Eh Johnson

Over the last couple of months, three days of every week, I learned a little more about Johnsons’ Sleeper Curve. Johnsons book “Everything Bad is Good For You” circulates around the idea of Sleeper Curve, which he tells us is the growth of complexity in pop culture and increase of intelligence in the last thirty years. It is because of this increase of complexity and difficulty in comprehension of pop culture that makes us as viewers practice critical thinking almost constantly of every day, causing this wave of intelligence in our generation.

Though there are many ways to argue this, I have to agree with Johnson. One might say that pop culture has no effect on ones literary intelligence, but then again this generation is constantly on the computer reading and taking in information. We may not know while reading blog posts and articles we are learning good grammar and vocabulary but we are unconsciously.

Johnson hits on different forms of media such as video games, internet, television, and film. All of which in some form or another have been advanced and are causing us to think. Video games involve a lot more problem solving, while internet websites almost need to come with a hand book for those who are new to them. Television and film now have more than one story line or multiple plots. Things like this is what keeps us hooked on watching, if we were to present the more simple shows from forty years, ago no one be interested because the lack of thinking needed to watch it. People love to guess who the crazed psycho killer is in a horror film or who is going to end up with the girl in the end of a romance flick. These are now things that we strive for in our pop culture, being more involved.

Johnsons term Sleeper Curve, to me, stands. I don’t see anything wrong in his concepts or ties to pop culture. This unconscious way of learning can easily be proved the best. It’s easier to learn when you don’t know you’re learning. It is not pressured, but it’s there and easily accessible. I’m grateful for the knowledge that I’ve come to realize I am effortlessly taken in everyday through mass media. My eyes have been opened through his ideas and it’s awesome.