People tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests

I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

Related:
Small and vulgar pleasures