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Long time lurker, first time poster with a general life question here.
My current situation is as follows: I've recently finished graduate school (in social sciences) and landed a research-adjacent position at a large organization. So far I've found myself fitting in quite well in terms of professional skills, but it's been an uphill battle socially.
The problem, to put it bluntly, is that I'm basically a walking stereotype of a weeaboo neckbeard with specific nerdy interests, who was suddenly thrust into a milieu of reasonably high-IQ, well-educated if somewhat snobbish upper-middle class background normies, who are well-versed in highbrow and middlebrow culture, and expect their interlocutors to be at the same level of general cultural awareness. I knew people like these in college and avoided them like the plague (didn't have anything against them, but we didn't exactly jive), however it no longer seems to be an option, as I realize that if I stick with my field, I'll be looking at working alongside people like these for the next 30 years, give or take, and I would prefer for this experience to be more pleasant and not feel like a perpetual outsider. Not to mention that I'd probably need to fit in culturally in order to eventually move up the ladder.
As for my own level of general cultural awareness, it is abysmally low, which makes communication very embarassing at times. I'd be able to discuss at length untranslated Japanese visual novels, Magic the Gathering meta, Super Mario 64 speedrun strats, Nijisanji vtubers or obscure internet trivia, but I managed to walk around God's green Earth for ~30 years without ever having watched Titanic, becoming able to recognize more than two songs from the Beatles or learning a single verse of poetry by heart. I want to fix that, and I'm willing to spend my commutes and several evenings a week on this project, even if the task at hand seems quite daunting. I''ve made peace with the fact that I'll probably never be a literati, but I want to be at least functional in such social settings.
However, because the gaping hole in my knowledge is so massive, I don't even know where to begin. Do I divide things up into subprojects like "Movies", "Music", "Literature", etc. with their own schedules and goals? (E.g. "Movies project – knock out 2 movies from imdb top 250 a week for a year before moving on to more obscure stuff".) Is there a smarter way to go about it?
Not caring and keeping to myself at work is not an option.
tl;dr version: adult nerd with very little cultural knowledge wants to fill in that gap (speedrun it, if possible) and become pleasant enough company in educated upper middle class non-STEM milieu. What would be the best way to achieve that?
To speedrun classic literature, go to the library and check out all the Wishbone books. Then if you like a particular story, you can actually read the original. If you don’t like any of them, at least you’ll know the basic plot line and should pick up on most references. For poetry, find an anthology of famous poems (or snag a list from the Internet) and read one or two per day for three months. Odds are you’ll probably find at least some you like. Rudyard Kipling seems to be popular among many rationalist-adjacent folks, so you might start with him. If you find that you really can’t stand any poetry at all, try reading them aloud. A lot of poems are just better that way. You can also usually find good recordings on YouTube. Both James Earl Jones and Christopher Lee have pretty decent recordings of Poe’s The Raven, for example. If there’s a poem you like well enough to memorize, print it out and read it out loud every night before you go to bed. As long as the poem isn’t Paradise Lost or something ridiculously long like that, you should have it memorized in no time. The routine will also probably help you fall asleep easier, in case you happen to have any trouble with that.
For movies, I’d suggest you keep a list of movie references that people around you make, and then just watch those. You should catch up to speed relatively quickly. Don’t watch all the top 100 films of all time or anything like that. Very few people have actually seen all of them, so you’d be wasting a lot of time.
I would guess that music is probably the least referenced, partly because there’s a relatively small number of universally-known songs. Person A might have grown up on the Beatles, but Person B grew up on Frank Sinatra, Person C on ACDC, Person D on Beethoven, and Persons E through G on jazz, hip hop, and pop, respectively. That said, if you have the time and don’t mind the bother, it wouldn’t hurt to listen once or twice to the top ten songs of each decade from 1950 to the present. Songs are short, and you can do it on your commute. If your coworkers are people of fine breeding and good taste, and they listen to classical music, find a Music Appreciation CD set, and just listen to the songs from the Baroque and Romantic periods. A Music Appreciation CD will only play short excerpts from the longer pieces, which should save you some time. Or just find a “Classical music you know but don’t know the name of” video on YouTube. Watch a few of those, while paying attention to who the composers are, and you should be set.
One final piece of advice: visit an art museum or two, if nothing else to say that you’ve been. New York, D.C., Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and other major cities have good collections. Pick whichever one is closest to you, spend a day there, and memorize the names and artists’ names of two or three pieces that you particularly like. Then if the subject ever comes up, you can add your two cents and raise your cultural standing.
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