Basic Trope: Aliens have no pop-culture, only high-culture.
- Straight: The Greyvians come to Earth and are befuddled by Earth's pop culture, having no television, video games or Teen Idol of their own.
- Exaggerated:
- The Greyvians have no art or literature or any kind of culture.
- Several alien races lack pop culture.
- Downplayed:
- Although the Greyvians are sufficiently advanced enough to get to Earth in the first place, the pop culture of their homeworld is always (from Earth's POV) Two Decades Behind (or more).
- The Greyvians have some art, music, and literature that is neither religious nor classic. However, there are far fewer writers, artists, and musicians on Greyvia than on Earth, meaning that if a work becomes popular, it will likely remain popular for a lot longer than it would on Earth.
- Justified:
- The Greyvians are a Proud Warrior Race or Proud Scholar Race that doesn't see any purpose to what we would deem Acceptable Breaks from Reality, preferring instead to concentrate on high culture and values they hope will pass onto the next generation.
- The Greyvians don't believe in art and music because those things are "emotional", and they have long since set aside or lost any semblance of emotion.
- The Greyvians are a very agrarian society; everyone is too busy tending crops and livestock to really concern themselves with much else.
- The same way there is a Proud Warrior Race, Proud Scholar Race, Proud Merchant Race, and so on, Humans are the "Proud Artist Race" of the galaxy and are renowned for their creative endeavors.
- The Greyvians consider writers, artists, and musicians as genuinely useless.
- The Greyvians discovered that most of the species do have a concept of fiction and art from their own anthropological (or xenological) research conducted before their encounter with humanity. But because they were unable to discover any indications that resembled the concept of a fanbase or fandom in humans, they mistook any form of popular entertainment (or any fiction with many fans) for a belief system-Imagine them were super confused when they found out that Sonic OCs/FCs do not have a basis in human mythology, Hatsune Miku does not exist until the 21st century or Hakurei Jinja Reitaisai is not an actual sect of Shintoism.
- (Exaggerated ver) The Greyvians consistently view all depictions as "records with a practical cause" as opposed to "emotionally driven creation" since they cannot recognize "beauty" or "aesthetic." Consequently, their interpretations are more like neutral descriptions when they examine any form of depiction that does not represent an actual entity that existed in real life in the first place. For example, If you were to show them a picture of the inside of a mosque dome that features Ottoman architectural details, all you would accomplish is confuse their understanding of the purpose of the lines and shapes. Alternatively, they also would be unable to comprehend why a pastel portrait of a person could be worth more than a photograph of the same person.
- Inverted:
- The Greyvians have no Mythology or religion or anything "classic" (or at least no memory thereof), only fleeting trendy pop culture.
- The Greyvians have more pop culture than we do, and center their lives around it.
- Humans end up lacking any pop culture as a subjugated species. Only aliens have the luxury to maintain it.
- Subverted:
- The Greyvians join their new Earth-buddies in watching a TV show or listening to some music.
- Outsiders simply think Greyvia is stuffy and repressed with no pop culture of their own, because they are only exposed to high-minded government representatives and stern military personnel. The average citizens of Greyvia, on the other hand, enjoy a thriving arts scene and mass media, but non-Greyvians almost never see any of it because the planet is remote and/or outsider access is restricted.
- The Greyvians do have pop culture, but because of a mix of Bizarre Alien Psychology and differences in values, humans wouldn't define it as so.
- Double Subverted:
- But back home, they don't have any of those things, and the other Greyvians back home think those things are just plain weird.
- Or they mistake it for a religious ritual, believing that characters on TV are gods, or that an Idol Singer is some kind of priestess or goddess.
- But little or none of that art or music is secular; it's all religious, or memorials to heroes long since passed.
- Not any recent shows, however; they're always at least Two Decades Behind.
- They still don't have and/or aren't allowed to have an actual pop culture of their own, but they can always just borrow from other planets.
- Parodied: The only thing that the Greyvians consider as "pop culture" is A Good, Old-Fashioned Paint Watching.
- Zig Zagged: The Greyvians have no pop culture, but their galactic neighbors the Graybians do, the Beigeans used to have pop culture but are trying to live it down, the Sludgies have pop culture but no high culture, and the Rainbowites have pop culture that's even better than Earth's.
- Averted:
- The Greyvians have their own pop culture back home.
- The Greyvians' culture (high or pop) never once intersects with or encounters that of another planet.
- The Greyvians has a similar pop culture to Earth.
- Enforced: "We need to make our aliens as... Alien as possible!"
- Lampshaded: "Strange how only humans seem to have pop culture."
- Invoked: The Greyvians emphasize things like honor, and learning history and long religious epics, as well as science and technology; there doesn't seem to be a place for "fun" things like that.
- Exploited: A human Starving Artist heads to Greyvia and becomes incredibly rich by creating Greyvian pop literature, film, and music.
- Defied: The Greyvians recognize the need for Acceptable Breaks from Reality, and develop a pop culture.
- Discussed: "Do you think there are rock concerts on other planets?" "No. Everyone knows aliens don't believe in entertainment."
- Conversed: "Why don't the aliens on this show have pop culture? They should have more pop culture than we do, because they're so advanced."
- Implied: Humans visit the planet Greyvia, and there is no sign of any pop culture.
- Deconstructed
- Because the Grayvians have no mass media that engages the mind, challenges social norms, or calls attention to the disenfranchised, their cultural growth is slow, and the people are extremely repressed in their emotions and sexuality as a result.
- The aliens bring home some of Earth's pop-cultural stuff, and set up equivalents in their homeworld. Or at least, shallow approximations of it devoid of any cultural context. Within weeks, the Greyvians have become so obsessed with pop culture that they have forgotten what's really important in life.
- The Greyvians bring their homeworld some music, and Moral Guardians there suspect them of corrupting their children and turning their back on their own culture.
- Reconstructed: The Greyvians learn to enjoy Earth's pop culture, maybe even make up their own, but they don't let it get in the way of their own values. And while they may exchange values and (if they have any) artwork and music with their new Earth-buddies, they don't impose their own (high) culture on that of Earth.
- Played For Laughs:
- The Greyvians are watching TV, and say in their own language, Who Writes This Crap?!?
- The Greyvians went to review every single Science Fiction that features aliens, and they have a feeling of weirdness when they find out some of the information didn't really match what they were yet still barely similar to them.
- They wish to be taken to Earth's leader, and believe (erroneously) that Justin Bieber is that leader.
- Played For Drama:
- The Greyvians are Scary Dogmatic Aliens who disapprove of Terran pop culture, so they kill the humans and dozens of other races in an interstellar war.
- The Greyvians went to a Warhammer40000 con in disguise. Initially, they were confused over why there are religious undertones in a fiction that is supposed to be a space opera. However, once they discover the "fear the alien, kill the alien" sentiment in the form of memes as well as some of the xenos being unfortunately enough to be similar to their appearances, they immediately considered the whole IP as a cult and relayed the information to their ambassador, who was still in a major UN meeting. Now, the ambassador must think what he should do with the information.
- Alternative: The Greyvians went for Internet surfing, and came across several forums that talk about genociding or mistreating intelligent life.....in a forum website. Horrified, they quickly downloaded the cache of the webpage and sent it to their masters for an emergency meeting because they thought what had been written signifies that humans have nefarious intent of mass killings.
Back to No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture, and no, that's not a shoutout to My Life with Xebulon.
