Popular Culture

Popular Culture Critical Commentary

My choice of popular culture is the new fad regarding fun runs or marathon. As you can see fun run is a healthy way of an activity, you get to run with people you don’t know and people who you share the same hobby with which is running. While fun run can be competitive it can also be leisurely. As a matter of fact I do fun run as a way of leisure since I’m not really a competitive runner. The populism of fun runs began in 2010 wherein people created a fundraiser and that fundraiser which is usually in the form of a party, which consists of eating, and drinking was transformed into a running activity. And that time it was considered as revolutionary due to the fact the logic was you’re the one who’s going to pay yet you’re the one who’s going to experience the pain of running. Well of course the aim of the fundraiser was to make an alternative to the usual fundraiser and turn it into a healthy alternative.

The experiment became a success and thus a fad was born, people every Sunday flock to places such as Mall of Asia, Bonifacio High Street and CCP in order to join the fun run. The success of the said experiment was coincided with the advent of advertisements about healthy eating. And those jumpstarted fun runs into a craze, recently fun runs have become a source of income for the organizers, organizers such as RunRio uses fun runs as a source of income and profit.

In my opinion, runs are impractical even though it is a healthy alternative, because of the soaring rates of joining a fun run, typically the fee for joining fun runs are rated at 700 pesos for 3 Kilometers of run while 10K runs are typically charged at 1500 Pesos per person. I believe that it is illogical because you do not really need to pay in order to run. Instead you can just run for free on the road, it is free and it is basically the same. I guess the logic for the some runners here is to show off and “magpapansin” that they can run or they have the money to be able to run. To be honest I only joined two runs in my entire life and I can say that it is indeed illogical because I believe that it is only a money making scheme, if you really want to run you can run without paying.