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People do need common culture. I have a friend in his mid-20s and he is always "Do you know [YouTube personality]?" or showing me memes that require extensive
by retrac 4y ago
People do need common culture. I have a friend in his mid-20s and he is always "Do you know [YouTube personality]?" or showing me memes that require extensive explanations. And we're actually very similar people in many ways.
Some of this is just me not being hip with the next generation's culture. But he also has not seen almost any of what I would call the American film canon. So we can't even discuss cheesy 80s action films. Eventually we figured out he had seen Stargate. He was surprised I had seen it.
He can't tell what's mainstream and what's highly esoteric. I do think that's a problem. I know no one will have any idea what I'm talking about if I bring up my favourite synthwave artists in conversation.
It occurs to me that the form of media often informed my awareness about that. Was it on TV? Popular book at the library? Or did I find it in the back of some weird 'zine?
It's all the same on YouTube. Though there is the view count. It's often watched alone, so no social feedback. When it comes to movie nights, for example, finding something that's acceptable to most, not just hyper-tailored to yourself and full of in-references, is an important social skill.
- oneoff786 4y agoOk but… this is so obviously a generational thing. You know who does know the YouTuber? His peers. He does not watch cheesy 80s films and you don’t watch 40s theater. People absolutely don’t need mainstream media. Mainstream media hits the lowest common denominator and tends to suck. I think most YouTubers and uncomfortably fake to watch, but I would still prefer people watch that over mainstream tv…
- retrac 4y agoI'm only some ten years older. The films I spoke of were released before I was born. Yet most of my generation is familiar with some of them. Star Wars, then. Or Schindler's List. Maybe I'm Spielberg biased. The Exorcist. My point is that there was such a thing -- a common film canon -- that people who were interested in film, could be expected to be somewhat familiar with. No longer true? Yes. Lowest common denominator. Some common point of reference gives a common vocabulary. Even if it sucks.
- oneoff786 4y agoTen years is a lot of years. You specifically called out a single decade of films. If someone is twenty, a film in 1980 is more than double their whole lifetime away. Wanting to chat with the youth about things before their time as the SHARED culture is dumb. If you’re 35, you were born in the 80s. Believe it or not, not a whole lot of people will watch Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time and think it was an amazing movie anymore. That’s not to say it isn’t well made. It is. But is also just not very interesting to modern youth.