Comment by ryandrake
3 months ago
> You’re not wrong, but these are mostly untenable solutions at present.
In the past, it was a lot worse. There was a lot more "shared culture" that seemingly everyone tuned in to, that you kind of had to grin and bear. If you didn't know what happened on Seinfeld last night (90s), or on the Simpsons (2000s), or Game of Thrones (2010s), then you really had nothing to talk about at the water cooler. Nowadays, there really isn't much popular stuff that -everyone- watches, so it's easier than ever to drop that popular stuff.
A sticky notable exception is still national sports. There's still so much shared pop culture in knowing what the local city's Sportsball team sportsed about during last night's game that you have to kind of put up with if you want to socialize at the water cooler.
It both was and wasn't back then. The large pop culture establishment was definitely more shared, TV, film and music for sure. But at the same time you also had more thriving regional culture. There were many musicians who became popular on a regional level and toured medium sized venues in the time before the internet. You don't see that anymore. Indie artists today have more diffused fan bases which makes profitable touring more difficult, among other things like the ticketmaster monopoly. Niche interests were also more localized and personal with small clubs instead of internet based forums like today. That's both a good and bad thing. I think the nature of things has changed but not in a way where you can say definitively everything is more homogenous or heterogeneous.