Are younger people less knowledgeable about pop culture history then before?

[mathew101281]

I remember growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, but still having a lot of knowledge about shows from the 60’s and 70’s and even earlier. Today I feel young people only really know about stuff from their generation. This is in spite of the fact that they have the internet and can look up older stuff easily. I think part of it has to do with the fact that back in the day reruns of old shows use to run alongside new stuff creating kind of a continuity between old and new. Today you have to actually seek out old stuff, so most people don’t bother.

[Güicho]

As far as I can tell they think every tv and cinematic concept, visual, tone, theme, motif, idea, began whole cloth with the Marvel Cinematic universes.
Nothing influenced or existed before it.

And yeah, you can't get them to read or acknowledge a post that came before theirs dropped, let alone a movie or tv series that existed before them.

Of course the exact flip-side happens with old fogies who can't or refuse to acknowledge or reference anything new, so it balances out perfectly

If anything back then everyone recognized the same stuff cause that's what was available.
There is so much content; old, new, international, all easily available now, no reason any two people saw the same thing.

[Starter Set]

Re-runs on tv helped a lot back then.

For example in the 80's Star Trek was very often on tv where i lived, as Space 1999, the Invaders, Batman, Zorro or The Twilight Zone so of course i knew about this old stuff.

But now who watches tv really?

[MyriVerse]

Re-runs on tv helped a lot back then.

For example in the 80's Star Trek was very often on tv where i lived, as Space 1999, the Invaders, Batman, Zorro or The Twilight Zone so of course i knew about this old stuff.

But now who watches tv really?

My family does, and no cable too (cable-free for 20 years!). All of those rerun OTA subchannels like MeTV and AntennaTV are staples.

[BeastieRunner]

Old people are more out of touch with the current generation that vice versa.

I've never seen so many people in the same or older generational cohorts as me so ouch of touch with current trends.

There's a lot more reverence with younger cohorts now in regards to what comes before. And is easier to find.

I think the disconnect is with the old farts.

[LordMikel]

Old people are more out of touch with the current generation that vice versa.

I've never seen so many people in the same or older generational cohorts as me so ouch of touch with current trends.

There's a lot more reverence with younger cohorts now in regards to what comes before. And is easier to find.

I think the disconnect is with the old farts.

It would be an interesting game show. Old guys vs young guys on pop culture.

[Powerboy]

Old people are more out of touch with the current generation that vice versa.

I've never seen so many people in the same or older generational cohorts as me so ouch of touch with current trends.

There's a lot more reverence with younger cohorts now in regards to what comes before. And is easier to find.

I think the disconnect is with the old farts.

It's probably the same problem. For younger people, there is so much going on now compared to decades ago that they have just as much knowledge but less of it is about the past.

With older people, it's the same but in reverse. There is so much going on now that we don't keep up with it all and still have any time for the older stuff.

People tend also to be biased in favor of the stuff from their formative years.

[From The Shadows]

I'm the same. I was born in the 70s but I also knew 60 and 70's stuff and even 40s and 50's stuff and enjoyed watching shows from those eras and some films (but mostly TV); Catch phrases you name it. It was the same with music. I love trivia too. Comics count too, then some.

Old people are more out of touch with the current generation that vice versa.

I've never seen so many people in the same or older generational cohorts as me so ouch of touch with current trends.

There's a lot more reverence with younger cohorts now in regards to what comes before. And is easier to find.

I think the disconnect is with the old farts.

I know what you mean, but...I don't have kids yet I know what they like/are into mostly... probably because I've kept an interest in pop cultures latest. Out of habit, enjoyment? I don't know. Despite me not liking a lot of it anyway.

Also, I've discovered some young to be hair curlingly ignorant to the point that anyone alive around the 1600's would even be scratching their heads. Though, I rather believe this is indoctrination of some sort.

[jb681131]

I remember growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, but still having a lot of knowledge about shows from the 60’s and 70’s and even earlier. Today I feel young people only really know about stuff from their generation. This is in spite of the fact that they have the internet and can look up older stuff easily. I think part of it has to do with the fact that back in the day reruns of old shows use to run alongside new stuff creating kind of a continuity between old and new. Today you have to actually seek out old stuff, so most people don’t bother.

You also missed the fact that there are way more new stuff now a days than before, that's why before there was lots of reruns.

[godisawesome]

You also missed the fact that there are way more new stuff now a days than before, that's why before there was lots of reruns.

This is the real change, I think.

Pop-culture knowledge as a whole nowadays is far more about breadth of material than depth. Your average member of Generation Z is going to have the same amount of knowledge as a Boomer, Gen X or Millenial... but the pool of information they’re drawing from will be exponentially larger, and therefore overlap from person to person will be rarer.

I mean, a cult hit today might be a YouTube channel with a few million subs, vs a film from the 80’s with a million in ticket sales.

I teach enough 6th Grade kids to see a tiny handful be massive nerds for the YouTube channel Overly Sarcastic Prodcutions, a larger group for the Disney Renaissance thanks to their parents, an equal group that now knows about Avatar: The Last Airbender but mostly thanks to Netflix, and can clearly state the overall class *does* know more about the MCU than they do about Star Wars.

Whatever generation change is happening here is being caused by a change in pop-culture, not the other way around.

(I’d also say Star Wars’s fall in popularity is in part because the franchise kind of had a “mini-regression” in its junior year under Disney in terms of keeping up with the times, especially compared to its George Lucas-led form and in comparison to the MCU - they never sought to fully saturate the market with kid appeal ideas the way Lucas did during the PT, and TLJ and Solo are movies made more for Boomers and Gen-Xers than for Millenials or Zillenials.)

[LordMikel]

I would say we should also realize the idea of historical.

In 1980 as a child of 8, I watched reruns of the Brady Bunch, which debuted in 1969 - 1974.
Brady Brides was in 1981.
The Bradys in 1990. Which I believe is the last time the original cast had a TV show. (There was a home show with the Brady Bunch)

It is 2020, my daughter is 11. I just walked up and asked her if she knew who the Brady Bunch was and she said no. so she doesn't know a TV show that debuted 50 years ago and was last on TV 30 years ago, and I'm really not surprised.

But let's go back to 1980. If we want to apply the standards of today with the standards back then, then I should know about movies from the 1930.
I had to do some research to find an example. Jack Benny show debuted in 1949. I know the name, but I've never watched a single episode.

I hate to say it, but some of us are old and stuff we remember and we think everyone should know about, is maybe a lot older than you think.

But this does bring up a good point. I do think a new high school class could be "pop culture and its significance" through the ages.

[A Small Talent For War]

I would say we should also realize the idea of historical.

In 1980 as a child of 8, I watched reruns of the Brady Bunch, which debuted in 1969 - 1974.
Brady Brides was in 1981.
The Bradys in 1990. Which I believe is the last time the original cast had a TV show. (There was a home show with the Brady Bunch)

It is 2020, my daughter is 11. I just walked up and asked her if she knew who the Brady Bunch was and she said no. so she doesn't know a TV show that debuted 50 years ago and was last on TV 30 years ago, and I'm really not surprised.

But let's go back to 1980. If we want to apply the standards of today with the standards back then, then I should know about movies from the 1930.
I had to do some research to find an example. Jack Benny show debuted in 1949. I know the name, but I've never watched a single episode.

I hate to say it, but some of us are old and stuff we remember and we think everyone should know about, is maybe a lot older than you think.

But this does bring up a good point. I do think a new high school class could be "pop culture and its significance" through the ages.

It is strange. Growing up in the 70's, there was an obvious distinction between say Laurel & Hardy and M*A*S*H. Or between the Beatles and Pink Floyd and David Bowie. I grew up with a strong sense of the chronology of pop culture. However, younger generations probably lump all of them into a general bucket of old or nostalgic media without a sense of early 20th century to late 20th century.

[Mister Mets]

It's an interesting question.

I think right now there's so much more material available, so it's harder to be as knowledgeable about the basics. We also have increasing nichification, so that few things are as popular as the big things in the past.

Friends had a viewership that regularly hit 30,000,000. The Big Bang Theory was not on that level.

It is worth noting that much of earlier pop culture doesn't survive. Sherlock Holmes and Dracula remain popular, but Tom Swift and Black Oxen have pretty much disappeared.

As an example of things that are popular and forgotten, look at how many bestsellers from decades past don't even have wikipedia entries.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Publishe...s_in_the_1920s
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Publishe...s_in_the_1950s

[Powerboy]

Some points I'm thinking of, some of which have already been brought up.

I grew up in the sixties and seventies. Reruns were a much bigger thing then. A lot of Saturday morning stuff was reruns of old movie serials which is why I have any idea who Roy Rogers was or the Lone Ranger.

Television was much newer then and there were only three networks, two in the early days, and they had a limited number of things to rerun. There was plenty of time to watch old stuff which really wasn't that old at the time.

Nowadays, you've got endless networks and streaming. There's so much more out there that you could never watch it all let alone reruns.

If you go far enough back, the culture has changed so much that a 20-something doesn't relate to it. The pacing back then was slower, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

I also think young people do know about stuff from before their time but a little before or if it's something that relates to something current. They might check out an older version of a character they like in the present.

But more than anything, I think it's that there is so much to watch now.

[GOLGO 13]

I remember growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, but still having a lot of knowledge about shows from the 60’s and 70’s and even earlier. Today I feel young people only really know about stuff from their generation. This is in spite of the fact that they have the internet and can look up older stuff easily. I think part of it has to do with the fact that back in the day reruns of old shows use to run alongside new stuff creating kind of a continuity between old and new. Today you have to actually seek out old stuff, so most people don’t bother.

I envy their choices.

They have a TON of things to occupy their time & fight for their attention. Star Trek Original must look painful to them. I think my daughter knows that Darth Vader is a bad-guy. I personally think Disney star wars/trek are both crap & actively sabotage any interest they might show in it. Yeah, because reasons.

Even though I have thousands of silver/bronze age comics, my children have never held a single floppy in their hands. They show MUCH more interest in manga & we share many of them together.

I judiciously share some of my interests from my youth & I am getting positive feedback from areas such as games & music & foreign cinema.