“Amy Winehouse? Who?” - What’s your “surely everyone knows who/what” moment?

[hotpotina]

I was with some fairly new Canadian friends recently and "Valarie" by Amy Winehouse came on. I immediately started humming/singing along and one of them asked “what's this song?” I said (probably with a confused expression) “ It's... Valerie... by Amy Winehouse...” and they both said they'd never heard of her.

Now, I KNOW. I KNOW there are massive cultural, generational and geographical differences in what people know. Obviously I do. But for some reason Amy Winehouse is just so completely embedded in my personal schema that for a second I genuinely couldn't compute someone not knowing who she was. She feels (to me) like one of those people who are simply there in people's consciousness; whether you actually like them or they were ever particularly relevant to your life seems almost beside the point.

It made me realise how funny these little cultural blind spots are. There must be many things that are ubiquitous to one person, that another person has somehow just never encountered.

Have you ever had this happen, where someone didn't know something/person that you genuinely presumed consciously or subconsciously was universal known? And do you have a “surely EVERYONE knows who/what they are” person (or thing etc) that you'd be surprised if someone had no knowledge of that thing?

My DC only know Hannah Fry this year and DS knows Amol from University Challenge. I do think the contestants are a bit more obscure for younger viewers than last years.

This seems to be a thing on YouTube (now tell me you don't know what YouTube is) where millenial "music producers" show themselves (over)reacting to iconic performers. "WTAF!!! Who the hell are the Beatles, why haven't I ever heard of them??!!" etc etc. All for views, of course, but very tedious. I just end up wondering how you can pretend to be an expert in your field if you know nothing of the background or history of the subject.

Oh dear, showing my age again.

Oh yes, I have viewed a few of them, in fact one of them was, "Back To Black". Then again, I don't know if the American person watching the video was a music producer. They don't look particularly young or old either so even more of a surprise.

Are you sure you mean Back in Black? That most certainly isn't an Amy Winehouse album 😂

These aren’t artists that have vanished into obscurity though. They all have songs that still get play on commercial radio. My DS (mid 20s) would be aware of most of them - even if just by knowing one of their most famous songs.

A young lad from Birmingham I was chatting to the other day hadn't heard of Duran Duran. A young ISH English lad on some trashy TV programme I was watching had never heard of Winston Churchill.

It’s possible that if he don’t know him as an author and only briefly heard the news in respect of the scandal, then it’s something he could have been vaguely aware of at the time and now forgotten. By the time someone is 60, there is so much information that has gone into our brains, it’s not surprising that some of it gets forgotten again.

That is fair enough. A bit different to the poster who mentioned someone in their late 50s who hasn’t heard of him!

I've heard of Blue but I couldn't name any of their members, songs or albums, I suspect I'm a bit too old (late 50s) and my DCs are too young (early 20s) to have listened to them. We have a late 90s / early 2000s gap when I felt too old for radio 1 and too young for radio 2 so switched to talk radio stations and they weren't born.

I think, whilst some people do just seem phenomenally ignorant and lack any intellectual curiosity, we need to remember how much life has diversified now that we have the Internet.

The amount of information, creative output and... everything... that is available to the typical person has multiplied a million-fold.

Back in the days when we had three or four channels on TV, a few radio stations, a handful of newspapers and such, a lot more knowledge and areas of interest were common. Even when it came to discovering music, we had the radio, Top of the Pops, and the CDs/tapes/records that the shop had on sale. The vast amount of music that was in existence was outside of that bubble and would never have entered our consciousness.

Basically, many of us do still have a great deal of some kind of knowledge; but the actual knowledge doesn't necessarily overlap between us anymore.

Tbh I've no idea what any of those are as I very rarely watch any American shows.

I suppose some of it is down to what your interests are. Our family is quite into classical music so people we are familiar with, others would never have heard with.

Same with sports.

TBH if you walk around Birmingham City Centre at the moment you would be forgiven for thinking that the only band to come from there was Black Sabbath. I think my son has only heard of them because of me going to see them fairly recently.

There was something on a TV quiz about what chocolate is advertised with the slogan "only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate" ...
The person didn't know.

My 18 year old son is a massive Beatles fan but surprisingly no-one in his class, except for him and his teacher had heard of Paul McCartney! I was shocked.

I went on holiday to Russia in the 2010s with a uni friend (graduate in science, doing a PhD, well travelled, born in late 1970s). We got chatting to an older couple in the queue to enter a palace outside St Petersburg - the man told us he was Russian but had managed to leave Russia and get to America decades ago, and hadn't been able to return for a long time due to government restrictions etc. My friend was puzzled and asked what restrictions- she'd never heard of the Iron Curtain & Cold War!!!

When a colleague and I showed a group of primary school children a photo of Diana, Princess of Wales and one of them asked if she was "the mayor of Chesterfield"...

Diana died 30 years ago - why would a primary school kid know about her? Their parents were probably kids themselves.

Exactly. Why would anyone under 16 know who who Princess Diana is/was?

A similar example... My neighbours kids have no idea who Leonardo DiCaprio is. They're between 5 and 10. He could pass them in the street and he'd not be recognised by most children under 12-13. He was the most recognisable face in the world in the late 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, and is one of the highest paid actors in the world, but all his films have been 15 or 18 certificate, and his films have never been aimed at children. Same with Diana. Most people born post 2010 aren't going to know who she is...

Why on earth would a kid know about a pop group that was massive in the 80s but then disappeared? Most kids nowadays won't even know who Cliff Richard is, and he's still around - he just released an album!

It's the equivalent of expecting folk in their 40s and 50s now to know who Jack Hylton, Jo Stafford, Leslie Sarony, Nelson Eddy, Jeanette McDonald or Gracie Fields were - I'll bet the vast majority wouldn't have the faintest idea.

It's a little bit egocentric to assume that the relatively ephemeral culture of your specific youth will be for the ages.

My son is 15 and has a Shrodinger cat t-shirt
All his friends and most older family members just look at him blank and make a comment along the lines of 'don't get it, whats that all about'

Were not massive into philosophy or science or psychology but read a lot in general so I was surprised how many people hasn't even heard of the theory

And this isn't a humble brag, we live in a council house on minimum wage... But do like books and have lots of general interests 😂

That doesn't surprise me in the slightest, I'd be more surprised actually if you found that everyone had heard of it

Didn't expect everyone at all but was surprised that not even one person had come across it. It's referenced in a lot of sitcoms, TV shows, comedy acts etc so thought it's something at least some people would have come across young and old

I'm in my 60s and have never heard of it but I don't watch sitcoms or stand up comedians.

Everything is relevant to your life experience. What might be take as obvious in one family might be completely alien to another.

I have no interest in history and didn't study it at school. I remember watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire with a family friend when a contestant got a history question wrong. He said 'What an idiot. Everyone knows that ". I didn't . Same with literature. I've never read, therefore haven't a clue about, any of the "classics"

But knowing about Schrödinger's cat is surely about having a general knowledge of science? Do people not know about Einstein or black holes or the structure of an atom because they haven't seen it on a comedy show?

Gawd help us.

I used to work in a Hospital kitchen & would play cd’s of Johny Ray,
Bobby Daren, Guy Mitchell,Frankie Laine, many of the young porters were often heard singing along with new to them performers .