To me, this was the most striking sentence in the article. It seems to be something that has increased from the time pop culture began to the present. Each of us probably hears more about Justin Bieber than we would ever truly care to, for example.
For instance, I know that Bieber exists, and I can probably count on my fingers how many times I've seen pictures of him. I found the one or two songs of his I've heard innocuous and utterly forgettable - I probably couldn't identify him if I heard those very same songs again. I'm not even aware precisely why he's the go-to example of annoying celebrity, lately.
I'm not utterly isolated from the world or media, though. I just actually choose what media I consume.
So yes, entirely voluntary.
Now, if you'd like to argue that I was "forced" to encounter information by talking to someone I know, then you're going beyond even trying to make victimization out of exposure to media and just showing yourself to long for a hermitage. :)
So it seems voluntary enough.
Indeed, and I've pretty much done it. But it takes effort. You need credible replacements for the mindless time, and then you need to actively push yourself towards the new stuff as opposed to the old stuff.
The credible replacements is everything. If you commute by car, you need either:
-Some audiotapes/audiobooks/podcasts
-Someone to carpool with
-Some way of not driving any more (car service if you're wealthy enough, taking the train or bus otherwise)
...otherwise you're going to listen to the radio. What else is there to do while driving?
So it takes some effort. Totally doable though. I just calculated out how much time I spent on pop culture this year - Only one movie (Robin Hood, meh - I would've seen Inception except I was in the back provinces of China when it was released, and then it was gone from theaters when I was back in civilization), less than ten hours of TV (mostly tennis), no pop music except what was on when I was wandering through stores playing music or at a bar, no newspapers, and a few hours of trashy magazines while sitting in an aeronautical engineer friend's bathroom (why he reads them is beyond me, but it wasn't a terrible use of time while in his bathroom).
But this is only possible because I've got a list of stuff to do - a Kindle loaded with good books, an mp3 player loaded with audiobooks/podcasts, Hacker News/LessWrong/Google Reader loaded with good blogs, Lichess.org for when I want to play a game of Chess, and a list of temples/mosques/ruins/parks/beaches to go to.
It's not enough to just "opt out" - you need to "opt in" to some comparable activity to fill your time.
How about just drive? I hardly turn on the radio when I am driving by myself and find it a great time to think about things I am working on.
Justin Bieber, just so you know, is a Canadian teenage singer who has over the last few year build a large mass of rather devoted fans. He makes very 'poppy' music ('mierzoet' as we'd say in Dutch, I'm not aware of an English term capturing the essence of that word) and is therefore widely reviled by those who consider their own musical interests more refined or otherwise better.
It's all described on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber, and no it's not just a US thing (although he has been popular there for longer, but he's also well known here in Europe, including here in the Netherlands; see http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Bieber ).
That said, the tone (as far as there can reasonably be understood a 'tone' from two words) and the upvote the post had when I posted my comment did not, prima facie, lead me to believe that the purpose of the post was to be informed about who actually Justin Bieber is. A 5 second google search would've shown more than enough to be able to understand what the GP (and following posts) are complaining about. So, all these circumstances combined, lead me to believe that there is at least a core of truth to my post, even if it's not as dramatic as spelling it out like I did makes it seem.
Then again, me making these ridiculous multi-paragraph posts on a topic that is wholly devoid of any intellectual value would probably rationally be considered indicative of me taking pride in some sort of meta-pseudo-intellectual snobbery; so am I sticking up for pop culture because for the right reasons or for vain self-gratification? Does it matter? I don't know. And I think it doesn't matter that I don't know, either ;)
More likely he was pointing out to bobf, the user whose post to which he was replying, that participation in pop-culture is entirely voluntary. I think to assume that he was passing judgment on Justin Bieber fans out of some 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery' is just a little bit presumptuous.
Anyway I'm just posting to point out that that last paragraph with the 'pseudo-intellectual snobbery' was a sneer at myself, and not at Jacques; to point out that these things are relative and that I'm not above it. Just sayin' to make it clear - like I said before, I can't presume to be able to pass judgment on Jacques as a person from a few HN posts.