I am not the content I see. I don't watch movies or shows, I don't watch Douyin (TikTok), don't keep up with social media, I haven't read Harry Potter or watched Star Wars. I only watch a few small channels on Youtube, and I play Rocket League, and work on personal hobby projects (coding, photography, ceramics).
There are lots of people who I would consider myself to not be strangers with. You should be able to connect with people over things besides "tentpole" pop culture artifacts. You should be able to connect with people without any common cultural artifacts. People are interesting.
> You should be able to connect with people over things besides "tentpole" pop culture artifacts.
You can, of course. You're missing or ignoring the implication that one can have any kind of expectation about connecting with an arbitrary individual.
Personally, I think this is for the positive: acknowledging that you can't expect to connect with everyone seems healthy.
To me it seems like walking back on all the moral progress we've achieved. Today you don't expect it's possible to connect with everyone, tomorrow you deny humanity to anyone you can't imagine yourself connecting to.
I think it also depends on what kind of connections you want.
As somebody that really values comedy and a sense of humor, it becomes very obvious that humor is particularly dependent on having shared cultural references. For me, if a new relationship doesn’t having the touchstones that allow joking around it feels empty and sterile
There are lots of people who I would consider myself to not be strangers with. You should be able to connect with people over things besides "tentpole" pop culture artifacts. You should be able to connect with people without any common cultural artifacts. People are interesting.