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When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK. I always thought there should
by DanielBMarkham 7y ago
When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK.
I always thought there should be some form of yearly bootcamp for nerds. Drop out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and thinking. That way you can stay mostly culturally-relevant without spending huge hunks of your time becoming the master of the intricate details of things like Game of Thrones. Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes and create metaphors and illusions.
I don't know who would run this bootcamp. I assume teenagers. Your teenage years are a time where it is very important to stay with the group, establish social ranking, be the master of conversation about various widespread cultural events. Those feelings never go away, but for many of us they die off as we get older, have families, and absorb ourselves in work we find important.
There are some very weird things about getting older. First off, you only are old on the outside. While people, especially some younger folks, may look at you as if you were an alien that just arrived from Mars, inside you're the same old kid you always was. Just the outside has changed. When presented with a new situation, you may appear to decide more slowly, but you're also thinking about a lot of different things and options you wouldn't have thought of in your youth, and you realize that unless you're driving a racecar, most times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong.
You see a lot of stuff. Hopefully you learn from it!
- RocketSanchez 7y agoThis is definitely a VC attractor
- rytill 7y agoAre you referring to the dynamical systems object and saying that this is a thought process that eventually ends up VC-like?
- taneq 7y ago> Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes and create metaphors and illusions. Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
- peterclary 7y agoThing about Arsenal is they always try and walk it in.
- MrsPeaches 7y agoThis is at least 5 years out of date.
- wffurr 7y agoIt's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.
- MrsPeaches 7y agoAh. Memes. I should have googled IT.
- shiblukhan 7y agoWhen you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK. I don't want to be the same as everyone else. "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." -- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
- chatmasta 7y agoIn an effort to cut through this meta-irony, here is a link to the reference: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gWJIQm9qH-w https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gWJIQm9qH-w Maybe it should be included in the bootcamp!
- jimbokun 7y agoAt least they managed to eke out a one-nil win over West Ham, in spite of a really poor performance. Overall though, I really like what Arteta is doing with the club.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ksangeelee 7y agoPerhaps we could get by with just a set of cheat sheets? I do think these would be useful, maybe even insightful. Unfortunately, it requires selflessness to submerge oneself in the mainstream in order to write such things. AI perhaps?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- comfyinnernet 7y agoI'm sure we could find a way for it to involve a blockchain too.
- lloydatkinson 7y agoThis is like an AI wrote a HN comment, except it was trained on nothing but boomer/neckbeard/HN type commentary. Boot camp for nerds? Christ
- wruza 7y agoyou can stay mostly culturally-relevant What for? Good thing about being un-junior is that you can ignore the relevance score and be your regular yourself at all times.
- ryandvm 7y agoAgreed. As a 42 year old, more often than not I find myself to be the oldest person on any given team. My advice is to take advantage of it. You get a free pass to opt out of the inane pop-culture discussions. You also inherit a default "guru" status on most teams as long as you don't screw it up.
- aiisjustanif 7y agoYeah not screwing up is hard.
- 45ure 7y ago>You also inherit a default "guru" status on most teams as long as you don't screw it up. Your entire post, seems to be describing Nathan Barley (British TV Series). It is evergreen content and a hidden gem, with a then unknown, all-star cast and co-written by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame. I will not link anything, in case you decide to seek it out; you will laugh and/or cringe, at least once!
- Angostura 7y agoTragically, Trashbat.co.ck Has recently disappeared from the net
- StavrosK 7y agoPlus, as long as you don't make it a point to not watch things ("I'm too cool for the-latest-fad"), nobody cares.
- telesilla 7y agoI teach. The students keep me up to to date with what's important.. Turns out, not that much and apparently a revolution is coming but they don't more than I do about that.
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoThere are a lot of folks commenting on my post, asking why it is important. I think you understand it. You want a wide palette of cultural idioms and metaphors in order to find better ways of connecting with your students. Otherwise it doesn't matter. People learn through taking patterns they already have and extending them. That means as a teacher you need an understanding of the common patterns your students carry around. I envy you. Must be cool to get immediate, day-to-day feedback on your work, even if it wears on a person after a while.
- dctoedt 7y ago> You want a wide palette of cultural idioms and metaphors in order to find better ways of connecting with your students. Some of my (law) students barely know what the TV show Seinfeld was — and one semester a couple of them, native-born Americans no less, weren't familiar with Friends.
- leetcrew 7y agoI'm 26 and I've heard of friends, but I couldn't differentiate it from cheer if you played a random episode for me. sorry.
- Angostura 7y agoOddly enough, my 14 year old daughter has just binge-watched the whole thing on Netflix UK.
- dctoedt 7y agoMy own now-adult daughter and her BFF were such Friends fanatics that they could tell you what episode it is just from hearing a line of dialog quoted.
- moron4hire 7y agoOr you could just read Twitter. The only thing I miss about being young is being physically fit. Which I could fix relatively easily, if I really cared a lot. Otherwise, it sucked. No money. Terrible job. No kids and family. No idea what I wanted. I don't feel young anymore. I feel in control of my own life.
- benburleson 7y agoPhysical fitness definitely gets harder with age, but the good news is that if you keep fit habits, it's not hard to maintain. Basically, you're going to need to care a whole lot more as time passes if you really do want to get fit, so better to start now!
- zigzaggy 7y agoYes it’s a little harder but it’s SO MUCH BETTER than being unhealthy/ unfit. I’m not necessarily a natural athlete but I’ve almost always stayed in shape... until a few years ago. I was running long distance trail runs and I injured my leg. I had to cancel a few races and I slipped into a bit of a depression. It took me a few years to get the courage and gumption up to get active again. Now that I’m older, it’s been much harder to get back in shape. And my recoveries (post- run or post-weights) take longer. But on the whole I feel so much better, all the time. My mood and my close relationships have all improved. And my work performance has improved too. The mild discomfort has been well worth the pay off.
- lumberingjack 7y agoTake all those things that you said and then apply it to someone who never ages on the outside and that's me I will forever look like a teenager this presents some unique situations in itself let alone other teenagers thinking I talk their lingo.
- 1MachineElf 7y agoIn the UK show The Thick Of It, for this they used a Zeitgeist Tape.
- pubutil 7y agoHow well would this work if it was only once a year? Many pop culture references and memes change on a monthly, if not weekly, basis
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI don't have to keep up on the meme-of-the-week. Next week it will be gone. In fact, I don't have to keep up on any of it. I have some interest in (at least some of) the stuff that lasts. But the ephemeral stuff... why should I care?
- ip26 7y agoMaybe I'm culturally irrelevant & just don't realize it, but IMO the banal movie star pop culture isn't significant, it's other things like the VW scandal, train delays in our town, city planning, energy planning, Tesla, e-mountain bikes, local snow trends, etc that I talk with people about. That stuff isn't just crap and it's worth paying attention to.
- Koshkin 7y ago> Just the outside has changed. People think that, but it's an illusion. The appearance affects self-perception and, eventually, behavior. And, normally, you become different by getting wiser, and that's not a small thing. You talk different. You do your work differently. (On the other hand, people who try to appear younger than they are look creepy.)
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago"Memes" are themselves a meme. At some point - probably soon - we'll get a different non-meme meme social activity attractor, which will confuse everyone who grew up with cat videos and random images captioned with Impact. For me, the worst thing about getting older is realising that I'm now older than the people who used to be on TV. They seemed ancient when I was in my teens - at least 35. Some of them may even have been over 50. (!)
- RichardCA 7y agoBack in the day (the 80's) we already had memes, but they looked like other things. The movie Robocop came out in 1987 but the gag about "I'd Buy That For a Dollar" was indicative that meme culture was enough of a thing to be worthy of satire. Back when SNL was in its 80's prime it seemed like every skit turned into a meme. For example the Jon Lovitz "pathological liar" skit was pretty big for a while. It's unfortunate the NBC keeps such a tight grip on all the SNL content. Lot's of 80's cultural history is locked up like that.
- sneak 7y ago> Drop out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and thinking. Why do you think that getting that indoctrination is in any way whatsoever valuable? I don't watch television or listen to the radio, and don't read or watch the news. I don't miss any of it at all, and I am not in any way whatsoever harmed by it. Most of that stuff is just distraction from the things in life that are actually important, like the people around you, or the fact that our society is explicitly designed to rob and oppress billions of people. Getting all of that stuff out of your face and head really lets you think and focus on the things you can actually do to enrich yourself, those around you, and the world/future generations. Reject mass media and focus.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoStaying culturally relevant is an overrated farce.
- goostavos 7y agoYou guys are swinging way too hard the other way in this thread. Being part of a society is generally pretty cool. Shitposting (and consuming shitposts) over the dumpster fire that was Game of Thrones was pointless, culturally relevant, and also a lot of stupid fun.
- techslave 7y ago> First off, you only are old on the outside. ... most times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong. you’ve just described being old on the inside. it’s not curiosity or hunger for new things that’s makes you young, it’s acting without considering consequences. it’s not being able to draw inferences from one situation to another. being old on the inside is desirable to the extreme. it’s called wisdom. do not knock it.
- jimbokun 7y agoWhat has been very strange for me, is the main streaming of comic book culture has made much of my decades old knowledge hip and current again. But when I was reading comic books as a teenager, it wasn't culturally relevant at all to my peer group.