Conversation

Thinking about how some things are sticky in the zeitgeist and others are not. Seinfeld, sticky. Friends, not sticky. 🤔
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Harry Potter first movie is now 20 years old. There are now college kids born after it as released. Even the last movie is 10y old. Surprisingly not that sticky, relative to its absolute dominance in its time. It’s turned into more of a minor cult now rather than in-the-water.
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It would be nice to measure stickiness by say (frequency of Twitter references+reaction gifs)/((budget in a base year)*age) Some measure of perma-memetic power. Not special interest subcultural power. That’s not zeitgeist stickiness really. You want general public impact.
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Matrix contributed a whopper — the red/blue pill HP’s big one is probably the 4 houses as a personality meme Pre-2000 things tended to contribute vignettes more than memes, like soup nazi Decays over time. I Love Lucy is now basically the chocolate factory scene.
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The Simpsons is weird. Mostly only context-free useful reaction gifs have survived, like Homer backing into a bush, grandpa shaking fist at cloud, Nelson saying haaha etc. None that recall a plot point Futurama refs are like 99% Fry suspicious or shut up and take my money
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People defending Friends… I basically never see refs or reaction gifs. Maybe it’s popular in other circles. Especially global. It’s certainly more accessible. But revivalist popularity + active fandom is not quite zeitgeist stickiness in the memepower sense I’m thinking of.
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