The academic study of popular culture ("contemporary culture as defined by the objects, images, artefacts, literature, music, and so on of "ordinary" people"[cit]) and popular digital culture "asks how new technologies reflect the wider social world offline, how they create new 'wired' cultural interactions, and how those new interactions in turn reshape the real (non-virtual) world."[cit]

Dr Strangelove reports: "'We're looking at how to push users into passive-consumption mode, a lean-back experience,' Jamie Davidson [a YouTube product manager] says." [cit]