I should say, Boomers and Gen X’ers. Boomers haven’t cornered the market on sniffing dismissively (although they are very good at it). 
I kind of distinguish between “pop culture” and wanting to be entertained.
I don’t remember ever giving a crap about pop culture. I liked entertainment, but I liked what I liked whether everyone else did or not. I didn’t care about the stars or the gossip around them. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything about any stars death that I’d not feel about a normal person’s death, except, oddly, I’m still sadden by Phil Hartman’s.
I give some new TV a chance now and then, but I prefer to watch Simpsons reruns or Good Eats. I’ve never been into reality shows or contest shows or game shows in my life, other than Jeopardy because it has smart people most of the time (I always hated college weeks and celebrity weeks).
I’m the opposite when it comes to professional sports (still can’t stand college sports): couldn’t stand them growing up, and couldn’t understand why something so unimportant consumed so many people. But now, give me a good hockey or football game (and even, yes, the very rare good soccer game), and I’ll have fun with it.
For movies, I like what I like. If it’s something popular like Avatar and it’s good, then I won’t hate it just because it’s popular (although, I’ve not seen Avatar yet). But I’ll also go see movies like Los Abrazos Rotos despite what most of the schlubs I know think.
20 years old. I’m 28 now.
I’m 33. As far as TV and movies, I quit paying attention about 5 years ago. The only TV show I have to watch is The Simpsons, and I recently had a 2-year streak of not seeing any movies in the theater.
As for pop music, I quit listening to the top 40 radio stations a couple years ago, but then I started up again in the last few months. There are still some quality songs out there, such as “Sexy Bitch.” (“I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful. But damn, girl, you’se a sexy bitch.”)
When I was in grade school, I looked at what was going on in pop culture, and couldn’t wait for my change to participate. At 12 & 13, I was the annoying kid who begged by older brothers to let me tag along to concerts and parties.
Finally I was old enough, and these were now my group’s concerts and parties. But there were always participants far cooler than me. People who wore the clothes better, and kept up the conversation smoother.
Then before I knew it, I was the creepy old guy who had no business being there. I’d get the stink-eye from young men who thought my presence polluted the purity of their scene, and from young women who assumed I had no other function in life than to make unwanted advances on them. My interest in the band or the paintings or conversation or whatever could only be a subtrefuge.
So I retired from cool, realized that I’d aged past the target demographic, had taken too many beyond-101-level survey courses in art/lit/music to not engage in analytical/critical thought and thereby come off as some has-been who never was, tearing down what others were trying to create, ect., etc.
Which gave me the remove to look back and observe something in retrospect: The cool people with the nice clothes & smooth manners, and the non-creepy old guys who were welcomed by the young crowd?
They had drugs.
My interest had been fading slowly during my medical residency. But I lost track of 99% of pop culture on January 23rd, 1986, at the age of 28.
It was that day when the local radio station changed its initials to WKLH and its format to Classic Rock. When I began listening to it almost exclusively that same day, I realized I’d moved into the “old fogey” category and I liked it.
Musically: I was 20 when Nirvana exploded onto the scene, and I couldn’t stand them (still can’t). I couldn’t take the whole grunge scene, so I left pop music behind at that point. I’d always been into prog rock anyway, so I’ve been quite happy following a scene that most people don’t know or care about, but which is a million times better than anything “pop”. That’s not so say I’m totally unfamiliar with what’s gone on the last 20 years - it would be impossible to avoid. But I don’t follow the scene avidly like I did when I was a kid.
As for TV, there was no defining moment, I just lost interest at some point ten or fifteen years ago. The only thing I watch regularly is The Daily Show or the local news, depending on the day of the week; been that way for years. Everything I know about pop culture these days comes from there or the 'net. Again, I’m not totally ignorant; for example, a couple of times a year when I visit my parents I’ll get a lot of TV watching done - so I’m familiar with cool shows like Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, etc.
I am quite proud of the fact that I have never seen an episode of any reality show, or American Idol, or any of the other trash that is so popular these days.
A similar revelation happened to me. I used to think the George Lucas / Indiana Jones / Terminator stuff was amazing. Now, I see them and they look juvenile and pointless. I would not have missed out on anything by skipping that whole episode of my life entirely.
And the supposed hi-tech CGI stuff in movies today? It’s horrible. All of it. Even the mega budget films like Avatar. All CGI looks like video games on film. Maybe in 20 years, the technolgoy will finally make CGI completely indistinguishable from real life but that day is not today.
Late in life, I discovered some of the black & white classics such as “All About Eve” and “Casablanca.” Those movies have aged much better than the special-effects summer blockbusters I used to enjoy.
I’m 32, and no more or less selective about what I’ll watch/read/listen to than I’ve ever been.
52, still keepin’ up. Anything that’s geared to adults (post 21-ish) and I’m probably aware of it.
I think when I was in my thirties I began to note a negative correlation between pop cuture and a healthy values system for me.
Do I still strive to keep up with the latest? Yup. At a basic level.
Ageism still hides in the shadows and it doesn’t hurt to have some knowledge of what goes 'round to maintain a credibility factor.
I lost intererest in the mid-90s when I was about 30. It was then I got into old time radio and became a big World War II buff. I still am finding new things from that era to listen to and movies to see and frankly even the “b-movies” of that era are far better than 99.9% of anything made since 1990
My tastes in music, moveis, etc have never really followed the mainstream, but I was for many years at least aware of what was going on. I never bought any of her albums but I certainly was aware of Madonna. I have no interest in American Idol but can’t really escape knowing about it.
A guilty pleasure of mine has been “red carpet hit or miss” type photo galleries. Used to be in People and US, but the internet makes it much easier. In bygone years even if the people shown were not well known to me I’d typically know if they were actors or musicians. Now, I don’t know who most of themare, and don’t much care. I’d estimate that it started around when I turned 40. It’s as if the brain only has a limited capacity for such information and I’m full up.
DVDs make it easier not to care about missing a TV show. If it’s good enough I’ll hear aobut it and in a year or two I’ll borrow it from the library and watch it without commercials.
Like many, about the same time I stopped watcing TV regularly - probably about age 26-27. That’s when I had so much going on in my life that there was simply no time, and after a few years I was not only totally out of the loop but had lost my ability to watch, or more specifically, listen to TV and radio noise. The sound of commercials was really grating and there was little on to make it worth redeveloping the ability to tune out the junk.
Wikipedia informs me that this makes you only 26 years old or so.
I have to go kill myself now.
ETA: Well, not really.
I have never particularly cared. As a kid I was into ballet, piano, literature, and science, in that order. Not much else got my attention - or does even today, although the order has reversed. And of course, all things Celtling are now at the top of the list.
When Celtling reaches the pre-teen phase, I can certainly imagine myself beginning to track trends aggressively, in order to ward off anything wicked this way coming. . .
A word from Been-There-Done-That-Land:
Warding off anything wicked which comes the child’s way can be more difficult than it sounds while Celtling is in relative innocence. It pays to never underestimate the power of peer pressure and popular culture!
And good on you for being ready to arm yourself with awareness. You are bound to have some interesting discussions. The fun stuff is coming. . .
Last Wednesday.
Pop culture is neither popular nor culture! I’d love to see Hollywood fold. I lost interest ages ago, but I am glad the better shows can be found on DVD.
In terms of music, at some point in high school (mid to late 1990s). Like santosvega, the end of the grunge era and rise of the very different but to my mind equally horrible “boy band” and “nu metal” genres marked the end of my interest in current popular music. Looking at my CD collection, I don’t own anything by a band that formed later than about 1991. I have more recent releases from these older bands, but there hasn’t been a new band that I cared enough about to buy their CD since then. I continued to discover artists that were “new to me”, ranging from The Stooges to Leonard Cohen, but these all come from an earlier era. Or, as I like to say, “I went backwards from Pearl Jam.”
There have been more recent songs I liked so post '90s artists are represented in my MP3 collection, but this amounts to maybe 25 out of over 1500 MP3s. I have minimal exposure to new music now that I live in a small town and the only local radio station I find tolerable is the “classic hits” station.