I just don’t care about Stranger Things.

If this strikes you as an inexplicably timed and inexcusably late attempt to join the Stranger Things conversation, that’s because it is. I saw a Kate Bush tribute act playing in the summer of 2022 and the mass Gen Z-led singalong to Running Up That Hill made clear that we had reached peak Stranger Things – and I was entirely out of the loop.

It’s taken me a further three years to commit my indifference to the page – indeed, it might be argued this is the very nature of indifference. I’m doing so now because Laura has started watching, become obsessed, and keeps trying to tell me about it. This I can live with; she also spends quite a lot of time telling me about historical events that I studied 25 years ago, courtesy of a popular history podcast she’s stumbled across.

The problem is that Laura also talks about Stranger Things to everyone else in her path, because unlike me, they’ve seen it, and can relate to her belated euphoria. And because they’ve seen it, the conversation inevitably shifts onto why I haven’t, and all of the compelling reasons why I should (“It’s got a Kate Bush song in it”; “It’s set in the 80s”), and why I’m a stubborn moron missing out on something everyone is convinced I would enjoy.

So allow me to set the record straight. I just don’t care about Stranger Things.

In fact, I’ll go further. I’ve seen a few clips while eating dinner, or while trying to encourage Laura to turn it off so I can play online golf. And it looks kind of stupid. The plot seems ridiculous. I don’t like supernatural mystery drama. The soundtrack is strong, but all of this music already resides in my music library. I didn’t grow up in 1980s America, so I can’t see the nostalgic value, other than perhaps echoes of The Goonies, which I didn’t watch as a child, or The X-Files, which I’ve seen too many times and hasn’t aged well.

I’m having a similar experience with the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. My friend Emma has just sent me a stream of WhatsApps asking what I think of it, remarking on the excellence of Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan impression, on how good Joan Baez is, on how much better music biopics are when the actors perform the songs themselves, on how it stacks up against Walk the Line.

Plainly these are not daft or redundant observations to make, and it isn’t Emma’s fault that at least half a dozen people have said the exact same things to me since the start of the year. But again, the problem is that I don’t care about A Complete Unknown.

I’m fed up of biopics. I’ve seen multiple feature-length documentaries exploring the same period in Dylan’s life, and I’ve read about five books that all cover it extensively. It’s well-trodden ground for me; a walk I’ve been on too many times, to the point where I no longer pay attention to the scenery because I just want to get to the end. And while I’ve no doubt Timothée Chalamet does a good Dylan impression, I just don’t care. I bet Ariana Grande has a better one in her locker.

What is vaguely interesting about these experiences, however, is what they tell me about our culture. 

The days when the masses spent their evenings watching the same thing on terrestrial television are long gone. Most of our conversations about so-called popular culture have been reduced to people talking past one another as they relay the experiences of their unique and largely algorithmically-curated content feeds. “Have you seen slow horses?” “No, I don’t have Apple TV. Did you catch Line of Duty?” “No, I don’t watch the BBC, it’s been ideologically captured by woke extremists.”

In a world where mainstream media and programming has all but ceased to exist, it seems people really do cling to the few breakthrough TV shows and movies that bring a particular cohort of individuals together in unity. Which is absolutely fine, except in the unhappy event that you’re one of the few people unwilling to jump on the bandwagon, either because you’re not convinced the effort justifies the reward, or because you simply don’t care enough to try.

I’m aware this may sound cynical, but it is not my intent. The effects of polarisation and social (media) bubbles are so pronounced that it can feel like a minor miracle when everyone coalesces around any topic of shared interest and enthusiasm. But despite this, another truth holds – at least for me: we don’t all have to like the same things, and we shouldn’t feel duty-bound to participate, if the specific niche interest we’re currently pursuing holds sway. Like playing online golf, or listening to Mike Oldfield.