

Labelling penny dreadfuls the Victorian equivalent of video games, The Guardian in 2016 described penny fiction as "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young". With the rise of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain experienced social changes that resulted in increased literacy rates, and with the rise of capitalism and industrialization, people began to spend more money on entertainment, such as (commercialised) pubs and sports. Traditionally, popular culture was associated with poor education and with the lower classes, as opposed to the "official culture" and higher education of the upper classes. The phrase "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier. In the past folk culture functioned analogously to the popular culture of the masses and of the nations.

( July 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) You may improve this section, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new section, as appropriate. The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the Anglosphere and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. The common pop-culture categories are: entertainment (such as film, music, television and video games), sports, news (as in people/ places in the news), politics, fashion, technology, and slang. It is generally viewed in contrast to other forms of culture such as folk cults, working-class culture, or high culture, and also through different academic perspectives such as psychoanalysis, structuralism, postmodernism, and more. Because of this, popular culture is something that can be defined in a variety of conflicting ways by different people across different contexts. However, there are various ways to define pop culture.

Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards certain topics. Heavily influenced in modern times by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society. The primary driving force behind popular culture is the mass appeal, and it is produced by what cultural analyst Theodor Adorno refers to as the " culture industry". Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time.
