Do you use "plastic" as a derogatory term?
When my friends and I were young it was common to denigrate things we didn't respect as plastic. Examples: American cars, shopping malls, cocktail parties, crooners, television newscasters. The implication was that those things were mass-produced for a mass audience, so the people who went for them were conforming to the culture instead of thinking it through. I'm older and I haven't heard anyone call culture "plastic" for a long time, but I'm curious whether other people remember it, whether it was widespread, and what the current equivalent term might be.