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Hello and welcome to our little bundle of joy, PopCult. While this newborn's features aren't yet fully formed and its head is still a little soft, I hope it's cute enough to present to the general public. Please look away and smile if it starts regurgitating too much… So what is PopCult? Glad you asked! Our crack team of elite marketers and sociologists spent the last two years hunched over their desks in fluorescently lit cubicles in a quest to determine what kind of webzine the Internet most needed. After countless focus groups with mall walkers in the southeast and several rounds of malt beverages, they at last concluded that cyberspace lacked one important element above all others (well, except for good pornography): a website about pop culture. After immediately downsizing our crack team of elite marketers and sociologists to zero, I started thinking about what they had reported. Could there really be a pop culture media vacuum on the Internet? I logged on to a handy search engine engagingly named "Yahoo" and soon discovered a plethora of pop culture websites–all of them targeting one specific micro-niche: obscure indie rock bands, Japanese anime, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s, the '80s (you could be the first to start a '90s site, act now), horror movies, science fiction movies, TV shows featuring guest appearances by Fred Willard, etc. But there are very few that look at pop culture as a whole, and even fewer that offered journalistically written stories. My mission, then, was clear: First, to find well-written stories about pop culture topics in the alternative press and convince the writers to give them to me for free. And second, to offer original commentary and humor when I had the time. With this bold formula, I hope to create an online publication that offers quality stories about quality pop culture. (For further words on The PopCult Philosophy, please read the overlong manifesto.) The PopCult website is divided into feature stories, short items, galleries, reviews, and consumer goods. I could certainly use your help in all these departments, whether throwing an idea my way or contributing stories. Eventually, I'd like to make this site an archive of popular culture history, creativity, and oddities. Please sign up for the PopCult Content Alert to receive updates on new story additions. Finally, I hope to promote the idea that there is indeed a difference between good pop culture and bad pop culture–a concept hard to discern in mainstream media coverage, where everything is worthy of hype as long as there's a celebrity attached. The best pop culture reflects the singular passions of its creators–and PopCult will devote itself to celebrating these strange obsessions, big or small, famous or unknown. Your Faithful Editor, Coury
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