John Locke once wrote “We are utterly incapable of universal and certain knowledge.” That may be true. However with enough hard work, dedication and talent, there’s nothing stopping you from catching the more than 100 new cute and inexplicably endearing monsters in Pokemon Gold and Silver, released today.

I could go on about all the cool new things in these two games, such as the real-time clock or how it supports every little Game Boy peripheral ever made, but you don’t care. I’m sure many of you have already dismissed Pokemon as a silly fad, destined to become old and irrelevant like Madonna. You couldn’t be more wrong. Pokemon is huge now, and it’s here to stay.

Americans are a materialistic bunch. We define ourselves largely on the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, and the cars we drive. With enough advertising, corporations have fed on this idea for years, selling us the latest and greatest thing that we snap up by the millions, consume and eventually discard. It’s the reason we have boy bands, petite pop princesses, cranium crapping corporate compost creations such as Blink 182.

They contrive it. They advertise it. We buy it. They make money. As wonderful as this system is for big business, people eventually smarten up, fads dry out and life goes on. Backstreet Boys will get old and married, Britney and Christina will become Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Of course, not all fads die. The survivors are those that were good from the start.

The problem is that most American fads are just plain dumb. Music is a great example. Record labels don’t bother to recruit talent.

It just hires hook-endowed songwriters, talented make-up artists, and quality choreographers to make five overdressed grown men sing bubble gum pop to preteen girls while hopping up and down and flailing their arms around.

Radio and MTV get saturated with it that until it becomes so overpromoted people vomit it back up like a force-fed goose. Americans consume and discard, and corporations return to the drawing board to think of the next idea to invade our pocketbooks by storm.

There’s really nothing wrong with fads – only bad ones. Popular culture is constantly evolving (or changing for the creationists), and corporations have to stay hip to survive.

The problem is that people who think up the products we buy, the music we listen to, or produce the shows we watch never really cared about giving us a respectable product. They only care about what sells.

American content-creators have gotten so lazy that all they market nowadays are overproduced bubble gum pop on the radio and profanity, sex and violence on television.

Instead of throwing something our way that’s actually worthy of our attention, we got Hootie and the Blowfish and Jewel. Instead of making quality products that people will enjoy and treasure, the people simply make pro-ducts that people will buy. Where’s the outrage?

Japanese toys and entertainment are so cool because it provides a harsh alternative to our society of contrived pop acts, shock rap artists and mediocre movies chocked full of sex and violence.

That magical little country makes great products devoid of quick-selling gimmicks. Behind all the advertising and hype, Pokemon still manages to be fun and incredibly addictive. As far as violent content goes, there may be frequent battles – and sometimes Pikachu gets smacked up pretty bad – but you just take him to a Pokemon Center and get him healed up, and he’s good to go again.

This is not to say all video games from Japan are cutesy.

Mature titles such as Konami’s Metal Gear Solid do contain adult themes and quite a bit of violence. The difference is that the Konami never considered it a selling point. Nintendo mascots and Playstation franchises will live forever because like cars and VCRs, the Japanese build things to last.

The entertainment industry needs to realize that people are tired of mediocre products sold on cheap gimmicks.

Heavy advertising can make anything a fad, but it won’t make them last. Profanity, sex and violence are all well and good, but it has become canonized as selling points or tastelessly employed to disguise a terrible product.

There is a market for imaginative, satisfying entertainment. Japan has proven this. If more focus were put on quality before marketability, American companies would find that their offerings to the shrine of popular culture will last a little longer than a snowball in hell.