I had an interesting discussion based on an article in a Danish newspaper ..
nowadays prime-time TV is filled with 'life-style' programs, which show us how to live our lives .. they show us how to live, or how not too, what food people eat, how they arrange their gardens, how much money they are getting for selling their house, what clothes is in etc etc..
The sheer amount of these kind of programs have exploded (at least on Danish TV), and mediascientists are speculating that these programs serve a use as a sort of social guidiance .. in a society with contiuos flexible norms which are affected by international trends, people are loosing touch with what is "right" ..
The solutions range from apathy to a more clear intervention in which trends come in and out of a country (if such a thing is even possible) ..
imo it's just shows that people aren't as 'individual' as we like to tell ourselves we are .. it seems we still rely heavily on others opinions .. and when these opinions are becoming increasingly numerous the need for 'normality' and a clearer definition of it, seems to be some kind of new commodity!
I see no solution and my discussion earlier this evening was quite fruitless, so I thought I would toss it by here .. to get a new international perspective ..
Do you think it's a problem? what can be done? should we even do anything? (or is it just another trend soon to be over?)