Information about Everything Bad Is Good For You

Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter is a book by Steven Berlin Johnson in which he claims that popular culture in general, and television shows and video games in particular, have grown more complex and demanding over time and are in fact making us smarter.

Thesis

Johnson makes his argument clear in the beginning of the book, when he states, “This book is an old-fashioned work of persuasion that ultimately aims to convince you of one thing: that popular culture has, on average, grown more complex and intellectually challenging over the past thirty years” (xv).

The Sleeper Curve

Johnson derives the term Sleeper Curve from the Woody Allen film Sleeper in order to to draw a comparison between the “scientists from 2173 [who] are astounded that twentieth-century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge” and the current perception that popular culture is “locked in a spiral drive of deteriorating standards” (xvi). Consequently, Johnson's Sleeper Curve serves to “undermine the belief that . . . pop culture is on a race to the bottom, where the cheapest thrill wins out every time,” and is instead “getting more mentally challenging as the medium evolves” (132-133). However, Johnson is also quick to point out that, by no means, does the Sleeper Curve imply that popular culture has become superior to traditional culture: “the Sleeper Curve undermines is not the premise that mass culture pales in comparison to High Art in its aesthetic and intellectual riches” (132). In other words, the Sleeper Curve is a device Johnson uses in order to raise questions about potential yet still unknown benefits to society that popular culture may possess.

Form as opposed to content

Johnson argues that the appeal of video games is not through their (possibly violent or sexual) content, but rather through the fact that the “structure” of the video games stimulates the reward centers of the brain. He first explains how the brain chemicals function: “a strong case can be made that the power of games to captivate involves their ability to tap into the brain’s natural reward circuitry. . . . The brain’s natural painkillers, the opioids, are the brain’s pure pleasure drugs, while the reward system revolves around the neurotransmitter dopamine interacting with specific receptors in a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens” (34). To clarify this, Johnson explains that the "dopamine system is a kind of accountant: disappointment and cravings are triggered by lower dopamine levels when rewards don't arrive as expected" (34).

Then, he establishes the connection between brain chemistry and the physics of a virtual world: “If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you’ll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they’re made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. It’s not the subject matter of these games that attracts- if that were the case, you’d never see twenty-somethings following absurd rescue-the-princess storylines like the best selling Zelda series on the Nintendo platform. It’s the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration” (38).

In other words, Johnson claims that the environment inherent to video games stimulates our brains to produce opioids and reward the player unlike any other form of entertainment. Thus, this strengthens his arguments that we need to evaluate the “form” of video games, rather than the content because there is an implication that something more complex is involved. Rather, he argues that the beneficial elements of video games and TV arise from their format.

Television & Television

In television, Johnson contrasts older shows like Hill Street Blues to modern shows like The Sopranos. He asserts that the storyline complexity has increased dramatically, and even the best shows from 20 years ago would be regarded as quite primitive were they to air today.

Johnson introduces the concept of the Autism Quotient or the capacity a person has for determining and understanding the interpersonal connections between people insofar as their emotional intelligence will allow them. This is determined by how low the score is; the lower the AQ score the higher the ability to determine these interpersonal connections. He writes, “People with low AQ scores are particularly talented at reading emotional cues, anticipating the inner thoughts and feelings of other people, a skill that is sometimes called mind reading...Television turns out to be a brilliant medium for assessing other people’s emotional intelligence or AQ—a property that is too often ignored when critics evaluate the medium’s carrying capacity for thoughtful content" (98-99). So, insofar as television programming can be said to be a vehicle for cognitive content, the Autism Quotient must be taken into account, at least according to Johnson.

Johnson also discusses Social Networks, a group or class of people linked in intertwined relationships, i.e. a family, a group of friends, coworkers, or any set of people with a continual and substantive interaction. He writes, “Where media is concerned, this type of analysis is not adequately illustrated by narrative threads or a simple list of characters. It is better visualized as a network: a series of points connected by lines of affiliation. When we watch most reality shows, we are implicitly building these social network maps in our heads, a map not so much of plotlines as of attitudes: Nick has a thing for Amy, but Amy is may just be using Nick; Bill and Kwame have a competitive friendship” (108). Because everyday human social interactions are more complex than a linear series of events, Johnson argues that they must be visualized, even in television programming, as a web of interconnected lines in reference to all occurring social interaction.

In film, Johnson highlights the recent trend of mind-bending films: Memento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Pulp Fiction. He argues these films have become popular despite their use of avant-garde techniques, which normally would restrict their accessibility and economic viability. The popularization of narrative experimentation in these films works to further Johnson's main thesis, which highlights an increase in complexity and viewer involvement throughout mass culture in the last twenty years.

Multiple threading

Prior to multiple threading, television episodes contained one or two main characters and one storyline. With the additional “collection of distinct strands” to the episodes, the public became willing “to tolerate more complicated narratives” (67, 72). This allowed the audiences to comprehend more storylines and characters as well as linking different episodes, improving their cognitive skills. In television shows like The Sopranos multiple threading is a common tactic used to provide information to the audience in an interesting way. Johnson explains, “The narrative weaves together a collection of distinct strands-sometimes as many as ten, though at least half of the threads involve only a few quick scenes scattered through the episode" (67). He believes that due to the rising technology in pop culture the audience is conditioned to comprehend the increasingly difficult plots developed with multiple threading.

Flashing arrows

Another term Johnson uses to describe the rising difficulty in television storylines is the disappearance of "flashing arrow." Flashing arrows act as “a narrative signpost, planted conveniently to help the audience keep track of what is going on” (73). For example, in typical slasher films, the audience knows that leaving a door unlocked leads to “unwanted visitors” (74). The unlocked door acts as a flashing arrow. In recent years, there has been a shift in reducing the number of flashing arrows causing “the cognitive labor you are forced to do filling in the details” (77). Television shows based in a hospital do not take the time to explain every medical term used; the audience is expected to grasp their meaning through context. In recent years television shows, the reduction of flashing arrows leaves the audience to discover plot twists for themselves.

Johnson discusses substance and texture and the way they are used to create a reality effect: Substance is all of the subtle, and sometimes obvious, clues that tell the audience what is happening in the show in a more direct way. For example, “When a sci-fi script inserts a non-scientist into some advanced lab who keeps asking the science geeks to explain what they’re doing with that particle accelerator- that’s a flashing arrow that gives the audience precisely the information they need to know in order to make sense of the plot.” (p.73). “Substance is the material planted amid the background texture that the viewer needs to make sense of the plot.” (p. 78).

“Texture is all the arcane verbiage provided to convince the viewer that they’re watching Actual Doctors At Work;” (p. 78) Texture is what is used to make the substance more believable. For instance, in Grey’s Anatomy, texture is the complicated medical jargon the actors use. Viewers are not expected to completely understand the language but it is needed to authenticate the plot.

“…Reality effects are designed to create the aura of real life through their sheer meaninglessness: the barometer doesn’t play a role in the narrative, and it doesn’t symbolize anything. It’s just there for background texture, to create the illusion of a world cluttered with objects that have no narrative or symbolic meaning…you don’t need to know what it means when the surgeons start shouting about OPCAB and saphenous veins as they perform a bypass on ER” (p. 78) The reality effects are created in concery with the texture to give the show more reliability; they enforce the believability of images as well as verbiage.

Video Games

Johnson's argument is that same skills exercised in modern pop culture are useful in the modern world and also correlate with the type of intelligence measured by IQ tests. As generations grow up more engaged in behavior that exercises this type of intelligence, their IQ scores rise. He asserts that this may be an explanation for the Flynn effect.

Steven Johnson discusses the different aspects of gaming psychology. The driving force that keeps you hooked on a game is what he terms “seeking.” He uses Grand Theft Auto as an example: the player drives around wherever he wishes, seeing new scenes around every corner. “. . . Most of the time when you’re hooked on a game, what draws you in is an elemental form of desire: the desire to see the next thing. You want to cross that bridge to see what the east side of the city looks like. . . .” (37).

Probing

Probing is the action that seeking induces. Computer games now are not self-explanatory and obvious. The player has to explore the world before he can reach his goal. This includes exploring the rules of the game and the physics of the game world. “You sit down at the computer and say, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ The regular games in the room have to explain: ‘You’re supposed to figure out what you’re supposed to do.’ You have to probe the depths of the game’s logic to make sense of it, and like most probing expeditions, you get results by trial and error, by stumbling across things, by following hunches” (42-43). Some of these rules you can learn just by reading the manual; others have to be discovered by playing (43).

Probing constructs the hierarchy of tasks that facilitate telescoping. This means that the gamer must keep long-term goals in mind as well as the current objectives at hand. “I call the mental labor of managing all these simultaneous objectives ‘telescoping’ because of the way the objectives nest inside on another like a collapsed telescope. I like the term as well because part of the skills lie in focusing on immediate problems while still maintaining a long-distance view” (54).

Telescoping

According to Johnson, multitasking is the action of doing multiple, unrelated things at once, and telescoping is doing multiple actions with a single objective in mind. Johnson differentiates between the two by saying, "Telescoping should not be confused with multitasking. Holding this nested sequence of interlinked objectives in your mind is not the same as classic multitasking teenager scenario, where they’re listening to their iPod while instant messaging their friends and Googling for research on a term paper. Multitasking is the ability to handle a chaotic stream of unrelated objectives" (54).

Johnson talks about the result of multitasking which he calls Continuous Partial Attention. He explains this by saying, “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data, picking out the relevant details, and moving on to the next stream. Multimedia pioneer Linda Stone has coined a valuable term for this kind of processing: Continuous Partial Attention. You’re paying attention, but only partially. That lets you cast a wider net, but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish" (61). In other words, continuous partial attention is the result of multitasking where things don’t get studied in depth--they are only looked at on a surface level. Johnson differentiates multitasking and telescoping even further by explaining this idea of continuous partial attention.

Criticisms

Some critics of Johnson's analysis argue his perceived support of unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism diminishes the overall poignancy of his argument. In the February 2006 afterword to the paperback edition of Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Johnson responds to these arguments with an admission of love for the spread and evolution of technology rather than open market systems. He furthers his stance by stating free market capitalism, in combination with mass communication advances in the 20th century, led to less challenging entertainment and a mired popular culture in comparison to our present high-tech, open-source society.

References

Johnson, Steven [2005]. Everything Bad is Good for You. Riverhead. ISBN 978-1594481949. 

External links

• Steven Berlin Johnson's personal website