I never have (and never will) drank alcohol, so when books are careful to describe what kind of drinks people are having, saying that they had whiskey or scotch or gin is exactly as meaningful to me as if it said that they had gooootlebep or tanbletak or wooferglub. Anyone else got views on commonly-used but wasted-on-you details?
Descriptions of guns, I guess.
References to designer clothing.
Pretty much anything involving kids these days.
It’s not that the writer is expecting you to know and be reminded of the taste of certain kinds of alcohol, it’s that they tell something about the character. Same as describing the clothes they wear, the accents they speak with, the vocabulary choices they make, the kind of car they drive, the hobbies they pursue. You may live in an Inuit fishing village 1000 km from the nearest road, but if you read enough books, you’ll absorb enough about mainstream culture to come to think differently about a Volvo driver and a Jeep driver.
I like this answer.
Not to say it’s the only answer, but it provided me with a point of view I can appreciate.
Nice job fellow doper.
Rap references like Trevor Noah uses on The semi-Daily Show. E.g. “It’s like that time <name1> called out <name2> in <song title>.”
No clue at all.
I have been a Science Fiction fan since I started reading on my own and bought the Ballantine paperback reprints of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars novels. (.50 USD each!)
In Mathematics, there is a wall with a door for which I have no key. High School algebra and geometry was as far as I managed to get. I love me some Space Operas, but the intricate descriptions of the math involved in space flight are just gibberish to me.
Pop culture in general. I haven’t listened to popular music since 1991. Mr. CK quit listening because of disco. We don’t pay for TV or subscription services (we get Amazon Prime as a Christmas gift every year, but we only watch The Grand Tour right now), and we only have a few TV channels sometimes.
I pick up a little bit about celebrities occasionally, but not firsthand. What I do get doesn’t make me miss it.
There’s an enormous volume of news involving supposedly famous people I’ve never heard of, or pertaining to celebrities whose intimate details I have no interest in hearing. I did not click on this headline, for instance:
“Danica Patrick opens up about how freezing her eggs influenced lifestyle changes”
Me, too, about celebrities in general, I mean.
We still get Entertainment Weekly magazine, and I don’t know who half of the people on the covers are. I recognize their names, and I have heard vaguely of their area of expertise, but…frankly, I have little interest in superheros or millenials slutting around, or how much money rappers and their 'ho’s make, or some such. And (it’s not just me!) I can hardly tell them apart, they all look vaguely alike, there are no STARS. Look at Channing Tatum, the goober with the big ears they have been trying to make ‘happen’ for a decade. I say he’s a potato. A potato with abdominal muscles that he is very proud of, and so what? …And the women! All stick figures with implants, all vaguely looking alike. Meh…gotta go, there are some kids I need to chase off the lawn with my cane
Right. You could be deaf, and it would still be meaningful to know whether a character was listening to smooth jazz or heavy metal or gangsta rap or Gilbert & Sullivan.
I stopped being interested at the same time. I play trivia a lot (Buzztime) and unfortunately present day singers and celebrities are featured a lot. I’ll have a great score going and then a question comes up about a singer I have barely heard of and a song I have never heard of. Oh well…
Dennis
Pretty much out of touch with current slang, and a lot of pop culture references are lost on me.
On the Dope, I look at most threads about physics and math much like a dog looks at you when you’re speaking to it: hopefully curious that there might be a treat in the offing, but ultimately confused and disappointed. And I took college math and physics courses. :smack:
Another one for rap artists. I can’t watch Aziz Ansari because his act is little more than being a male Kathy Griffin, except instead of Kardashians, he talks about rappers. Speaking of which, reality shows like the Kardashians, Duck Dynasty, etc. mean nothing to me, either. They get referenced all the time and I have no idea what any of it means.