Playing Trivial Pursuit with my parents. Question (paraphrased): “What movie contained the quote, ‘Open the pod bay doors, please, Hal’?” Mom had no clue, so I finally gave her the answer.
Mom: “2001? What was that?”
Me: “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Mom: “That’s not a movie; it’s an album.”
Me: “No, it was a movie. Stanley Kubrick.”
Mom: “Well, I never heard of it!”
Dad: “What? You know, the one with the apes, and the bone that turns into a spaceship, and the black column…”
Me: “And the space fetus at the end of it? It was in 1969, remember?”
Mom: “Was this some weird obscure hippie thing? I never heard of it!”
Me: [thinking] You know the name of a David Bowie album, but you’re calling a Kubrick movie a “weird obscure hippie thing”?
For years, my BIL was carrying around a vague memory of a show he’d watched when he was a kid. Many times, he’d asked others if they remembered it, and no one did. He’d concluded that it must have been something he’d dreamed up, maybe when he had the flu, and then one day, read a retrospective about Sid and Marty Kroft. :smack: The show was Land of the Lost! And the creatures were Sleestaks! Still doesn’t know why no one else ever recalled it, but perhaps he didn’t describe it very well.
I hardly ever visit Usenet groups any more, because the nitpickers who populate that section of the net make Dopers look mellow. A while back though, there was a discussion that led to someone pointing out that an unflattering video or photo that gets circulated around the net can sometimes be highly traumatic for the subject. “Look at the Star Wars Kid,” they said.
“I don’t know anything about those actors,” came the reply. “I think Jake Lloyd sunk his career post Phantom Menace, and I heard Natalie Portman is working on something, but [rant about SW prequels snipped].”
“Uh, I wasn’t referring to the movies,” the first poster said, helpfully providing a link to the golf-ball-retriever-wielding high schooler.
I mean, I can understand the confusion if this was a convo IRL. But by his own admission, the Usenet poster who didn’t get the reference spent hours and hours every day on the net. And in all that time, no one ever sent him a link to that video? He never heard it being discussed? As big of a SW fan as he apparently was, it never came up in a discussion? Usenet people blow my mind. They are the perfect example of what tomndebb and sublight were talking about: they’re that focused on whatever brought them onto the net in the first place, and they have zero interest in using internet access to expand their horizons.
Back in 2000, I was in the break room, at an office job, chirped, “Okay, who’s gonna line up for Harry Potter 4 on Saturday raise your hand!” Mine was the only hand that went up, among six or seven people giving completely blank looks. After a long pause, someone ventured, “Who’s Harry Potter?” and before I could answer, someone else replied, “It’s like Hardy Boys.”
I mean…were they serious? Had none of them, any time recently, been to the bookstore that was just down the street, with the displays and signs telling you where to reserve your copy? Had they never once noticed anyone reading books 1, 2 or 3? Never seen a kid dress up for Halloween as Harry? It was not just a matter of being a reader or not: the whole phenomenon was so inescapable. Although I’m not sure if casting for the movies had begun yet or not. That would have gotten their attention, I’m fairly certain.
And in the early '90s, I asked the mother of the kids I was babysitting if they liked Calvin and Hobbes. “What time does it come on?” she asked.
