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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?
What makes you think they care about poetry? I can’t remember the last time I came across someone who actually cared about poetry
Might be a difference in the cultural context – I reside in a European country, and the local intelligentsia still cares quite a bit about poetry and literature more broadly. I did hear that the US is pretty different in that regard though.
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Because to opine on poetry, specifically as a man, is seen as either insufferably conceited, effete, or both.
One choice retort I had up my sleeve the other day to respond to another Mottizen, was :"You will never be a poet." I thought it was a rather good comeback, but then realized it would probably be taken as a compliment.
I actually gave some thought to this and literally the last person I remember who cared about poetry was an insufferably conceited gay man. So yeah
I'm probably one of those, I'll leave it to the audience to guess which.
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