Harry Potter

Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels and one play written by British author J. K. Rowling. The series chronicles the life of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's struggle against the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who aims to become immortal, overthrow the Ministry of Magic, subjugate non-magic people and destroy anyone who stands in his way.

Since the release of the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, on 30 June 1997, the books have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide. They attracted a wide adult audience, and have remained one of the preeminent cornerstones of young adult literature. The series has also had some share of criticism, including concern about the increasingly dark tone as the series progressed, as well as the often gruesome and graphic violence depicted in the series. As of July 2013, the books have sold more than 450 million copies worldwide, making the series the best-selling book series in history, and have been translated into 73 languages. The last four books consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, with the final instalment selling roughly 11 million copies in the United States within the first 24 hours of its release.

Popular culture

Popular culture or pop culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are 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 (movies, music, TV), sports, news (as in people/places in news), politics, fashion/clothes, technology, and slang.

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 (most notably religious groups and countercultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, or corrupt.

History and definitions

The term "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, popular culture was associated with poor education and the lower classes, as opposed to the "official culture" and higher education of the upper classes.

Social media

Social media are computer-mediated tools that allow people or companies to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks. Social media is defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Furthermore, social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities, and individuals. These changes are the focus of the emerging field of technoself studies. Social media differ from traditional or industrial media in many ways, including quality,reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Social media operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media that operates under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers).

Video game

A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device such as a TV screen or computer monitor. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but it now implies any type of display device that can produce two- or three-dimensional images. Video games are sometimes believed to be a form of art, but this designation is controversial.

The electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms; examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld computing devices. Specialized video games such as arcade games, while common in the 1980s, have gradually declined in use due to the widespread availability of home video game devices (e.g., PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) and video games on desktop and laptop computers and smartphones.

The input device used for games, the game controller, varies across platforms. Common controllers include gamepads, mouses, keyboards, joysticks, the touchscreens of mobile devices and buttons. In addition to video and (in most cases) audio feedback, some games include haptic, vibration or force feedback peripherals.

Rhett and Link

Rhett and Link are an "Internetainer" duo consisting of Rhett James McLaughlin (born October 11, 1977) and Charles Lincoln "Link" Neal (born June 1, 1978) from North Carolina. Self-styled as "Internetainers" (a portmanteau of the words "Internet" and "entertainers"), they are known for their online viral videos and comedy songs, ten-episode TV series Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings for the Independent Film Channel, and more recently, their daily talk-show, Good Mythical Morning. In their 2008 documentary, Looking for Ms. Locklear, they chronicled their search for the first grade teacher in whose class they met for the first time.

The duo runs a number of YouTube channels including Rhett & Link, which has over 584 million views and nearly 4 million subscribers, and Good Mythical Morning, a talk-show posted on weekdays at 6:00 am EST with over 1.9 billion views and over 9 million subscribers (making it the 63rd most-subscribed YouTube channel). With 2 million subscribers, a third channel called Good Mythical MORE airs directly after Good Mythical Morning and is described as the "show after the show." Their fourth channel called EXTRAS – RhettandLink (RhettandLink4) is dedicated to uploading extras (BTSs, included sketches of Good Mythical Morning, etc.) and unedited versions of certain videos. As of November 2015, their fifth channel, RhettandLink5, is inactive, with only one (unlisted) video. There is a sixth channel, but it has no videos at all, and it is unknown whether or not it is official. They have also created Buenos y Míticos Días, a channel with content from their Good Mythical Morning channel dubbed to Spanish, with over 31 thousand subscribers.