@sendpaws @RustyCrab @wertimer @Economic_Hitman imagine in the before-times, how repetition of shared stories formed the cultural backbone of a society - and then compare that to the now industrialized production of stories in books, movies, music, games, etc. The volume of cultural output has increased drastically, and as a result cultural touchstones and reference points come and go much more quickly. What I'm trying to get at is how a person's cultural references and, more importantly, their whole mindset for dealing with the world and further how they perceive it slows its adaptation and eventually stops, becoming rooted at some point, resulting in them misunderstanding situations and being completely bewildered by situations that are easily understandable and predictable by younger people - and not in the "80 year old man has dementia" kind of way but in the "this guy is 40 and used to get it but something shifted in him and now he's """old""" " kind of way (where "old" is a stand-in for the thing I'm trying to express)