"People who may not ever meet face to face and thus have few real-world connections with each other can tap into the shared framework of popular culture to facilitate communication."
This quote is saying that the people spend less time with each other in person, but connect socially through the internet and use it to communicate. People can use common interests in popular culture to initiate cyber interaction. This cyclical process traps those who look for comfort behind a computer screen, lacking social skills, hindering them from gaining proper social skills by getting an easy fix, finding solace through further internet use.Through chat rooms, fan groups on social networking sites, role-playing games etc., people are experiencing an almost "in-authentic" social experience, to derive from Walter Benjamin. While it is easier to communicate through online sources, this "reproduction" of human interaction lacks authenticity, and the real things, like senses, that come from physically being with someone else. Even though we are able to send out mass "reproductions" of ourselves via the web, the realness is lost through whatever outlet we choose to utilize communication outside real-life. These projections of ourselves that we give on the internet, while able to be enjoyed by masses, are not really us, because it provides a detachment from ourselves where we can be someone else, and defy our previous traditions. Like a piece of art, these reproductions are less valuable, less complex and therefore less interesting than the real.
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