"No way!" I shriek excitedly as I polish off the last episode of House of Cards. "It's just so gooooood" I blab excitedly, hands-a-flapping to my friend. We bond over our shared love of Kevin Spacey's awesomeness, the cat-and-mouse element and, of course, our curious girl crush on Zoe Barnes. "#GoZoe!", I cry over-enthusiastically. Oh no. Busted. Yes, OK, I mean I've just finished the last episode of season one of House of Cards. Yes dear, the US version of House of Cards, not the obscure British original (heaven forbid.)
The fact that I had seen all the British version of House of Cards and so little of the worldwide phenomenon that is its US counterpart got me thinking about other cultural phenomena I have neglected until altogether too recently: Orange is the New Black, brogues, Breaking Bad, Stromae, giant couscous...the list goes on. Clearly, I have a disturbing pattern for being religiously 3 years (at least) behind any trend.
Initially I couldn't put my finger on why this could be. Whilst I (painfully) strive to cultivate a slightly boho, anti-establishment vibe, I ultimately fail in this respect. And I do quite like being able to talk about things. You know, things other people like as well. Having voraciously consumed or worn all of the items detailed above it was obvious that it wasn't through cultural snobbery that I had been so unwilling to accept them into my life. Nor was it the memory of meeting my shell of a friend for lectures after he'd had a hard night of Breaking Bad.
And then I realised: I don't hate anything that's 'in', I just hate being pestered. It's boring and makes me grumpy. Everywhere I look there's hype. Hype on social media, hype at the Oscars, hype at work, hype at the gym, hype in my real world, hype in my virtual world. Hype, hype, hype. And then I had a double epiphany: hype has killed my cultural mojo!!!
Despite having grown up an arty kid in an arty household and gone on to study a bachelor of arts it is evident that, against all the odds, I am in fact extremely lazy when it comes to the arts and culture more broadly. I'll watch, listen to, wear anything and everything deemed to be popular, but only, it seems, once it's stood the test of time. How melancholic this makes me feel. There used to be a time when I would buy three random CDs every week from HMV just to try them, a time when I would read poetry just because it sounded amazing read aloud, who cares who wrote the damn thing. There was a time when I wore tie dye head to toe and watched 24 with my whole family not because people said it was awesome, but because the guy's last name was the same as mine. I had my cultural groove on so to speak.
Living as we do in a world that is saturated by hype, bombarded with images and soundbites of what's hot, how is it possible to keep your culture mojo going? Dear HuffPost readers, if you have any tips for getting a woman's weary cultural mojo grooving once again please take pity get in touch with suggestions. You know my Twitter.