r e s m a r t e d

Pop Culture & The Little Debbie Effect

Modern popular music is not thought provoking. It does not dig at the fundamental truths of what it means to be human. It does not inspire the betterment of society or confront the ills of society. It provides a visceral pleasure, compounding simple animalistic emotions, giving us a cheap high that perpetuates our need for more while numbing us to the quality of deeper feelings and thought. Like heroin.

One can find Little Debbie in the red-light district of convenience stores – on the shelves in the checkout lanes next to the National Inquirer and a rack of key chains. Little Debbie sells herself for a scandalous quarter-dollar. Despite the list of ingredients longer than anything Homer ever wrote, Little Debbie has two basic components: sugar and food coloring. When consumers are faced with a choice between a Little Debbie and any other snack, they must ask themselves the question, “Do I want to pay more than half a dollar to have to chew and deal with the stimulation of multiple flavors, or do I want to spend only twenty-five cents and just mash my tongue to the roof of my mouth, dissolving the one-flavored goo in seconds?” Little Debbie peers up from behind those curly red locks and says, “Not hungry? Grab a Little Debbie,” because Little Debbie and hunger have nothing to do with each other. We don’t eat a fudge-round because our stomach is growling. We eat it because we want to, because is satisfies a simple urge long enough for one to get home and have those urges distracted by television. When we eat a Little Debbie, we don’t want to chew or think or receive any nutrients, we just want to feel, and after opening the wrapper, the Little Debbie is a symphony of the mouth with no mandible struggle required.

Culture is what separates humans from animals. Our lives are more complicated than satisfying our basic needs for survival and reproduction. Culture redefines our needs. Culture creates a life experience that goes beyond braving the elements and interacting with the other creatures on earth. Humans are blessed with two worlds: the physical world and the world of our minds. That world we create in our imagination is much less appealing today, it seems. Most would prefer to live a life no more complicated than the stimulations of their environment and their immediate instinctive reaction to it.

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