As a Yankee, it messes with my head a bit, the thing of connecting with people over overlap of pop culture interests. Like having played the same video game and liked it, or liked the same books or movies. The fact of it alone is not what weirds me out. It's the extent to which that seems to be a primary way of connecting, if that makes sense. Like there is not that much to bond over because so many things that are more serious, people are so divided on? So the fandoms sort of become a stand-in.

I just can't unsee it in the context of that Iran quote about Qasem Soleimani. The more liberated parts of the world, who have had to battle for sovereignty, have real heroes to look up to. The west has Spongebob Squarepants. It seems rather pathetic to me. It's like escapism became a mainstream cultural crutch rather than a fringe coping mechanism.