You know, besides the physical stuff.
Anyone else in their mid-thirties feel incredibly old sometimes? All body aches, creaking joints, and real physical issues aside (why do they all hit right at thirty?!) I’m definitely getting old and out of touch.
As a younger person, I was a big pop culture fan.
I mean, I was in the know, even when that meant a majority of my information came from Teen People, MTV and Entertainment Tonight. We didn’t have a computer at home, so as a teen I’d go to the library and browse different sites for the latest celebrity gossip. While somehow still squeezing in my education, I watched all the buzzed about movies and TV shows and knew all the popular songs.
This is no longer the case.
I first realized I was getting old when I would hear songs on the radio and have no idea who sang them. Not just one song, mind you, but I went through a whole slew of songs with no idea whose voices I was hearing. I used to be up on all the mainstream musical artists; there wasn’t anyone I didn’t know in the pop, hip-hop or alt rock genres. Even if I didn’t listen to their music, I was still able to place who they were and the names of their songs.
Today, I only know a handful of popular singers/rappers by name. And in most cases, I can’t match them up with the songs they sing. When the time comes for music award shows and the roster of attending artists are listed off, a majority of them are people that I’ve never even heard of before.
Music itself has changed as well and I find myself feeling about today’s music the same way the older generation felt about mine. There are some real stand outs as far as talent (Adele, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, etc.) but otherwise, besides some of my favorite artists from teen-hood that are still around (thank you, Pink and JT), it’s all just noise. And I’m the same person who could rap along with Nelly, T.I., and Lil Wayne.
And don’t get me started on rapper names. Not that we didn’t have some interesting ones in the 90s and early aughts (I never did understand Diddy’s evolution from Puff Daddy, (like that wasn’t bad enough), but today’s stage names are in a whole other ballpark. Is blackbear this guy’s favorite animal? Does Pop Smoke smoke? What]s a Lil Uzi Vert?
The world may never know.
I had dreams of being an actress one day.
In school, I dabbled in Drama, plus I knew all of the popular actors and actresses in Hollywood and envisioned myself mingling with the performers I saw onscreen. I could tell you who was in what movie or TV show, who was dating who, so on and so forth. Now, it’s the same as with music artists – I got nothing. When I first started hearing the name Millie Bobby Brown, the person I envisioned versus who the actress turned out to be when I finally saw her was wildly different; not to mention that she’s a star in a well]-known show I’ve never had any interest in watching (sorry Stranger Things, but I think you’re doing fine without my viewership). Anyway, I had assumed she was an older person. And possibly related to R&B singer Bobby Brown. Clearly, I was wrong.
How did this happen?
Don’t get me wrong, I listen to the radio and stream music. I set up my Spotify playlists with songs I like, typically after Googling them by their lyrics. And I do watch a handful of shows on TV and streaming services. I’m also on TikTok, a new development during the pandemic. I’ve done a few videos on there but now I mainly just scroll through when I remember the app exists, the same with Facebook and IG, honestly. I have trust issues, which is why I have yet to be convinced by my husband to set up Apple Pay. (I know, it’s secure, supposedly).
The thing is, I’m not engrossed in this stuff anymore and I don’t know how things work. Gone are the days of winning trivia games and schooling adults on who’s who in the media. I’m the clueless adult now.
I don’t know when it’s acceptable to start using the phrase ‘when I was a kid’ but I’m already there. Why we compare our kid’s stuff to what we had is a mystery to me, but we do it all the same. From toys to games to cartoons, it’s always run through the filter of what our millennial selves played with or watched. We grew up with cartoons that we now realize had offensive elements and a majority of them had no educational value, but we loved them. Our toys were cool, even the ones that could potentially do us harm (I’m looking at you, Skip-it) and we loved them. We just can’t connect with today’s offerings because they’re so unlike ours, never mind the fact that they’re not for us.
I remember catching a clip of WWE Raw a little while back and thinking that the storyline was terrible and the match fake looking. It used to be so much better.
But was it? Was wrestling truly better back in the day? Was anything else, for that matter? Or do we just remember our entertainment being ‘so much better’ because it was marketed towards us at the ages that we were then? I’ve come to the realization that a lot of what’s out there is not marketed for me. I am no longer the age demographic. I’m past the much desired 18-34 target audience. Newly, yes, but I have an old soul, so I think I crossed the threshold some years back and let go of the teen dramas I used to adore. Well, okay, I couldn’t not watch the rebooted Gossip Girl series, but I clutched my non-existent pearls at least once per episode.
Is this just the normal progression of ageing? We become less invested in the frivolous happenings outside of our worlds of family, work, friends, and hobbies to the extent that we fall of the loop? And we constantly reminisce about how things used to be while lacking technological savvy?
It’s fine, if so. I just didn’t expect it to happen to me so soon.
Just like the one single gray hair at my temple that my husband wants to pull out. (Absolutely not, because ten more will grow in its place).
Anyone around my age feel the same about not keeping up with what’s ‘popular’ these days?
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