Arrested Development. Had no idea it existed until years after it was over, when its cult status was starting to rise. And I still haven’t watched it, though I have every intention of doing so sometime, probably soon. Maybe.
*Hunger Games. *Never heard of it until my sister made a post on Facebook about going to see the movie at midnight on Friday. I played ketchup, though–saw the movie on Saturday morning, and read all the books by Sunday night.
*Sucker Punch, *too. I just learned what it was last weekend. Really dug the movie.
I miss out on most pop music, since I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV (my media collection would be stuck in the early '00s if not for word-of-mouth recommendations). I didn’t know who Lady Gaga was until… the middle of last year, I think? My boyfriend at the time introduced me to her.
I’m all about Always Sunny in Philadelphia now, but I wasn’t aware of their existence until the same boyfriend introduced me to the show. Now, I can’t get enough of it.
Somehow, I never heard of the movie Saved! until a few days ago. Also really enjoyed that.
I still haven’t heard the original “Tik Tok”, and only became aware that it existed through this Doctor Who version. Which is awesome.
If a (recent) pop song hasn’t been used in a TV commercial, I probably haven’t heard it or heard of it.
I do this a lot with music.
A lot of the time, I become a big fan of the artist, or at least the song, when I do discover them, but I’m usually pretty late in the game. F’rinstance, I was pretty much oblivious to Katy Perry until a fanartist did a My Little Pony wallpaper based around Last Friday Night (…oh, like any of you had an ounce of respect for me before I said that!)…I may have been vaguely aware of the existence of I Kissed a Girl (which I’m listening for the first time RIGHT NOW, prompted by something else), but no idea about Perry herself, or any of her other music. (And while I didn’t become a fan, per se, I have a strange love of both Last Friday Night and California Gurls, but I’m pretty sure that’s due to associations, rather than the songs themselves.)
Oddly, a lot of the popular cartoons of my childhood era, where not popular cartoons of my childhood, as I completely missed their existence, until they were off the air, or were only aware of them as toy lines - Thundercats (was aware of it by the 90s, never saw it until a year or two ago), Silverhawks (still have never seen it), a few others.
Close to the OP scenario. I was unaware of both “Arrested Development” and “Firefly”. I didn’t stumble across them and learn they were popular, it was much after the fact that I kept hearing about them I went looking for them.
I had no clue who Nirvana was until the late nineties, and never consciously heard a Beatles song until around the same time, though I at least knew who they were.
Gosh I wouldn’t know where to start. At certain points in my life I have been driven to keep up with pop culture, at least the references, if not the content. At others - wow was I out of it. In the 70s & much of the 80s I survived without a tv. In the 90s & early 2000sI was raising a child. So missed whole waves and waves of probably interesting as well as probably horrid popular stuff.
That said, I’m glad I’m catching up on “Scrubs” now. What a wonderful show, sorry I missed it first time around when I was entirely oblivious to its existence somehow.
Great news: Ke$ha’s next album comes out soon, hopefully this spring or summer. It’ll be great to add to my collection of about 125 Kesha songs, and hopefully to see her on her next tour!
If the OP means things we weren’t even aware of when they came out:
Game of Thrones (book and movie)
Hunger Games (same)
Tik Tok (I still don’t know who that is, all I have heard are parodies of her song)
Every Rihanna song (I don’t know any of them)
Katy Perry’s music (I have heard of her, just not any songs of hers)
I didn’t know who Justin Bieber was until people started making fun of him on the internet
If the OP means discovering that it had been very popular without you noticing:
Hunger Games and Game of Thrones again. My boss bought me the first Game of Thrones book, knowing me all of 2 years (and I’m pretty secretive), saying, “I thought it would be something you’d like.” I’d never heard of it. And yes, she was right.
Tupac’s hologram? I still haven’t seen it, unless it was the stupid thing in the Star Wars R2 parody I saw yesterday.
There are plenty more, but since I don’t know they’re popular, I guess I wouldn’t know until it comes up here.
I can’t answer the question. There are many, many things I haven’t been aware of over the years . . . but I’m still unaware of them.
Basically, I dropped out when the Beatles broke up. If it weren’t for Yoko Ono I’d still be hip.
The entire 1980s and most of everything since then. If I am aware of something, I am usually just aware that it exists/existed or of some trivial detail connected to it but have no comprehensive knowledge of it.
I only just discovered the amazing comedy bit “Who’s on first?” for the first time a month or two ago. I can’t believe I had never heard of it or seen it before. I now recognize it as one of the finest pieces of comedy we’ve ever been blessed with. Yes, it was way before my time, but I feel like this is something that most people know about and love, and pass on, and I somehow missed out on it for 24 years of my life.
I didn’t know about Take That or any of the members until 2010, when my cousin showed me one or two Robbie Williams songs. I did’nt like him one bit. I’ve actually never heard Take That, but I guess I’m better off without.
When I think about it, I didn’t actually know about most popular acts with singers performing over synthesizers between early nineties well into the two thousands. Friends have later, to my dislike, filled me in. Not that I have anything against synthesizers, though. I love synthesizers.
It’s the same with cartoons during my childhood. I didn’t really bother watching that stuff because I found them unrealistic and rather annoying.
I have a friend who has managed to miss almost every single pop culture milestone for the past 50 years – and she’s only been alive for twenty-six of them. She isn’t Amish, or from any other odd subculture that eschewed modern technology or frowned on popular entertainment, and, despite being a military brat, in fact lived in the same ordinary, modern American town from the age of 3 until she left for school at 18. She just never had cable as a kid, and didn’t listen to the radio much.
I, and other people, have had to intentionally sit her down and introduce her to a great many things, but one of the most striking is that I showed her her very first episode of Gilligan’s Island the semester she graduated from college.
If you want something that technically happened in her lifetime, she was born when Back To The Future was still running in theaters – a couple years post-graduation, we found out that she’d never seen that either. She adores small cute things, so of course she fell in love with Michael J Fox immediately. 
She’s not much better with things that are happening now. She’s kept up with a few TV shows and musical artists, but mostly because someone else has alerted her to their existence, and hands her DVDs or tells her when they’ll be on TV. The only things I can remember her wanting to see in theaters unprompted are the recent Sherlock Holmes movies, and the first couple of Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Any new music, books, movies or other pop culture from late 2008 to mid 2011 I was not aware of until late 2011 - if that counts. I was working in the Middle East and, although we had internet and tv, I didn’t bother keeping up with any new releases as there was so much from before that I hadn’t seen and could easily download. Also Saudi doesn’t have any cinemas or bars/clubs and during my two years there just read a lot of books and watched complete series (like The Sopranos), which I knew of but hadn’t got around to seeing all of the episodes.
I saw a list of One-hit-wonders (songs) of all time and could recall virtually all of the top 50 except a song called Bitch by Meredith Brooks (1997). It was #9 - of all time so it had to have gotten considerable play and buzz. Don’t remember it, never heard it and never heard of Meredith Brooks. And I was sober in 1997!
Hunger Games books. Not until the movie making made a splash online did I know a thing about it. But, since I wasn’t paying attention to any YA stuff (if you think HG isn’t YA, that’s fine, imho, ymmv), having already got tired of endless refs to Twilight and Potter, I wasn’t really too surprised I missed it. Still not that interested, but at least I now know it exists.
.
Bull. “You Get What You Give” was everyone. Hell, it’s everywhere today. Listen to any “adult alternative” station for a few hours and they’re bound to play “You Get What You Give.”
My personal experience is yes to the first case, no to the second. When you feature on ads for NPR you know you are omnipresent like it was in the late 90s. But I have maybe heard this song once in the past 10 years.