I think I’m going to have to do another “Current Music for Old Farts” thread. 
Oh, I am so there!
(Is that how you say it now?)
From the OP it sounds more like “follow popular shows” than “care about popular culture” which to me would be more like people who read “People” and the like and follow all of the stories about what celeb is up to what. So I hope my post answers the OP’s question properly.
I only watch the shows that I do because I consider those particular shows entertaining, not because they’re the “in” thing to watch. I haven’t been able to stand a single sitcom since probably the Cosby’s or Frasier. Most today, from the little snippets I’ve seen, are very tacky, crude and unimaginative. I was one of the 5 people in the US who could not stand “The Seinfeld Show”.
Same with music, I like different genres and different artists, but it depends more upon the specific song than it does “oooh this is by So and So band, they’re so great”. Most of the time, if it’s a newer song I have to ask my students who the artist is so I can hunt down and buy the song on iTunes.
I’m picky enough about music that I don’t typically buy a whole album from a band just because it’s “that” band.
And as to following popular celebrities, I didn’t even do that when I was a teen. Even at that age I never saw the point in wasting any energy on lusting after cute boy stars when there were plenty of real boys all around. By the time I was 21 I was a young married girl with a little one, so I had no time for that. Although I do remember liking “Dallas” and “Knot’s Landing”. Oh, and that was so long ago, I don’t even remember who shot JR. 
I’m in my mid 50s and I still enjoy plenty of stuff but I am far less involved in it than when I was younger.
I religiously watch House, Rescue Me and Friday Night Lights but other than that all I watch is sport on TV. However I couldn’t name most of the cast of any of those shows.
I go out to live music all the time and have a large collection of new stuff. In the last two weeks I have seen* Big Bad Voodoo Daddy* and The Decemberists as well as several local bands. I own all their music. The only band members I can name are Colin Meloy and Chris Funk and I only now know Funk’s name because I looked up the instrument he played on Tuesday night.
I see dozens of movies a year but, although I used to be a walking IMDB years ago, I now don’t care about things peripheral to the movies.
I think my attitude changed when I lost interest in keeping track of all the gossip aspect of life. I lost interest in most famous people other than for their work. So I don’t know who goes out with who or whether they have kids or what they are doing or planning to do. I guess this started about 20 years ago.
25
It started with the disconnect in 2002 between the huge underswelling of the popularity of emo versus how little it got played on the radio in Orlando. The rock radio stations even sponsored concerts but still only played warmed over nu metal/rage rock. So I didn’t really keep track of what commercial radio played because it was obviously not an indication of what was really popular.
But the defining moment came only last year when I was in the used CD store (before I had started buying songs online. One advantage that store still has is that you can listen to a CD before you buy it without time limits unless someone’s waiting.) Sometimes I took a listen to a band merely because of their name, and I noticed a band by the name of The Black Maria. I was wondering if that was a reference specifically to the song “Hang 'em High” by My Chemical Romance rather than a generic reference to Black Mariahs in general. But anyway, by the artwork and the name I figured it would probably sound like early MCR anyway, and it did, so I bought it.
So I bring up my obscure selections to the register, and the employee looks up the number of reward points I have and informs me that I have a free CD coming, and asks me if I want it to be the “Black Mah-REE-uh” CD.
God, if I’m hipper than record store workers in that I know how to pronounce bands names I’ve never even heard of, there’s nothing left to aspire to in pop culture, is there?
But in general, while I like pop culture less than I did as a teen, I care in an abstract way more because I can see through experience how what’s popular and/or heavily marketed will influence what’s being made and the ease of access.
On the flip side I have also experienced a handful of bands that I like become hugely popular and so “graduate” to less intimate venues, so I also worry about bands that I like becoming too popular, not because they will sell out but because I won’t get to be as close to them when they perform.
Around 25. That’s the time when I moved from college into “real life,” and also the time when the Beatles broke up.
I think I can safely say I’ve never had an interest in pop culture. When I was in primary school, early to late fifties, my family didn’t have a TV. Other kids would come to school chatting about the latest TV phenom. I was a reader but had no one to talk to about my latest read. I rarely went to films, maybe once or twice a year. I just didn’t have any interest. Now, my wife (who was once an actress) knows all the latest about which TV programs and which films are hip and she knows the names of all the actors. My daughter and son are both the same. My son has his own library of DVDs My daughter collects TV series on DVD. I’m known as the pop culture klutz of the family. My siblings are the same.
Yep! Exactly! The original “Father of the Bride” (with Spencer Tracy) is a gem, too.
I tried to watch one of the “Lord of the Rings” (Lords?) in the movie theater and it gave me a headache. It was too…off. And blue. The camera only stared straight ahead, I kept wanting to turn around. I shut my eyes and just listened.
Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of having seen a lot of movies over the years? We went to see Mickey Rourke’s “The Wrestler” last year and I saw the ending coming from about 20 minutes in and couldn’t have cared less.
Suspension of disbelief is not easy nowadays. I worked with architects - nothing like Mike Brady. Been to the ER several times and there’s no sign of George Clooney. I know lawyers and their lives are nothing like LA Law.
What strikes me is that on TV everyone’s distant - and in real life, everyone’s afraid. Just a little, or maybe a lot. Truly confident, competent, breezy people are extremely rare.
And I’m really offended by some programs. Maybe it’s my age showing, but I think those “CSI” shows are, if the commercials are an accurate depiction (because I’ve never sat through a whole episode), utterly despicable. Half-naked young women as victims, over and over again. There was a commercial on TV during a game my husband was watching where they’d found one half-buried. And they showed that, on TV. Arms in the mud.
Hello? Objectification of women? Misogyny? Anybody still care about that?
How about just complete disrespect for human life?
The boxes at Blockbuster just make me gag. I worked at a video store many years ago and it wasn’t like that, not row after row of women being violated.
I stay in the kids section w/my children, it’s safer over there.
Grumble, grump, fuss - I’m no fun this morning.
Probably need some sunshine.
Boy howdy, I agree with you about the misogyny, the continual onslaught of women maimed, dismembered, killed in horrible ways for entertainment. Why don’t MEN ever get buried alive or sliced up or …whatever? Always women, always for entertainment. (yeah, yeah, I know men suffer too, I know. A few.) … One thing that always stuck in my craw was this was played for laughs in a Seinfeld episode! Kramer was suspected of being a serial killer! Haw-haw! I mean, he certainly looks deranged. But right in the middle of a comedy series, there were the LA police finding a girl’s dead body on the side of the road, ho-hum, another one, like a squashed possum. They played it for laughs… I’d like to know how and why this thing came about. Either fat, boring nerds who can’t attract hawt women hate them this much. Or the screenwriters in the biz are so used to hawt fake-boobed disposable whores who are all the same, just things to use, let’s kill 'em off onscreen. Book authors dreaming up new atrocities churn out new stuff to feed the poison. The level of hatred for women is mind-boggling, that would make a good discussion sometime as to why and how it came about and why it is so much in the open.
I’m 28 and I still give a rat’s patooty about pop culture. And I hope I never stop. That would be horrible, having to give up my favorite stuff because “now I’m an adult”. Fuck that.
You can take my episodes of Lost, my big budget blockbusters and my video games when you pry them from my cold dead hands.
Some of you aren’t really giving up on pop culture. You’re just refusing to give up your past. There’s no reason to feel superior for watching reruns of Seinfeld or MASH rather than watching 30 Rock or Glee or thinking that listening to Pat Benatar or Cyndi Lauper is any different than listening to Katy Perry or Lady Gaga.
Mix it up. Appreciate the stuff that came out when you were a teenager but also give the new stuff a try and check out the stuff that came out before you were born.
**salinqmind **and fessie, I think you need to lightne up a bit. First of all, I haven’t actually done a census nor do I follow the series that closely, but the victims in CSI seem to be roughly split between men and women.
Secondly, slashing up scantily clad women has been a horror movie staple since the 70s. So I guess let me be the first to welcome you to the past 40 years of cinema.
Finally, I’m not a sociologist, but my WAG is that you tend to find more female victims in horror movies for the simple reason that the audience tends to be male. I think it has little to do with hating women for 99% of them.
As for the OPs question about giving a rat’s patooty about pop culture, I’m not sure what he means. I think nearly everyone of every age probably has shows or movies or music they enjoy. I mean do people just suddenly stop liking music or professional sports movies at age 40 or something?
As for obsessively being “into pop culture” or defining myself by my pop culture interests, I think that crap stopped in my late teens once I got to college. Dressing up like your favorite band is for suburban kids trying to look “cool” by trying to show how they aren’t just like the rest of their peers by dressing exactly like them.
I think the OP was implying the question is actually “At What Age Did You Cease to Give a Rat’s Patooty About (CURRENT) Pop Culture?”
Which makes some of the subsequent answers really funny. Look, if you still watch Lost or 24 or enjoy the comedic stylings of Dane Cook, etc, etc, you still give a rat’s patooty about pop culture. Just because you like more stuff that is older doesn’t really mean you’ve disconnected from most of the current pop culture doesn’t mean you’ve given up on all of it.
Also, “pop culture” is much bigger today than it was even five years ago. The Internet has fractured pop culture to the point where it’s possible to follow a dozen different TV shows, movies, books, whatever and have someone else’s list of 12 have no overlapping items at all. But it’s all still “pop culture”.
If I had the time on my hands, I would love to do a census like that to put the question to rest once and for all. I think it would come out pretty close to 50-50 as well. Although L&O SVU might skew the victim numbers for women a little higher.
Yeah, I was kind of wondering both those things – since somewhere around the time I turned 40, I quit being able to sit through professional sports on TV. Never loved it before - now I can’t be bothered at all.
And it IS kind of sad. But I wondered if it’s a cumulative effect of aging.
And no, I AM certain that the the shelves at Blockbuster have changed drastically since 1985. Of that I can be positive.
I think a lot of people get busy with other things.
I hope I didn’t come off as trying to sound ‘superior’ about not following pop culture. It’s just not my bag anymore. I certainly don’t think any less of people who do enjoy it.
I wonder this too. Seems like any new movies coming out are ‘predictable’ to me; or they seem like a mashup of old story lines.
You must pity all us old folks, sitting in our recliners, wearing sweatpants, picking lintballs off our sweaters, counting out our Lipitor pills, and Preparing For Death, lol!
My mom is over 80 and doesn’t get out too much, but she isn’t watching Mass For Shut-ins or QVC, she knows way more about popular culture than I do and likes it! Her favorite movie of last year: Borat!
And I didn’t mean to sound superior, either - I’d still watch Brady Bunch reruns if I could. They’re not High Drama or anything, they’re just familiar.
It’s more & more difficult for me to invest in something new. I have a harder time caring.
I think this is the main reason.
It’s gotten to the point where the predictability and manipulation is pathetic and annoying.
For example, whenever somebody mentions a tv show or movie with an “ensemble” cast, I have a horrible habit of wondering, “so who’s the token black guy in it?” – and sure enough, 9 times out of 10, there’s a token black guy in it! Doesn’t matter if it’s Mission Impossible tv series from the 1960s or Ocean’s Eleven n the 2000s. (I know there are good reasons for it … such as making the movie more marketable to the 11% of African Americans and/or making it more politically correct. Nevertheless, it still feels artificial.)
If a guy & girl give each other “that look” at the beginning of the movie (especially if it’s not a romantic comedy), they will have sex with each other.
If a group or team is trying to survive a killer, or fight some enemy to save the world, the lower tier B-list actor is the one that dies.
We’ve. Seen. Everything. Recycled over and over. Yawn.
I’m 28 and I’m hanging on by a thread.
I haven’t cared about pop music for a decade, and just very ostensibly cared about it before then.
I can no longer stand most Hollywood movies (though I still watch a lot of documentaries, indies, and classics.)
I own the least cool gaming system, and only play 2 or 3 games a year.
I literally do no have television anymore. I have a tv set, but it’s only good for games and dvds. Doesn’t pick up television. And I’m totally cool with that. My wife and I actually talk during meals now and we read even more than we used to.
I still absorb a lot of what’s out there through friends, family, the internet, and the Howard Stern Show, but I give a rat’s patooty about very, very little of it.