Are people whose vocabulary consists entirely of pop culture doing themselves a disservice?

I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable being around people whose conversations revolve around making pop culture references. It's becoming so bad that some 50-70% of conversations I'm involved in eventually get diverted into pop culture discussions. Unfortunately, it only takes one person in the conversation to divert it, since after the reference is made, everyone else in the conversation has to prove that they get the reference. At that point, everyone has to drop the subject we were talking about and instead talk about the reference and make other references from that thing. It seem like most of the time, I'm not even having conversations anymore, but instead having a big fluffy pop culture shell with a very thin core of actual substantive dialogue beneath it.

I realize I may not be talking to the most sympathetic crowd here, but is this annoying the living shit out of anyone else? It's starting to trouble me that I don't even know who these people are outside of their tastes in music, movies, books, and youtube videos.

it used to annoy the hell out of me when i was younger, but i guess i systematically changed who i hang out with (largely by losing most of my friends and moving over and over to places where i knew no one) until i reached my present state of blissful, 99% pop-culture free conversations. i mean, don't get me wrong, i may talk about breaking bad on occasion or whatever, but no one is going to answer a question by quoting a character, look around the friend circle to see who else got the reference, then act like that's normal. that would be an odd occasion these days, whereas it was once commonplace

I did get sick of "I'm Rick James bitch" but over 10 years on Super Troopers references still are hilarious to me so whatever

i'm pretty sure this process is how people started expressing disbelief by saying "really? really? really? seriously? seriously? seriously?", via SNL references

When I was young and there were just three television networks and Top 40 radio on AM, making pop culture references still only worked if your conversational partners fell into the correct target demographic. Now that pop culture is balkanized and sliced thinner than delicatessen meats any group which communicates largely in terms of references to television or pop music would have to be homogenous to a ridiculous degree and therefore stultifying.

btw, old people who strive constantly to be 'up on' all the latest pop trends are just as pathetic now as they were when I was a teenager. 95% of all my contemporary pop culture knowledge comes from stumbling over threads on ilx and reading them with a combination of fascination and horror. It's so much easier than actually watching or listening to all that stuff!

h8 when ppl engage with culture

I read a lot of books. This hurls me into an orbital path very far removed from the center of pop culture gravity. Although I engage with an antiquated and highly unpopular culture, it is still a culture and I am engaged.

woah

I'm always a little bummed when someone makes what I think is a really funny joke in the lunchroom and then later I find out it's just a line from the office that everyone else knew.

you can't fool me, wins. you post on I Love Books, too.

sry from The Office

Venn diagram of people who hate this vs. people who say "i don't even own a tv".

Who are all these "people who say 'i don't even own a tv'" I like never run into them except for people who are "cord cutters" and just have netflix and a roku or whatever.

I have the overcaffinated/hypermediated/ADD'd-out brain that messily/easily makes connections and don't always have enough control at the moment to prevent myself from vocalizing the reference.

Is the annoyance factor coming from just the references or allusions themselves or from the possible superficiality of the pop-cult item referenced?

I don't actually mind anyone making pop culture references per se, I just get disappointed when I think the person has said something really clever and then I find out it wasn't theirs. But there's one guy in my office who makes seinfeld references for fucking EVERYTHING, and that gets irritating.

its pretty annoying. it's also annoying when when i'm hanging out with people and talking about all kinds of real-life shit and they interrupt a good conversation and go "oh wait you gotta see this youtube video!!!" like even if it is a really funny or good video, it's kind of annoying

Present shock

I think as a kid I'd feel some sense of awkwardness if I didn't get a reference. These days, I am a lot more likely to feel awkward if people are still fucking making the same stupid-ass comedy film references and I get them.

I went to high school with a dude who was 90% references, conversationally, all to pop culture shit. I think he's a lawyer now, although mostly doing research work. I can only imagine how many minutes it'd be if he defended a case before he started making Darth Vader analogies.

xps: that was my experience with watching Family Guy in the early 2000s. "Oh wow, this is really hilarious. Wait, no, it's basically just quotes from classic movies/shows I hadn't seen yet."

Family Guy would probably be more interesting if you were laughing at the characters for being idiots with no ability to see the world other than through the lens of pop culture.

What if that Peter dude on Family Guy is actually one of those aliens from the Star Trek episode 'Darmok'

Shaka, when the walls fell.

I don't actually mind anyone making pop culture references per se, I just get disappointed when I think the person has said something really clever and then I find out it wasn't theirs.

even more annoying flipside of this is when you say something you think is really clever and someone else goes, 'what is that from?'

haha yes

Venn diagram of people who hate this vs. people who say "i don't even own a tv".

I'm getting pretty tired of the lazy lobbing of this tired cliche of "not owning a tv" as a go-to way to dismiss someone as a smug, condescending jerk. We all have reasons for consuming what we do, and I can respect people's choices. I don't think twice if someone says "I don't own a tv." To me, that's just a statement, usually made when someone is asking the person a question about TV. It's the natural response.

What I don't care for is people endlessly blathering about whatever it is they are into, whether it's constantly hating on TVs or constantly talking about TV.

the dude I know who says "I don't own a tv" is the same one who mentions that he never reads books

Maybe he has a full and rich mental life just engaging with what is in front of him.

Is there a way for me to unpost that venn diagram joke

Would frequent refs to high culture go down smoother?

no

I feel like there's a good comedy sketch there, like a guy who suddenly quotes Ibsen in this chummy way like he expects the whole watercooler crowd to get it.

on the one hand I find it repulsive to bond with others based only on shared consumption of the same media, but on the other, diversifying your outlook or learning about other life experiences that might not be otherwise evident is a good thing

with my luck, people are just watching things that reaffirm their own outlooks

that's generally what people do, ain't it?

shh, I'm trying to be an optimist

I'm a little tired of having the same conversations about TV shows over and over again. However, with my sig other and very close friends, a lot of my vocabulary or attempts to communicate are taken from certain pop culture reference points because when we have a shared understanding of the context, it serves as a shorthand that can just *nail* what you're trying to say. It's not like I'm quoting then looking around to see who got it, it's (I think) more subtle than that - a casual line rather than a 'quote', but it means I can sometimes struggle to explain what I mean to people who don't have the shared reference points.
Hard to think of a specific example that will make sense, but ILX memes must work the same way, right?

just now, watching the cardinals game broadcast. out of nowhere, a announcer goes "my friends call me the cruiser". they both laugh. 5 seconds later, the other announcer says "lighten up, Francis". they move on without explaining.

i guess i should have stripes memorized or whatever but that's the kind of thing i'm whining about upthread. it's not a big deal in isolation, but some people's conversations consist of about 30%+ references like that, and if you find yourself in the middle of a conversation where 4-5 people who are into doing that it can be living hell.

(indidentally, i guess the cardinals announcer really loves that line: https://twitter.com/DannyMacTV/status/380165221932756993)

you'll never take away my obnoxious references to The Critic

yessss

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/04/01/297155827/what-the-simpsons-says-about-ukraines-language-divide

finally, a story that combines the "people outside the US don't know the Simpsons" idea, current world events, and NPR

one of the most unbearable things about hanging out with people even a few years younger than me (I'm 26) is that they recognize NONE of my classic simpsons references :(

at least you have ILX, the last bastion for people who can understand early Simpsons references

for me I think roughly "Tomacco" is like the Maginot Line

ALSO I got a few 'favs' for my recent tweet about "a nightmarish dystopian future of constantly having to explain your Star Wars quotes"

so my answer is that I used to do this, and will probably start doing it again when I figure out what pop-culture references actually translate outside of my most intimate cohort

Nhex we're talking, like, blank stares in response to "Ze goggles do nothing" or "I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords"

oh gosh i thought i could be young forever but if that's the case then it's all over.

it totally is man, it totally is

GRAMPA SIMPSON: I used to be "with it", but then they changed what "it" was. Now what I'm with isn't "it", and what's "it" seems weird and scary.

real talk tho: it's the people who haven't even seen the first 7 or 8 seasons of the Simpsons (let alone obsessively rewatched them until entire episodes are burned into their memories) who are doing themselves a disservice

you kids don't know first eight seasons of the Simpsons? The bong-rattling writing of Conan O'Brien? The etc etc and so on.