Claim: Entertainment, sports, news, politics, fashion/clothes, technology, and slang are popular culture categories.

Popular culture or pop culture is the entirety of attitudes , ideas , images , perspectives , and other phenomena within the mainstream of a given culture , especially Western culture of the early to mid-20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century . Heavily influenced by mass media , this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society . The most common pop culture categories are : entertainment -LRB- movies , music , television , games -RRB- , sports , news -LRB- as in people/places in news -RRB- , politics , fashion/clothes , technology , and slang . Popular culture has a way of influencing an individual 's attitudes towards certain topics .   Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and `` dumbed down '' in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream . As a result , it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources -LRB- most notably religious groups and countercultural groups -RRB- which deem it superficial , consumerist , sensationalist , or corrupt .