I’m still not sure if that’s exactly how I want to put that question, but it’s the best that comes to mind at the moment. This isn’t asked as though you’re totally oblivious to or avoidant of pop culture (see defining terms), but closer to like maybe someone on a casual diet or something.
defining terms
For the purposes of this post I mean pop culture in the mostly literal sense of popular culture, so box office hit movies, big sports events, major album releases, big budget video games, etc.
It seems kind of hard to figure out how or what to relate to people with if it isn’t through questions like, “Hey did you see [the game/recent big movie/etc.]?” or other times like, “Do you play or have you played [major game release]?”
You don’t want to kill the conversation before it’s even started, but it can be almost unavoidable when opened like that and you haven’t yet experienced that bit of pop culture or whathaveyou. It gets a little more clunky if you may have (a little) and you didn’t really click with it, but at least there’s a little more room for conversation then.
There was a meme or tweet or ex or whatever that went around a while back that asked something like, “People who ‘don’t do small talk’, do you just go home and say ‘Hi honey, I’m home, do you think free will is real?’”
Or something like that.
And I saw that, and then got in the car with my partner of 20+ years and we talked about the epistemic behaviors of antivax groups vs. people with dementia.
Like, I don’t know how the fuck to get on with people who don’t want to talk about ideas and only want to talk about politicians or movie stars or butts.
But I think that’s probably okay.