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We Want Some Too: Underground Desire and the Reinvention of Mass Culture
Published on the brink of the millennium in the waning days before the iPhone, Reality TV and YouTube, We Want Some Too is acclaimed cultural observer Hal Niedzviecki’s groundbreaking book about the mass desire to reclaim popular culture.
Since its publication in 2000, We Want Some Too has become an underground classic. As relevant today as it was 10 years ago, it portrays the way generations of TV-infused product-adorned aspirationals have formed a new relationship to popular entertainment. This relationship, which Niedzviecki dubs “lifestyle culture”, consists of endlessly attempting to confer the fabricated events of pop with personal truth; a truth that situates mass culture at the very heart of daily life. (“Oh my God. She’s dead. I can’t believe she’s dead!” a man was reported to have screamed while browsing the weekly edition of Soap Opera News in a Toronto bookstore.)
From zine publishing to punk jazz to underground comics to pirate radio and culture jamming, Niedzviecki unearths the underground, makes sense of the barbarians massing at the gates of high art, and ruminates on everything from the nature of reality to the role of the ‘stupid job’. We Want Some Too depicts legions of disaffected, dedicated culture consumers challenging and utterly reshaping everything from television to journalism to pop music. The legions of Reality TV supplicants, bloggers, uploaders and digital mash-up artists that emerged a few years after We Want Some Too imbue Niedzviecki’s thought provoking commentary with new urgency and relevance.
We Want Some Too is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the role of popular culture in contemporary society. It’s also a book that retains its reputation as a smart, funny, accessible – and ultimately uneasy – portrait of a conflicted millennial culture born out of collapsing values, fragmented families, and uneasy economies.
Hal Niedzviecki is a Toronto-based writer. He is the founder, former editor and current publisher and fiction editor of Broken the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. He is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including Hello, I’m How Individuality Became the New Conformity and The Peep How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. Learn more at
Since its publication in 2000, We Want Some Too has become an underground classic. As relevant today as it was 10 years ago, it portrays the way generations of TV-infused product-adorned aspirationals have formed a new relationship to popular entertainment. This relationship, which Niedzviecki dubs “lifestyle culture”, consists of endlessly attempting to confer the fabricated events of pop with personal truth; a truth that situates mass culture at the very heart of daily life. (“Oh my God. She’s dead. I can’t believe she’s dead!” a man was reported to have screamed while browsing the weekly edition of Soap Opera News in a Toronto bookstore.)
From zine publishing to punk jazz to underground comics to pirate radio and culture jamming, Niedzviecki unearths the underground, makes sense of the barbarians massing at the gates of high art, and ruminates on everything from the nature of reality to the role of the ‘stupid job’. We Want Some Too depicts legions of disaffected, dedicated culture consumers challenging and utterly reshaping everything from television to journalism to pop music. The legions of Reality TV supplicants, bloggers, uploaders and digital mash-up artists that emerged a few years after We Want Some Too imbue Niedzviecki’s thought provoking commentary with new urgency and relevance.
We Want Some Too is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the role of popular culture in contemporary society. It’s also a book that retains its reputation as a smart, funny, accessible – and ultimately uneasy – portrait of a conflicted millennial culture born out of collapsing values, fragmented families, and uneasy economies.
Hal Niedzviecki is a Toronto-based writer. He is the founder, former editor and current publisher and fiction editor of Broken the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. He is the author of many works of fiction and nonfiction, including Hello, I’m How Individuality Became the New Conformity and The Peep How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors. Learn more at
- GenresNonfiction
359 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
30 people want to read
About the author
Hal Niedzviecki
16 books50 followersHal Niedzviecki is a writer, culture commentator and editor whose work challenges
preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. Hal works in both the fiction and nonfiction genres. He is the author
of books including, in fiction, the novel Ditch, and his latest novel The Program. In nonfiction, his most recent work is The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (www.peepdiaries.com). He is the
current fiction editor and the founder of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and
the independent arts ( www.brokenpencil.com). He edited the magazine from 1995 to
2002. Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across North
America including the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life,
Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. He was the recipient of the Alexander Ross Award for
Best New Magazine Writer at the 1999 National Magazine Awards and has presented his
work at events across North America including the International Festival of Authors in
Toronto. Once dubbed the “guru of independent/alternative action” by the Toronto Star,
Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction
and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities
at the heart of our fragmenting age. For excerpts, reviews, samples of past articles and
more, visit Hal’s website: www.smellit.ca
preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. Hal works in both the fiction and nonfiction genres. He is the author
of books including, in fiction, the novel Ditch, and his latest novel The Program. In nonfiction, his most recent work is The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning To Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (www.peepdiaries.com). He is the
current fiction editor and the founder of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and
the independent arts ( www.brokenpencil.com). He edited the magazine from 1995 to
2002. Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across North
America including the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life,
Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. He was the recipient of the Alexander Ross Award for
Best New Magazine Writer at the 1999 National Magazine Awards and has presented his
work at events across North America including the International Festival of Authors in
Toronto. Once dubbed the “guru of independent/alternative action” by the Toronto Star,
Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction
and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities
at the heart of our fragmenting age. For excerpts, reviews, samples of past articles and
more, visit Hal’s website: www.smellit.ca
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 3, 2017
Decent book, addresses the conflict mass media has caused by infiltrating our lives since we are born, and proposes a neat solution - just take what media has given us and create something with it.
March 20, 2011
Love the premise and style, but this was a chore to read for some reason.
July 28, 2015
A really good collection of long-form magazine articles. I'm just not sure it's a really great collection. Interesting but not intriguing.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews