• stingpie@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    As knowing random facts is second nature to us trivia fans, it’s easy to forget that the average person probably only knows a couple pop cultural references from the 30’s.

    • zabadoh@ani.social
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      4 months ago

      For me, I have to believe this kind of thing is common knowledge for my generation, which is Gen X, which is what makes this joke from 1981 possible.

      I’m old enough that I watched a lot of Looney Tunes and some Fleischer cartoon shorts on broadcast TV when I was a kid, and Gary Larson is almost 20 years older than me, and may have watched them in theaters or on TV.

      Today, kids are watching a diverse array of media on the internet, and for those classic cartoon shorts are probably something that they might never come across if they’re not actively looking for it, much less any facts about them, and therefore are truly obscure trivia.

      That’s the impression that I got from comments prior to mine.