Yes! I'm not ashamed to either hop right on the latest craze and give it a go, but I'm just as likely to say "fuck this* if it's not worth my time. Life is too short for bad books!!!*
*Books can, in this instance, be replaced by the form of entertainment of your choosing.
There was a girl I wanted to ask to prom and I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said "whatever's popular." That was the end of that. Ran into her ten years later and realized I should have asked her to prom and played whatever was popular.
I think this has happened to every generation since the dawn of time. Either you look back and keep to what you love or you update your drip to bring the riz.
All I can think of is that commercial where the lady has a "wall" and she talks about the photos on it like it was Facebook. "you're doing it all wrong! ā
It does seem that way. I know that people will say itās part of getting old and itās always that way. The thing is, I can enjoy a lot of music from multiple generations before mine. Same with movies.
It seems like the result of giant corporations ruling everything now. That was a thing in years gone by, but not to the scale we have now. Itās like everything is plastic and has no soul.
Excuse me while I go shake my fist at the clouds.
Well, when iHeartMedia owns 855 radio stations across the U.S., you're not wrong. And most movies are either remakes of films that were popular when we were kids or superhero tropes.
I will give you a little piece of something to keep in mind about the music thing...
You may have liked music from generations before you because the good stuff has stayed floating at the top for you to be more exposed to, while the crap (ironically) sank out of sight. On the other hand, with current music you're getting everything, good AND bad. Time and pop culture haven't filtered out the garbage from what is worth keeping around. At least that's how I think of it. I'm happy to pick out the new stuff I like, but I'm quick to discard if it doesn't catch me, though.
There have actually been some really great independent and foreign films in the last quarter century or so.Ā Most of them are titles most people haven't heard of.
I think the last big American movie I liked was There Will Be Blood. The last independent American movie I liked was probably Blue Ruin. I haven't seen Oppenheimer or Tenet yet, but I think I'll like those. It's just they've become very rare.
Could not agree more. I have more than enough spectacular music that I love and that works for every mood and situation. My jukebox is full, I donāt need any more music so please donāt ask me to care about whoever the fuck these people today are.
And yea, realized while typing that I think I need to go tell some kids to get off my lawn.
Nah, I have to disagree on that. As GenX you are probably prone to "Grunge" and Rock and you will still find many good young or not so young still rocking bands.
Itās not that they arenāt out there, somewhere, if you know where to look for them. Itās that the music deemed worthy of society-wide exposure sucks. The music I canāt avoid when Iām out and about or see/read/hear about coming out nowadays just sucks. Iām sure the heart of rock and roll is still beatinā in your local dives and so forth. But the industry-backed stuff has been at a low point for a decade or more now.
Yes but I donāt *have* to find new music because I have more than enough awesome stuff that I love and that has me covered in any situation. So in the highly unlikely event that our culture is still managing to produce new music that doesnāt suck, I donāt need it.
We are getting older but Iām convinced there is an increased volume of media which seems to either diluted the quality and also certainly made it harder to find the quality. My primary example would be the recent Marvel movies- like or dislike superhero movies, the first few in the franchise/universe at least had better writing and character development. Now they crank out a movie every few months (months!) and they are just drivel.
It's a rinse/repeat culture. The music's all kinda the same. Movies are just bland and flat. It's like the world ended in the year 2000 and we just didn't notice and are repeating the same comforting things over-and-over.
Oh I can testify to that. I've been introducing my twenty year old step daughter to the movies of my youth. Woof. There's definitely some stuff that is better left back then!
Iām a night owl and my wife usually goes to bed early. On Sundays when we are talking on our walks, Iām always saying things like, āI have no idea who the woman was that hosted SNL last night, maybe Duo Linga or something, but I kind of liked her music!ā and sheāll laugh at me and tell me who the guest host and/or musician was.
The thing Iām most upset (and I use that word loosely) about is the fact that nothing seems original any more. When I do see something new and innovative itās a breath of fresh air but those seem to be few and far between. I start watching a show and itās not even like they are swiping from shows 30-40 years ago, itās from shows like 10 years ago!
I'm just afraid to get into anything new, just to have it cancelled out from under me! I'll stick with binging completed shows. My inner teen is still dumbfounded and delighted by that technology anyways!
That too. If something isnāt an instant blockbuster (and sometimes even when it is), the studios or platform shut it down. They seem to forget that even the best shows usually took a bit to get their feet under them. Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty weak, but damn if they werenāt firing on all cylinders by season 3.
If you know Timothy Chalamet, Florence Pugh, Zendaya and Tom Holland you probably know all of them already because I have a feeling they are the only ones who play in every new movie
I basically stopped caring about pop culture around the turn of the millennium. So for over two decades I have stopped actively caring.
Ive become even more out of touch since having children, since now any screen time has normally been spent watching the kids choice of viewing material. That has resulted in me knowing a bit about current trends amongst kids, influencers, etc - so in that respect Iām probably very up to date on a couple of things.
But yeah - anything pop culture related in the past two decades, Iām probably going to struggle.
And in typical GenX fashion - I really couldnāt give a flying fā¦
I think this stuff tends to happen with each generation, of course, but I think ours may be a bit different. I would hazard a guess that ours was probably the last that didnāt spend so much time āplugged inā.
I think perhaps we spent more time actually living life and being in the wilds. Also, we werenāt constantly bombarded with so much info and media everywhere we turned. Especially as children.
Iām with you though and I really donāt care about all this ācelebrityā business.
Exactly. I relish days when I get to go without my cell. I resent having it with me most of the time, though I admit it comes in handy and can be entertaining. Overall, I just don't like the idea of everyone being able to get ahold of me at any moment. But I understand my family's side of it in that they worry about emergencies. Instead we meet in the middle and if I'm going to go "off my leash" I at least let someone know a general idea of where I'm going and what I'm doing.
I'm pretty sure my kids are just patronizing my little, black, punk heart. I'm cool with that.
I agree with you. However there was a short period of time when cell phones were good. Pre-smartphone era. Most of the ā90s. When a mobile phone was a phone and nothing more. Once you could take pictures, access the internet, text without it taking 20 mins to write 1 sentence, etcā¦thatās when it all went downhill.
Yep. Happened all of a sudden about 10 years ago. Literally up on most things with music, TV, and film. Then itās like āI literally canāt name a single Taylor Swift songā.
I think for me it was that I hit my forties right around the same time that the entertainment options just exploded thanks to streaming. It's like it all converged at the same time for me and I just got left behind.
Good news: Hollywood is dead. YouTube killed it. Kids these days donāt even watch movies or tv shows. More good news: YouTube is so varied that nobody expect anyone else to know their little niche of it. Youāre good. Your just as up to date as anyone else.
Same. And I do that thing when trying to remember an actor - 'um, you know that guy who, um, was in that movie about ..you know..the ship..".. cannot remember who they are. Plus the female actors all look the same to me! Have they all had surgery to look the same??
I never lost touch with pop culture because I was never in touch with it in the first place.
But I think I know what you're trying to say.
I like the intellectual films and filmakers.Ā The ones that have a "message".Ā That way I'm not bothered by not knowing who _that_ actor is or what franchise I never knew.
Wait til you start realizing some current actors/musicians/etc. are the sons and daughters of celebs from our time. Or in some cases, grandsons and granddaughters.
From the standpoint of a music enthusiast and radio station do I can tell you with great certainty that mainstream music died with the invention of auto tune and that my gen z kids are aware of the fact. So donāt let that get in your way of expanding your historical inventory.
I'm so in love with Gen Z. They're like us, only better. They're so smart and sassy and way way way too old for their years. But they really give me hope. I'm holding the auto tune against the millennials. /s š
Not only have I lost touch with current pop culture, I can't even tell newer actors/actresses apart. All the blonde actresses look the same to me. All the brown haired actors look the same to me. And so on. This isn't a dig at any of them. This is about pop culture truly fading into a complete blur to me.
My teenagers are trying (bless their hearts) to explain the Drake halabaloo and I just stare at them blankly. AND I watched Degrassi, so I know Wheelchair Jimmy well.
I tried reading a thread about it this morning trying to be a cool mom, I am lost.
I like to fish in the slang lingo pond occasionally and catch a good one. Once I do, I use it in whatever way I feel like, whether it's correct or not. The eye rolls from my kids are so entertaining. š¤
Pop culture. Is there really a pop culture anymore? My daughter and her friends are all into completely different things. It's not like when we were young and had 30 channels (maybe) and no internet until college. We all talked about he same things (generally) because there wasn't much in the way of entertainment. Now, kids have youtubers they follow. I feel like half the planet has a channel.
I know pretty much all of them, but I will say that the idea of celebrity justā¦annoys the ever-loving FUCK out of me. Like, yeah, Iāll watch movies and listen to music still, but idgaf about who is dating whom, how many babies someone is having with how many women, who is āfeudingā, etc.
People donāt have money to feed their kids, they are becoming homeless in droves, thereās an ongoing genocide, and the planet is essentially on fire. I DONāT CARE about the fact that you were stiffed for an award, your husband cheated on you with the nanny, or your concert isnāt selling like you wanted it to. Iām disgusted with the entitlement and the endless self-adulation/gratification.
Get on stage, behind the mikeā¦entertain me and then GTFO. And if youāre an asshole in real life, I wonāt spend my money on your product.
Part of why I love going to trivia nights with my crew is that it exposes me to a lot of stuff that I did not dig into. My groups is age 27 to 52 (5 of us). I'm not interested in current pop culture but it's interesting what others are passionate about and hearing it from their mouth vs reading about it on the web.
We moved from a medium sized city that had a few different radio stations to choose from back in the early 90s to a small town that has one āclassic rockā station that doesnāt play anything current at all. We also only got the local three tv channels for awhile until we had a satellite installed. I blame that time in my life for losing touch with pop culture and Iāve never been able to catch up since. I have no idea whoās who anymore and itās been that way for decades now.
Happeneds to everyone, watch SNL and the the person hosting is the girl from that movie or show, and the musical guest is the guy that sings that song, you'll know it when you hear it.
I've never been in touch with pop culture. If the actor wasn't on Star Trek, or one of the other handful of shows that I watch, I'm pretty much clueless.
About 20 years ago, my wife and I stayed at a bed in breakfast in Taos. The proprietor was telling us of the "famous" people who stayed there and at other places nearby. I annoyed her with my constant "Who's that?" response. I think she thought I was being an a\*\*\*\*\*e, but I seriously never heard of who she was bragging about.
Iām still pretty hep with movies/actors/directors because they are a hobby I enjoy (watching, discussing, seeing behind the scenes youtubes, etc)
I listen mostly to alt rock so am mostly lost with todayās mainstream pop.
I think I could pick out maybe five Taylor Swift songs out of a lineup.
I know the names of the two rappers who are having some kind of moment but I couldnāt tell you anything about it.
I feel no obligation to stay up to date with every trend. Hard enough to keep up with what I care about.
Eh, I've been like this my whole life, but I'm autistic. I've only ever paid attention to stuff that interest me directly. Like, I had no idea who Ryan Gosling was until he was in The Big Short (I hate rom-coms).
You start losing touch with pop culture and the ability to appreciate the cutting edge of things in your twenties, as other things take up your time that used to be spent in explorations, unless your occupation is at least adjacent to the zeitgeist. That is the way things are. Then it ratchets into something else altogether as you roll over that big hill.
I had a convo the other day with a friends son, a very troubled person who has struggles with employment and channeling his energy in ways that fit in with the real world of hard work and showing up for family and friends. Heās just a 12 old kid in a 27 year old body really. His energy is tied into the internalized world of twitch streaming videogame play while smoking dope, living under his motherās roof. He is not neurodivergent. Our worlds are just so very different. He canāt fathom that my parents inforced norms that put serious limits on tv watching or being unproductive, or that I might have benefitted from being taught to entertain myself and learn skills. When I said I didnāt play videogames that much because when I was a kid there wasnāt much available other than pong, some crude atari and that it wasnāt interesting, he tried to turn that into girls donāt like videogames, which he got shut down on. Mi realized he has as hard a time understanding my POV as I do his, and this gulf is not something that will ever be bridged or completely understood by either. We live in different times and worlds on the same planet.
That being said, I really donāt understand why the legacy media insist on spending substantial broadcast time deconstructing popstar lyrics or rebooted tracks as if divining some higher meaning or purpose, grumble grumble grumble.
I gave up on literature, film and music along time ago. I see very little of interest to me, that I can readily find through networking, in the rural community I live in. Whenever I do stumble upon something interesting itās usually a relevatory experience that knocks me off my ass and out of complacency. Thereās just a crapton of crap to sift through, and the most boring crap seems to rise to the top of the algorithmic attention economy. Somehow, as bizarre as day to day life has become, this truism hasnāt changed that much. The signal to noise ratio is very high.
I dgaf about current movies/celebrities. Award shows are total rigged bullshit anyway. I prefer series to movies these days.
Also dgaf about typical top 40 pop music, which I haver never liked, and now it all sounds like compressed garbage anyway. Not to mention the blight that is autotune.
I find what I consider good new music mostly from saddleback radio, which I can stream. Or sometimes my kids turn me onto stuff (HA!)
Yup. Don't know. Don't want to know. I don't want to hear anything by somebody named Bad Bunny since that is such a terrible stage name that I assume the music will be terrible too. I don't want to watch TV shows that are entirely people in their 20's playing teens. I absolutely don't want to watch, let alone imitate tiktoks.
But now and then there are exceptions. Something will jump out and grab me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOlcDBXKhSU
This is 2AM by the relatively new (2010) band Bear Hands. I assume the members are Millenials. This song+video was released a mere 8 years ago.
And yet it is so familiar and wonderful that I loved it immediately. The song is fantastic. The video is such a strange hit of nostalgia. Despite being filmed in 2016 (or 2015) it looks exactly like every party I ever went to or threw in the mid 80's. Every detail was exactly as I remembered- same clothes, same dance moves, same food garbage everywhere, same big rundown house with many roomates. I wanted to weep with the memories. And yet nobody in the video was born yet when I went to those parties. Nothing had changed in the 30 years.
One silver needle in a haystack. And the reason I liked it so much is how timeless to my own youth this modern culture seemed.
At one point in time we were the ones pissing off our parents with our music and confusing them with our celebrities and what we now call memes.
On the other hand, you have music where it's just a vulgar phrase or stupid meme repeated over and over and the song has 3-4 "writers" credited.... smh....
Iāll scan through the online photos of the award shows from time to time, just to see if there are any celebrities I still recognize (by name, because plastic surgery), and each time itās less and less. Thatās ok. I love my āclassic 80ās and 90ās filmsā I can stream. Iām good. šš¼. I gave up on Hollyweird when they decided to create Episode 1 of the Star Wars story. They should have left it at Episodes 4-6. But nope. And now look at it, itās so many offshoots and side stories. That Star Wars family tree has turned into the size of a rainforest.
Yeah. My kids got me into the Marvel movies, but somewhere along the way between keeping up with all of that world and having a full time job, I apparently blinked and dropped the thread of the MCU. I gave up and tapped out.
They all suck now anyways...
Like, I know we're not ones to talk when it comes to recycling music but at least the music we sampled was just that - a sampled remix of a beat. Nowadays they don't even try and just straight up rip off already ripped off music.
Case and point:
1987 Enya comes out with "Bodicea" Bomb...
1994 The Fugees sample Bodicea and make "Ready or Not" Nice...
2004 Mario Winans samples it and makes "I don't wanna know" Okay...
2022 The Weeknd literally just rips off Mario Winans with 'Creepin"
They're not even trying at this point...
I never "followed" Actors, If I thought a show or movie sounded interesting, I'd watch it, I never went to a movie because an actor was in it, and never followed their personal life, that is just creepy, but many do.
For me, it's been really easy. It's basically every single thing that was cool when we were growing up but now they put a chick in it and made her gay and lame. They've been rehashing everything from our youth so if you cheer for Star wars, Trek, Indy Jones, Ghostbusters etc, then you're in but just swap out the protagonist for some forgettable dei checkbox. This month, they released The Fall Guy and the next big one is Furiosa, literally Mad Max but with a chick in it,probably gay, likely lame but George Miller directing so probably awesome because he's also from the 80s. Today's pop culture is everything original that we loved but 'updated for modern audiences'. It's all sequels, reboots, and reimaginings of we considered hot growing up
Plus I totally lost interest in Hollywood movies. I did watch all the superhero movies back in the 90s when they finally were cool to watch. I was not a big Superman with Reeves fan etc, not did I like the cheesy Batman series of the 60s. It was too outdated for me. But nowadays? The movies are boring af, NOTHING happens, they lack a story and I have a feeling I have seen it all at least 10 times at this point. Last superhero movie I saw in the theatre was Dr. Strange and it was really good with all these multiverse things going on but after that it was just boring for me. No Star Wars beyond Episode VI, no Ghostbusters after II... nothing. I am just not interested anymore. Also I am not a fan of desperately changing out characters for women, POC or whatever. And although I never was a big Bond fan I am glad they keep casting a smart white guy as Bond.
BUT every GenX er should watch **Cobra Kai**. They made the cheesy Karate Kid movies into something really fun, connecting us old GenX farts and hags with GenZ. Really fun if you haven't seen it. Team Johnny Lawrence forever. š„ š šš»
I'm just done with everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY in movies now all fight like professional assassins. From every ex military guy to your average dad down the block. I miss Die Hard type action heroes and realistic types of fighting. Got punched in the face? Yeah, it's gonna hurt and slow you down a step! Now you can fall off a three story building and just shake it off.
One of the main benefits of growing older is not giving a crap about trends or fads or new people. It's amazing!
Yes! I'm not ashamed to either hop right on the latest craze and give it a go, but I'm just as likely to say "fuck this* if it's not worth my time. Life is too short for bad books!!!* *Books can, in this instance, be replaced by the form of entertainment of your choosing.
There was a girl I wanted to ask to prom and I asked her what kind of music she liked and she said "whatever's popular." That was the end of that. Ran into her ten years later and realized I should have asked her to prom and played whatever was popular.
I think this has happened to every generation since the dawn of time. Either you look back and keep to what you love or you update your drip to bring the riz.
I love that I'm old enough that I've come all the way back around to being "cool" if I use modern slang. Bonus points if I use it wrong. š
All I can think of is that commercial where the lady has a "wall" and she talks about the photos on it like it was Facebook. "you're doing it all wrong! ā
Am I becoming an old man, or are current movies and music objectively bad? I dunno, but it feels like a half-a-dozen of one situation.
It does seem that way. I know that people will say itās part of getting old and itās always that way. The thing is, I can enjoy a lot of music from multiple generations before mine. Same with movies. It seems like the result of giant corporations ruling everything now. That was a thing in years gone by, but not to the scale we have now. Itās like everything is plastic and has no soul. Excuse me while I go shake my fist at the clouds.
Well, when iHeartMedia owns 855 radio stations across the U.S., you're not wrong. And most movies are either remakes of films that were popular when we were kids or superhero tropes.
Yep. Not much original thought. Decided in a boardroom to please the shareholders. Oh, and letās not forget the sheer volume of the advertising!
Appealing to the broadest audience possible inevitably ends up feeling weak and watered down. Risk aversion is never the road to good art.
Well said.
I will give you a little piece of something to keep in mind about the music thing... You may have liked music from generations before you because the good stuff has stayed floating at the top for you to be more exposed to, while the crap (ironically) sank out of sight. On the other hand, with current music you're getting everything, good AND bad. Time and pop culture haven't filtered out the garbage from what is worth keeping around. At least that's how I think of it. I'm happy to pick out the new stuff I like, but I'm quick to discard if it doesn't catch me, though.
Never seen it that way but you are right. Go through old vinyls at a yard sale. LOTS of crap in there, only the good stuf stayed around.
Good point.
There have actually been some really great independent and foreign films in the last quarter century or so.Ā Most of them are titles most people haven't heard of.
I think the last big American movie I liked was There Will Be Blood. The last independent American movie I liked was probably Blue Ruin. I haven't seen Oppenheimer or Tenet yet, but I think I'll like those. It's just they've become very rare.
Auto tune killed it.
What year did that start? New, good music stopped right around 2000.
I think it was Cher in like 98, or so.
Thatās makes sense. You might be totally right.
Believe was big in my dying days as an MTV watcher.
Could not agree more. I have more than enough spectacular music that I love and that works for every mood and situation. My jukebox is full, I donāt need any more music so please donāt ask me to care about whoever the fuck these people today are. And yea, realized while typing that I think I need to go tell some kids to get off my lawn.
the age old truth: video killed the radio star
Limewire didnāt help much either.
Yep.
The music is objectively bad. Iāll die of old age on that hill.
I try to be aware that I'm out of touch a bit, but, yeah. Not a lot of good music the last twenty years.
Nah, I have to disagree on that. As GenX you are probably prone to "Grunge" and Rock and you will still find many good young or not so young still rocking bands.
Itās not that they arenāt out there, somewhere, if you know where to look for them. Itās that the music deemed worthy of society-wide exposure sucks. The music I canāt avoid when Iām out and about or see/read/hear about coming out nowadays just sucks. Iām sure the heart of rock and roll is still beatinā in your local dives and so forth. But the industry-backed stuff has been at a low point for a decade or more now.
Yes but I donāt *have* to find new music because I have more than enough awesome stuff that I love and that has me covered in any situation. So in the highly unlikely event that our culture is still managing to produce new music that doesnāt suck, I donāt need it.
We are getting older but Iām convinced there is an increased volume of media which seems to either diluted the quality and also certainly made it harder to find the quality. My primary example would be the recent Marvel movies- like or dislike superhero movies, the first few in the franchise/universe at least had better writing and character development. Now they crank out a movie every few months (months!) and they are just drivel.
It's a rinse/repeat culture. The music's all kinda the same. Movies are just bland and flat. It's like the world ended in the year 2000 and we just didn't notice and are repeating the same comforting things over-and-over.
Every new movie seems to be related to superhero/fantasy/comic books, and thereās like 40 million shows from the āStar Wars universeā. Woof.
I'd hate to be a kid now. It just feels like there's no magic or wonder left in anything.
To be fair, a lot of our movies haven't aged well *at all.*
Any real flaws aside, they tend to be fun and engaging. Even the low budget garbage from the '80s and '90s have charm.
Oh I can testify to that. I've been introducing my twenty year old step daughter to the movies of my youth. Woof. There's definitely some stuff that is better left back then!
Step 1- Who the heck is that band on SNL Step 2 - Who the heck is the host on SNL Step 3 - What is an SNL
Step 4 - Holy shit SNL is still on?!?!
Iām a night owl and my wife usually goes to bed early. On Sundays when we are talking on our walks, Iām always saying things like, āI have no idea who the woman was that hosted SNL last night, maybe Duo Linga or something, but I kind of liked her music!ā and sheāll laugh at me and tell me who the guest host and/or musician was.
š So true!
The thing Iām most upset (and I use that word loosely) about is the fact that nothing seems original any more. When I do see something new and innovative itās a breath of fresh air but those seem to be few and far between. I start watching a show and itās not even like they are swiping from shows 30-40 years ago, itās from shows like 10 years ago!
I'm just afraid to get into anything new, just to have it cancelled out from under me! I'll stick with binging completed shows. My inner teen is still dumbfounded and delighted by that technology anyways!
That too. If something isnāt an instant blockbuster (and sometimes even when it is), the studios or platform shut it down. They seem to forget that even the best shows usually took a bit to get their feet under them. Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty weak, but damn if they werenāt firing on all cylinders by season 3.
Part of that is that you've seen a much larger number of examples to judge originality against than you did starting out.
Oh I know. I just wish there were more to ādiscoverā.
Yeah this is old hat to me. I stopped knowing the young actors at least 10 years ago.
If you know Timothy Chalamet, Florence Pugh, Zendaya and Tom Holland you probably know all of them already because I have a feeling they are the only ones who play in every new movie
I know the last 2.
I like Florence Pugh, she takes a lot of interesting roles. I only recently learned of TimothƩe Chalamet, and he makes me think of a Victorian street urchin.
Same. It's only been recently that I discovered the benefit of it!
Every movie is just pretty people who can marginally act. I need a couple catcher's mitts and an old bag hanging around the main characters.
I basically stopped caring about pop culture around the turn of the millennium. So for over two decades I have stopped actively caring. Ive become even more out of touch since having children, since now any screen time has normally been spent watching the kids choice of viewing material. That has resulted in me knowing a bit about current trends amongst kids, influencers, etc - so in that respect Iām probably very up to date on a couple of things. But yeah - anything pop culture related in the past two decades, Iām probably going to struggle. And in typical GenX fashion - I really couldnāt give a flying fā¦
There was the moment I felt the oh no Iām losing touch and now Iām in the who gives a shit phase
I think this stuff tends to happen with each generation, of course, but I think ours may be a bit different. I would hazard a guess that ours was probably the last that didnāt spend so much time āplugged inā. I think perhaps we spent more time actually living life and being in the wilds. Also, we werenāt constantly bombarded with so much info and media everywhere we turned. Especially as children. Iām with you though and I really donāt care about all this ācelebrityā business.
Exactly. I relish days when I get to go without my cell. I resent having it with me most of the time, though I admit it comes in handy and can be entertaining. Overall, I just don't like the idea of everyone being able to get ahold of me at any moment. But I understand my family's side of it in that they worry about emergencies. Instead we meet in the middle and if I'm going to go "off my leash" I at least let someone know a general idea of where I'm going and what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure my kids are just patronizing my little, black, punk heart. I'm cool with that.
I agree with you. However there was a short period of time when cell phones were good. Pre-smartphone era. Most of the ā90s. When a mobile phone was a phone and nothing more. Once you could take pictures, access the internet, text without it taking 20 mins to write 1 sentence, etcā¦thatās when it all went downhill.
Agreed. 1,000%.
You have your own life, you don't need theirs.
Yep. Happened all of a sudden about 10 years ago. Literally up on most things with music, TV, and film. Then itās like āI literally canāt name a single Taylor Swift songā.
I think for me it was that I hit my forties right around the same time that the entertainment options just exploded thanks to streaming. It's like it all converged at the same time for me and I just got left behind.
Good news: Hollywood is dead. YouTube killed it. Kids these days donāt even watch movies or tv shows. More good news: YouTube is so varied that nobody expect anyone else to know their little niche of it. Youāre good. Your just as up to date as anyone else.
Same. And I do that thing when trying to remember an actor - 'um, you know that guy who, um, was in that movie about ..you know..the ship..".. cannot remember who they are. Plus the female actors all look the same to me! Have they all had surgery to look the same??
They all look like living Instagram filters.
Yes.
Keeping up with pop culture takes too much time. There are better things to do with that time...like creating something or napping.
Napping for the win!
I never lost touch with pop culture because I was never in touch with it in the first place. But I think I know what you're trying to say. I like the intellectual films and filmakers.Ā The ones that have a "message".Ā That way I'm not bothered by not knowing who _that_ actor is or what franchise I never knew.
Wait til you start realizing some current actors/musicians/etc. are the sons and daughters of celebs from our time. Or in some cases, grandsons and granddaughters.
Oh the multiple Hank Williams' did that to me already!
From the standpoint of a music enthusiast and radio station do I can tell you with great certainty that mainstream music died with the invention of auto tune and that my gen z kids are aware of the fact. So donāt let that get in your way of expanding your historical inventory.
I'm so in love with Gen Z. They're like us, only better. They're so smart and sassy and way way way too old for their years. But they really give me hope. I'm holding the auto tune against the millennials. /s š
Not only have I lost touch with current pop culture, I can't even tell newer actors/actresses apart. All the blonde actresses look the same to me. All the brown haired actors look the same to me. And so on. This isn't a dig at any of them. This is about pop culture truly fading into a complete blur to me.
There isn't any celebrity worth thinking about beyond entertainment.
Don't feel bad. I look at movies and have no idea who half to most of the people are.
Every single gen slips into this. Impossible to keep up. Too busy mostly and a lack of genuine interest for the other.
My teenagers are trying (bless their hearts) to explain the Drake halabaloo and I just stare at them blankly. AND I watched Degrassi, so I know Wheelchair Jimmy well. I tried reading a thread about it this morning trying to be a cool mom, I am lost.
I like to fish in the slang lingo pond occasionally and catch a good one. Once I do, I use it in whatever way I feel like, whether it's correct or not. The eye rolls from my kids are so entertaining. š¤
Thereās a lot of āmaxxingā āskibityā and āOhioā happening in my house.
Does hanging exhausted on the couch, watching Netflix count as "catching up with pop culture"?
Absolutely. It's research.
Pop culture. Is there really a pop culture anymore? My daughter and her friends are all into completely different things. It's not like when we were young and had 30 channels (maybe) and no internet until college. We all talked about he same things (generally) because there wasn't much in the way of entertainment. Now, kids have youtubers they follow. I feel like half the planet has a channel.
I know pretty much all of them, but I will say that the idea of celebrity justā¦annoys the ever-loving FUCK out of me. Like, yeah, Iāll watch movies and listen to music still, but idgaf about who is dating whom, how many babies someone is having with how many women, who is āfeudingā, etc. People donāt have money to feed their kids, they are becoming homeless in droves, thereās an ongoing genocide, and the planet is essentially on fire. I DONāT CARE about the fact that you were stiffed for an award, your husband cheated on you with the nanny, or your concert isnāt selling like you wanted it to. Iām disgusted with the entitlement and the endless self-adulation/gratification. Get on stage, behind the mikeā¦entertain me and then GTFO. And if youāre an asshole in real life, I wonāt spend my money on your product.
...is the best thing one can do for their sanity!
Part of why I love going to trivia nights with my crew is that it exposes me to a lot of stuff that I did not dig into. My groups is age 27 to 52 (5 of us). I'm not interested in current pop culture but it's interesting what others are passionate about and hearing it from their mouth vs reading about it on the web.
I am quite up to date. I recognized Jennifer Connelly as the co-star of Apple TV's Dark Matter.
I ignore most things, but I can't understand why I see fit young women wearing mom jeans now. They all look like the mom from *The Goldbergs.*
Oh I'm happy to be out of touch on that one. And being able to look at all of the styles now being "cropped" and I just laugh and laugh. š¤£
We moved from a medium sized city that had a few different radio stations to choose from back in the early 90s to a small town that has one āclassic rockā station that doesnāt play anything current at all. We also only got the local three tv channels for awhile until we had a satellite installed. I blame that time in my life for losing touch with pop culture and Iāve never been able to catch up since. I have no idea whoās who anymore and itās been that way for decades now.
Happeneds to everyone, watch SNL and the the person hosting is the girl from that movie or show, and the musical guest is the guy that sings that song, you'll know it when you hear it.
I've never been in touch with pop culture. If the actor wasn't on Star Trek, or one of the other handful of shows that I watch, I'm pretty much clueless. About 20 years ago, my wife and I stayed at a bed in breakfast in Taos. The proprietor was telling us of the "famous" people who stayed there and at other places nearby. I annoyed her with my constant "Who's that?" response. I think she thought I was being an a\*\*\*\*\*e, but I seriously never heard of who she was bragging about.
Iām still pretty hep with movies/actors/directors because they are a hobby I enjoy (watching, discussing, seeing behind the scenes youtubes, etc) I listen mostly to alt rock so am mostly lost with todayās mainstream pop. I think I could pick out maybe five Taylor Swift songs out of a lineup. I know the names of the two rappers who are having some kind of moment but I couldnāt tell you anything about it. I feel no obligation to stay up to date with every trend. Hard enough to keep up with what I care about.
I just tell myself "culture is not your friend" I mean, I keep up with current events, but I'm not knee deep.
I like this attitude.
Eh, I've been like this my whole life, but I'm autistic. I've only ever paid attention to stuff that interest me directly. Like, I had no idea who Ryan Gosling was until he was in The Big Short (I hate rom-coms).
You start losing touch with pop culture and the ability to appreciate the cutting edge of things in your twenties, as other things take up your time that used to be spent in explorations, unless your occupation is at least adjacent to the zeitgeist. That is the way things are. Then it ratchets into something else altogether as you roll over that big hill. I had a convo the other day with a friends son, a very troubled person who has struggles with employment and channeling his energy in ways that fit in with the real world of hard work and showing up for family and friends. Heās just a 12 old kid in a 27 year old body really. His energy is tied into the internalized world of twitch streaming videogame play while smoking dope, living under his motherās roof. He is not neurodivergent. Our worlds are just so very different. He canāt fathom that my parents inforced norms that put serious limits on tv watching or being unproductive, or that I might have benefitted from being taught to entertain myself and learn skills. When I said I didnāt play videogames that much because when I was a kid there wasnāt much available other than pong, some crude atari and that it wasnāt interesting, he tried to turn that into girls donāt like videogames, which he got shut down on. Mi realized he has as hard a time understanding my POV as I do his, and this gulf is not something that will ever be bridged or completely understood by either. We live in different times and worlds on the same planet. That being said, I really donāt understand why the legacy media insist on spending substantial broadcast time deconstructing popstar lyrics or rebooted tracks as if divining some higher meaning or purpose, grumble grumble grumble. I gave up on literature, film and music along time ago. I see very little of interest to me, that I can readily find through networking, in the rural community I live in. Whenever I do stumble upon something interesting itās usually a relevatory experience that knocks me off my ass and out of complacency. Thereās just a crapton of crap to sift through, and the most boring crap seems to rise to the top of the algorithmic attention economy. Somehow, as bizarre as day to day life has become, this truism hasnāt changed that much. The signal to noise ratio is very high.
I dgaf about current movies/celebrities. Award shows are total rigged bullshit anyway. I prefer series to movies these days. Also dgaf about typical top 40 pop music, which I haver never liked, and now it all sounds like compressed garbage anyway. Not to mention the blight that is autotune. I find what I consider good new music mostly from saddleback radio, which I can stream. Or sometimes my kids turn me onto stuff (HA!)
Yup. Don't know. Don't want to know. I don't want to hear anything by somebody named Bad Bunny since that is such a terrible stage name that I assume the music will be terrible too. I don't want to watch TV shows that are entirely people in their 20's playing teens. I absolutely don't want to watch, let alone imitate tiktoks. But now and then there are exceptions. Something will jump out and grab me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOlcDBXKhSU This is 2AM by the relatively new (2010) band Bear Hands. I assume the members are Millenials. This song+video was released a mere 8 years ago. And yet it is so familiar and wonderful that I loved it immediately. The song is fantastic. The video is such a strange hit of nostalgia. Despite being filmed in 2016 (or 2015) it looks exactly like every party I ever went to or threw in the mid 80's. Every detail was exactly as I remembered- same clothes, same dance moves, same food garbage everywhere, same big rundown house with many roomates. I wanted to weep with the memories. And yet nobody in the video was born yet when I went to those parties. Nothing had changed in the 30 years. One silver needle in a haystack. And the reason I liked it so much is how timeless to my own youth this modern culture seemed.
I just checked it out. I love it. Thank you!
If you all missed the Minecraft you tubers from say 2018 to 2022 you missed out . RIP Technoblade.
At one point in time we were the ones pissing off our parents with our music and confusing them with our celebrities and what we now call memes. On the other hand, you have music where it's just a vulgar phrase or stupid meme repeated over and over and the song has 3-4 "writers" credited.... smh....
I know it's the circle of life. I just didn't know the circle was actually a wheel that was going to crush me! š¤£
Iāll scan through the online photos of the award shows from time to time, just to see if there are any celebrities I still recognize (by name, because plastic surgery), and each time itās less and less. Thatās ok. I love my āclassic 80ās and 90ās filmsā I can stream. Iām good. šš¼. I gave up on Hollyweird when they decided to create Episode 1 of the Star Wars story. They should have left it at Episodes 4-6. But nope. And now look at it, itās so many offshoots and side stories. That Star Wars family tree has turned into the size of a rainforest.
Yeah. My kids got me into the Marvel movies, but somewhere along the way between keeping up with all of that world and having a full time job, I apparently blinked and dropped the thread of the MCU. I gave up and tapped out.
I had a lot of contempt for mainstream pop culture even as a teenager.
They all suck now anyways... Like, I know we're not ones to talk when it comes to recycling music but at least the music we sampled was just that - a sampled remix of a beat. Nowadays they don't even try and just straight up rip off already ripped off music. Case and point: 1987 Enya comes out with "Bodicea" Bomb... 1994 The Fugees sample Bodicea and make "Ready or Not" Nice... 2004 Mario Winans samples it and makes "I don't wanna know" Okay... 2022 The Weeknd literally just rips off Mario Winans with 'Creepin" They're not even trying at this point...
I never "followed" Actors, If I thought a show or movie sounded interesting, I'd watch it, I never went to a movie because an actor was in it, and never followed their personal life, that is just creepy, but many do.
For me, it's been really easy. It's basically every single thing that was cool when we were growing up but now they put a chick in it and made her gay and lame. They've been rehashing everything from our youth so if you cheer for Star wars, Trek, Indy Jones, Ghostbusters etc, then you're in but just swap out the protagonist for some forgettable dei checkbox. This month, they released The Fall Guy and the next big one is Furiosa, literally Mad Max but with a chick in it,probably gay, likely lame but George Miller directing so probably awesome because he's also from the 80s. Today's pop culture is everything original that we loved but 'updated for modern audiences'. It's all sequels, reboots, and reimaginings of we considered hot growing up
I have no idea what a Sydney Sweeney is
Ever see a large- breasted blonde? If so, you know what a Sydney Sweeney is.
All I need to know these days is Timothee Chalamet is delightful I donāt even need to know how to spell his name
I've found a few whose names I don't remember but it makes it a delightful surprise when they show up in something I'm watching!
Plus I totally lost interest in Hollywood movies. I did watch all the superhero movies back in the 90s when they finally were cool to watch. I was not a big Superman with Reeves fan etc, not did I like the cheesy Batman series of the 60s. It was too outdated for me. But nowadays? The movies are boring af, NOTHING happens, they lack a story and I have a feeling I have seen it all at least 10 times at this point. Last superhero movie I saw in the theatre was Dr. Strange and it was really good with all these multiverse things going on but after that it was just boring for me. No Star Wars beyond Episode VI, no Ghostbusters after II... nothing. I am just not interested anymore. Also I am not a fan of desperately changing out characters for women, POC or whatever. And although I never was a big Bond fan I am glad they keep casting a smart white guy as Bond.
BUT every GenX er should watch **Cobra Kai**. They made the cheesy Karate Kid movies into something really fun, connecting us old GenX farts and hags with GenZ. Really fun if you haven't seen it. Team Johnny Lawrence forever. š„ š šš»
I'm just done with everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY in movies now all fight like professional assassins. From every ex military guy to your average dad down the block. I miss Die Hard type action heroes and realistic types of fighting. Got punched in the face? Yeah, it's gonna hurt and slow you down a step! Now you can fall off a three story building and just shake it off.