/lit/ - Literature

>>18026871
>>18026901
You don't do this to fuck or for women, you do it as part of achieving normalcy. This is a subtle point, so bear with me.

An absolute absence of knowledge in these spaces DOES make you come off as out-of-touch, unfashionably older than your peers, and unable to relate to them on basic small talk questions likely to come up, but its real impact comes from hundreds of micro-interactions you probably wouldn't recognize are happening if you've not done this consumptive legwork.

If you need proof of this, there's a reason that the kid at daycare who was like
>oh I don't watch TV
was always the weirdest motherfucker, and it was in part because he was UNIRONICALLY uncultured. This is because there are elements of his cultural education which other media, like video games and films, impart that his parents objectively failed to pass on, and you notice it in the blank stares when you discuss story and character beats you care about, or when people tell jokes in passing that rely on referential knowledge, or in hundreds of other small moments of normalcy's performance.

This means when other normal people, who are comparatively well-versed in these matters talk, he comes off like a weirdo, for lack of the knowledge needed to navigate these conversations with the same level of adeptness. So you're right that this knowledge doesn't get you laid, which in practice for most people comes from going to spaces with women that share interests with you and asking them out. This knowledge DOES get you to the point that when you socialize WITH men and women, they recognize you as a man of culture, in the literal sense of
>a man who has had a similar cultural upbringing and canon that they're pulling from as the one I was raised in
and as dumb as it sounds, in 2021, that expectation demands you to have watched quite a few movies and played quite a few games.