I’ll admit this one on myself. I don’t have kids. Back when the Barney the Dinosaur craze was huge, I had sort of heard of it but had no idea what it was. So I asked a friend, who I knew had kids, to explain it to me.
When I told him I had never seen the show and knew nothing about it, the first thing he said was “You are so lucky.”
I made the SAME lame joke to my boss the other day. He was just back from from Reno and I asked if he had shot a man just to watch him die. He was like 
Ditto.
And most non-country music of the last forty years.
On a football weekend at Ga Tech a friend fixed me up with his Girlfriend’s sister for a game against Auburn and then a party afterwards.
She was marveling at the tailgating and all the people. Making small-talk, I said something like “We are not in Kansas anymore”. She told me in no uncertain terms that she is from Carrollton Ga, and never been to Kansas before.
Is he on Downton Abbey?
the movie or the play?
I got thoroughly reamed on this board for not knowing the group “The Smiths” even though I recognized the song “How Soon is Now”. there seems to be an infinite number of musicians I can’t name.
That’s funny. As soon as I saw this thread I was going to post about how my entire family- parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents- have never heard of The Smiths or Morrissey. I’m a huge Morrissey fan, that’s how it’s come up in conversations with them.
I once got into a strange argument with a friend who didn’t believe me that “I Wear My Sunglasses At Night” was by Corey Hart, not by Corey Feldman, and she was convinced that Corey Feldman’s dead when in fact it was Corey Haim who died. In her defense, I can understand getting confused by all the Coreys, the main issue was that she didn’t believe me when I was trying to tell her who was who.
I mentioned Ike Turner to my grandma and she told me she, “couldn’t keep up with all these new, young artists.” This was circa 2008.
One of my co-workers has never heard of The Killers. He’s a 20 year old indie kid, you’d think he would have come across them at some point.
Up until some point late last year, I had no idea that the Washington Redskins were from D.C. and not the state of Washington (even though I should have reasoned this out on my own knowing that Washington is not nearly a big enough state to warrant having 2 NFL teams).
I would 
I think I’ve mentioned somewhere that I was having lunch with a middle aged, ostensibly graduate-level educated dude, and I mentioned that I had just finished reading Slaughterhouse Five. (Blank look.) OK, you know, Kurt Vonnegut? (Continued blank look, with a tinge of increasing suspicion.) Not having read Vonnegut I can understand, but having never heard of him at all? Strange. And the guy now thinks I’m into some kind of gory slaughterhouse themed fiction, to boot.
In the '90s, I had no idea the WCW World Heavyweight Champion had been in a rock band.
I met a middle-aged (late-50-ish) female person a few years ago whose knowledge of the world is apparently derived solely from the supermarket tabloids. In conversation once I happened to mention something about the Cold War, and she knew nothing about it.
Myself, I have never had a TV in my adult life, and never regretted it. And I don’t listen to music much. So I am, like, near-totally lame on pop references, except for the occasional things I pick up from message boards where ignorance is fought.
At an airport layover once, I saw a TV playing a cartoon show that was all Pink Panther cartoons. That was fun watching.
Now, I really wonder what happened with this one. The correct name is certainly Chicken Licken (along with her friends Foxy Loxy, Goosey Loosey, Henny Penny, etc.), but the name has somehow morphed into Chicken Little. How did that happen?
No, not I.
Here’s a story I heard from Johnny Cash himself, when I saw him play at a county fair in Paso Robles: He tells of a fan who approached him and asked: Hey, if you shot a man in Reno, whatcha doing in San Quentin?
Actually, come to think of it, I think there are two distinct stories being scrambled together here in many peoples’ minds, mine included.
There was one story about a Little Female Chicken of Reddish Hue who had to make bread all by herself because nobody wanted to help, so when it was all done, she ate it all herself.
And there was a separate story about a little juvenile chicken who got dripped on and then ran through the streets, Archimedes-like, yelling The Sky Is Falling!
So now, I have no idea really which of the other characters appeared in which of these stories. So much for MY knowledge of pop culture!
It’s a good thing you weren’t discussing baseball or the name of a certain Milwaukee Brewers player might have turned the conversation into “Who’s on first?”
My elderly retired for 15 years mother knew nothing of the Simpsons. Only the longest running show on TV. Figured she would have stumbled accross it at some point.
I had somebody say “Get errrr dun”. I had no idea why they said that phrase in such a manner.
My profound lack of interest in professional sports is widely enough known amongst my friends and colleagues that they’ll pre-emptively add the information in now when they mention players. 
I’ve run into more than one first-world adult person who’s never seen Star Wars, and I once worked with someone who’d never seen any of the Indiana Jones films. Vaguely knew there was a guy with a whip and a hat in them, and something about treasure, but otherwise nothing.
The good thing about my friends and colleagues is that none of them are hipsters so they’re not into obscure bands whose music will never even manage an EP on iTunes, but at a previous job I was definitely The Guy Who Didn’t Know Anything About Contemporary Music, apparently.
I also seem to encounter a lot of people who say they’re “Gamers” but are completely unfamiliar with things like the Grand Theft Auto series, the Fallout/Elder Scrolls series, Doom/Quake, Bioshock, the Civilisation or Command & Conquer series, any of the Total War games - because it turns out their definition of “Being a gamer” is playing Bejewelled or Plants vs Zombies a lot, or maybe stretching to World of Warcraft.
I’d never heard about it until just now. Nor half the stuff mentioned in thi thread.
The first story is The Little Red Hen, in which the characters are referred to descriptively (The lazy dog, the sleepy cat, the noisy yellow duck).
The second is Chicken Little, in which the characters generally have rhyming names (Henny Penny, Foxy Loxy). Although Henny Penny is a separate character in the linked version of the tale, she is apparently the title fowl in some tellings, as is Chicken Licken. A scholarly study of the evolution from the apparently original “Licken” to “Little” does not appear to have been made. More’s the pity.
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to answer a question with a question, as I found out when my college roommate asked:
“Who did we fight in the Revolutionary War?”
“Well, what language do we speak?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything!?!?”
Same here.
I haven’t watched TV in 15 years. This includes reality shows, talent shows, and cable TV shows/series. I have never watched, for example, American Idol, Survivor, Grey’s Anatomy, Walking Dead, Mad Men, The Big Bang Theory, NCIS, Jersey Shore, House M.D., etc. I mean, literally *nothing *in 15 years.
Lord of the Rings? Hobbit? Have never watched them or read the books. Totally clueless.