[forty-two]

Originally Posted by KarenBoo

My "problem" is that my teen doesn't connect with other teens over this stuff, and she feels like she is missing out, and she can't join the conversations. This is because it all seems stupid to her.

Does she actually *want* to learn to appreciate this "stupid stuff", though?

I mean, I was definitely out-of-step with most teens as a teen, but while I wanted to not be left out, I didn't really want to *be* in-step with them, just accepted by them - I didn't want to change the things I liked or spent time doing. The internet essay "Why Nerds are Unpopular" pretty much summed up my teen years: yes, I was unpopular, and I didn't like being unpopular, but when it came down to it, I was not willing to do what it took to *be* popular. If the price of being popular is having to continually spend a huge chunk of one's time on "stupid stuff" - time that could have been spent on better things - then maybe not being popular, not connecting, is worth the cost .

On a pragmatic level, she could probably google the dominant memes referenced in her group, follow a few rabbit trails to connected stuff, and get a handle on the basic references in order to follow along and at least understand what's going on, even if she doesn't appreciate it. With everything being so referential, it's an uphill slog at the beginning, because there's six different things to get in every in-joke, and it doesn't make sense till you've figured out all six. But a given group is probably pulling from the same pool of references, so once you've sorted out 20-30 things, or 50, then you pretty much have all the raw material sorted out - everything else is just variations on a theme.