In my case I saw the actual film by Kubrick. So the whole meme and stuff never really meant anything to me.
Hickman said something interesting when promoting his upcoming run on X-Men, where he wondered "is the real modern complication atomization? Where everything is segmented to such a degree that there are no stories which mean something to everyone. Where the psychological expectation is something catered, or personalized." (
https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/05...e-powers-of-x/).
A good part of meme culture requires people to know, or in the case of EWS, know just enough (i.e. the meme and not the movie) to get a reference the way it was communicated. In the case of stuff like Falling Down, I only know of it because Frank Grimes from Simpsons was based on the character in that. So that's my frame of reference for it.
Emotionally and so on he doesn't see himself that way. If you followed the run maybe it didn't feel that way. But if you look at it overall it does. One of the many issues people had about Carlie was that she showed up in the last pages of OMD and the overall intent communicated by Quesada was that she was an 'updgrade' for MJ and that Peter's being rewarded by OMD to indulge in guilt free dating.
In any case, look at Peter/Flash/Harry...isn't Peter the guy who got the most action between the three of them? If you were to fan-cast FRIENDS on to the three of them, Peter would be the Joey, Flash the Chandler, and Harry the Ross.