up abdominal muscles.

As far as body art — which is the more socially acceptable term for tattoos these days — the very fact that one can design own tattoo drawings and then have an artist with them on one’s skin probably would come as a big surprise to all those Navy sailors throughout the years who got their tattoos from some tattoo parlor in San Diego or Norfolk, Virginia.

Popular culture is so ubiquitous that we couldn’t come close to being able to escape it even if we wanted to. It confronts us on a 24/7 basis and does almost nothing we can do to keep it from intruding on us. Just about every person of the Amish faith can probably attest to that fact whenever they come close to being hit by a car while they’re out in their horse-drawn carriages.

This is because those Amish must deal every day with those in popular society who look at them as the ones who are out of touch instead of looking at themselves as being people who are way too much in touch. Still and all, there probably aren’t too many people that would go back to the so-called ‘old days’ and all of the problems that those days really presented to people.

Popular culture will always be popular culture matter the era, though. When Elvis Presley made his debut, many people considered that he was the beginning of the end of society. Nowadays, people look back at those times and wonder what all the fuss was about. It’s fairly certain that people 50 years from now we’ll look back at these times and wonder why we were such fuddy-duddies.