So I work with everyone from boomers to gen z and conversations can very wildly but beyond sports and weather it seems like there’s nothing that everyone and their mother is talking about. Not just at work too but in a lot of social settings. “Did you see this on the news” “no bro I only watch the real news at governmentarelizardppl dot com”

Talking with Gen Z coworker and she’s telling me about some online personality with huge amount of followers that’s always on her TikTok page. I tell her what I’ve been saying mostly (at the time) is Kat Williams on that podcast. Co-worker than asks who she is (sic).

(We found common ground in both having seen the movie Saltburn which is has been discussed frequently at my work since it came out but only by a few people :lol:)

When I was younger: Hey bro, did you watch Seinfeld last night?
Example Bro: of course.

Unlike back in my day 👴 where the was a few channels and what you saw on music videos or heard on the radio there is instead algorithms giving you exactly what it thinks you want. See artists “no one has ever heard of” and they have hundreds of millions of streams.

So I feel like again outside of sports and weather there’s only few topics that can claim
that status. (*outside of the NFL/Kelce relationship)

Water cooler talk

Inflation
Taylor Swift*
Game of Thrones (when it aired)
Saltburn/leave the world behind for a week after they hit streaming

As you can see I’m clearly struggling so what do you guys think…

About that team winning and this weather huh?

As we moved on from cable to more ala carte streaming it's very hard to find anything that is MUST watch enough that you can't put it off and have to stay up late the night before to check out. It's interesting what gets people's attention at work. Local sports still kinda do, but they might as well be speaking german to me. I hear 2 guys sometimes talking about GOT/Star Wars stuff, but I try and drown it out in case I plan to watch the thing they're discussing.

Is it too many options/not a priority or do they just not make things that draw the public's eye anymore? Did they only do it when they has 3 options? Man remember in 7th grade when wrestling was water cooler? That was insane.

Jan 21, 2024 15:28:07 GMT @ness said:

As we moved on from cable to more ala carte streaming it's very hard to find anything that is MUST watch enough that you can't put it off and have to stay up late the night before to check out. It's interesting what gets people's attention at work. Local sports still kinda do, but they might as well be speaking german to me. I hear 2 guys sometimes talking about GOT/Star Wars stuff, but I try and drown it out in case I plan to watch the thing they're discussing.

Is it too many options/not a priority or do they just not make things that draw the public's eye anymore? Did they only do it when they has 3 options? Man remember in 7th grade when wrestling was water cooler? That was insane.

This is probably what it is, here we have AFL that is the topic of discussion everywhere, but it isn't like the nineties where everyone was discussing the episode of Friends last night or whatever.

Water cooler talk is actually important for business, it creates rapport and also allows for incidental discussion.
I have a new business acquaintance who designs offices and a big part of new office design is creating spaces where the kitchen etc. is at the center of the design to promote a collaborative workspace.
This is very much in the design of houses here also, where kitchens are the heart and center of a house design.

Quantity over quality and variety at the very least. A little bit from column A and a little bit from column B...

If you search for ratings in Australia, using this past Saturday for example, sport and news dominate, hence why current affairs is what people talk about the next day.

But, despite the endless possibilities in regards to streaming, there isn't a series that is universally acclaimed and/or religiously watched as it was up until a few years ago with GOT, and more so in the 1990s and 2000s with... well, everything that was in prime time.

There isn't even a sitcom today I could suggest off the top of my head that has filled that void that Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, HIMYM, TBBT, etc held, in terms of both popularity and cultural impact.

Jan 21, 2024 20:58:39 GMT NATH45 said:

Quantity over quality and variety at the very least. A little bit from column A and a little bit from column B...

If you search for ratings in Australia, using this past Saturday for example, sport and news dominate, hence why current affairs is what people talk about the next day.

But, despite the endless possibilities in regards to streaming, there isn't a series that is universally acclaimed and/or religiously watched as it was up until a few years ago with GOT, and more so in the 1990s and 2000s with... well, everything that was in prime time.

There isn't even a sitcom today I could suggest off the top of my head that has filled that void that Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, HIMYM, TBBT, etc held, in terms of both popularity and cultural impact.

At my wife's work back in the day the discussion would be Friends, Ally Mc Beal, The Practice.
For me it was always the football...

The other one was the news, people used to watch a 6pm bulletin.
Now I find increasingly not only do people not watch the news, but there is a growing percentage of the population who never look at any news or current affairs whatsoever.

At home, I have Sky News on more often than not. (the news cycle is much different to the " Sky after dark " conservative faction)

We were talking about that a few days ago, how little many people pay attention to the news.

Even as a teenager, I'd watch the 5pm Channel Ten News (Ten was the cool channel in the 1990s) and even, the late news, followed by Sports Tonight.

A lot of people rely heavily on Facebook, and because of pay walls, don't read beyond the headline or the cooker comments.

You can understand why COL pressures suddenly hit everyone like a tonne of bricks despite the conversations and warnings were there for a number of years.

Jan 21, 2024 20:58:39 GMT NATH45 said:

Quantity over quality and variety at the very least. A little bit from column A and a little bit from column B...

If you search for ratings in Australia, using this past Saturday for example, sport and news dominate, hence why current affairs is what people talk about the next day.

But, despite the endless possibilities in regards to streaming, there isn't a series that is universally acclaimed and/or religiously watched as it was up until a few years ago with GOT, and more so in the 1990s and 2000s with... well, everything that was in prime time.

There isn't even a sitcom today I could suggest off the top of my head that has filled that void that Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, HIMYM, TBBT, etc held, in terms of both popularity and cultural impact.

I'm going to say it's *because* of the rise and endless possibilities for streaming.

Look at wrestling; there's WWE, AEW, NJPW, AAA, WOW, Championship Wrestling from Hollywood, IPW, WoW, Stardom, if you were only looking to fill hours you could watch only wrestling and it wouldn't be particularly hard to pull off.

Sci-fi? Like five Star Treks, eighteen Star Wars series, I think Black Mirror's still going. Streaming also means access to old shows like Battlestar Galactica (the OG and the reboot), Orphan Black, Westworld, the Expanse. Easy to watch only sci-fi if you wanted.

Anime is endless.

The demise of the CW also meant the end of Riverdale and Nancy Drew, but Gen-Z for some reason also started binging old 2000s teen dramas, so that's another rabbit hole one can fall down.

Rather than like four networks and that's it, now it's so, so easy to get caught in your own preferred bubble of media (not just news) and Game of Thrones was the last, and maybe THE last cultural touchstone that you can assume pretty much everyone knows.

With the old boss and old crew at work it was all small town gossip. Who's banging who, who got thrown in jail, Urban Cowboy, all the good stuff. Now with the new boss and the new crew I actually only talk to the one other left over from the original crew and pretty much its bitch about your job.

bodyslam 's job sounds miserable.

I love how everyone talks up water cooler talk, but if you engage in water cooler talk in most places you get complaints from management for time off task and slacking off.

Jan 31, 2024 14:02:00 GMT c said:

I love how everyone talks up water cooler talk, but if you engage in water cooler talk in most places you get complaints from management for time off task and slacking off.

"Fellas, we stealin' company time?"