For me it was about ten years ago, when i started working in a company with a lot of people 10 years younger than me. They all listened to new French rap, so i gave it a shot as i am a fan of the 90s stuff so i figured i’d like it. The truth is i couldn’t understand any of it… not that i hated it, but it was just so alien to me. I didn’t understand enough of it to even form an opinion.

I realized that i had missed not only that moment in music, but also all of its precursors, so i really had no point of reference to it. I guess the pop music i grew up with, even the stuff i hated, was always one or two generations away from some genre of music i could identify. But this was based on a whole chain of influences that was unknown to me. A great feeling tbh.

The day my boss, who asked for my help, said “That’s not what GPT said” and promptly ignored my input, wasted 2 days of a customer’s time and $700 of their money (refuses to walk back his time doing what GPT said), then finally allowed me to fix the actual problem using my meat popsicle intelligence’s output, which took 14 minutes.

We’re doomed. He votes.

When kids didnt know what CDs were. Or when people didnt know what the address bar or Ctrl+F does.

To be fair I live 30 years in the past when I can so I’m not susprised.

Never been in touch!

Probably always been a bit out of touch. Never really enjoyed pop culture. The first time was probably around 10 when everyone started getting into social media and I was like why the fuck would you ever put your real name and face on the internet.

I have always been “out of touch”. I used to reject pop-culture because I thought I was too cool for it. Now I avoid pop-culture because it’s a habit. Whenever I attempt to participate in pop-culture I quickly realize why I made avoiding it a habit.

As soon as I cut everyone out of my life and just started going to work coming home and gaming. I just let life pass by because it seems like too much work to be involved in it.

When I’ve seen people showing 0 interest in the content they watch, but 100% interest in being lobotomized for 60 seconds instead.

If you have kids moving into their teens you figure it out fast.

They start speaking an entirely different language.

As you grown into an adult you follow your peer group and friends through whatever social life, maybe going to places like bars or events that keep up with music trends. You all like the new banger from whoever that shows up on the playlist or New Year’s Eve party. You talk about new series, what entertainer is in concert or on social media, you still remain connected to trends.

But at some point life intrudes, work starts wearing, maybe start a family, and you have less time for these excursions. Crowded, noisy, expensive bars get way less attractive and maybe you have a couple favorite chill spots that play music you like. You’ve got your playlists set. Your streaming music is “bestof” a decade a lot of the time. This is where diversion starts, you choose the familiar over seeking out the new and exciting. But you don’t really notice, you got shit to do.

But eventually you do. Younger coworkers start talking about entertainment and people more and more often you don’t know. They start using phrases and slang you have to figure out. And like I said, if you have kids, you’re gonna have to learn 6-7, gyatt, and the most irritating - the repurposing of words and symbols you already knew. # is number or pound, not just hashtag you illiterate heathens. Maybe your closet, too. You’ve now had the same jacket for 15 years, among many other pieces of clothing that have lasted; jeans, shirts, pullovers, whatever. That’s ok, why keep buying new throwaway fashion? They’re still good to wear.

So now you listen to “old” music, maybe some of your clothes are old enough to vote, and you spend time on Urban Dictionary or KnowYourMeme so you don’t feel lost when younger people sart talking about pretty much anything.

That’s when you know.

After the first few times that my kids sent me a meme and I had no idea what it meant.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve noticed, but a huge one for me was Weird Al’s album “Mandatory fun”. I had no idea who a majority of the artists he was parodying.

That kinda implies that there was a time where being “in touch” was a priority for me. Nah, I’m more interested in people keeping up with me.

I think when I moved from not liking things younger people enjoyed to simply having no idea what they enjoy at all.

I’ve never been particularly with it on trends and such. When I was younger I knew the trends and rejected them in the spirit of youthful rebellion, aspects of my personality were defined by what and who I wasn’t.

Then I got a little older and rejected the things people slightly younger than me enjoyed. This came naturally, because I was no longer the target audience for these things it was easy to write them off as if I were.

Now I don’t even know enough to reject them. My knowledge of what younger people like seems to be about five years out of date. When something new comes along that seems irritating to me it seems to pass so quickly I don’t really have time to register it, and when I find something new I enjoy there’s apparently whole fandoms about it where (presumably… hopefully…) very young people fight about it, and they’re fighting about things I genuinely don’t have time to decipher. It’s like it all moves too fast for my vision to really gain focus, by the time I’m able to tell what I’m looking at everyone else seems to have already moved on.

Lol I’m autistic, I’ve never been in touch. I rarely understand what’s going on but I fake it really well!