It was weird seeing all the spongebob squarepants memes take over the internet when I was too old to ever grow up with that. I turned 28 in 1999 when that first aired. That was my "holy shit I'm so old" moment when that finally trickled up into my awareness as someone nearly turning 40 or so.

As a 48 year old who has no idea who an awful lot of modern celebrities are, I'm constantly wondering if it is because I'm just old now or if its because there are just way more celebrities these days due to the large parasocial celebrity class that didn't really exist when I was younger.

Maybe a bit of both.

> parasocial

^H^H^H^H^Hitic

There, FTFY.

For me it is Pokemon. I was a few years older than the demographic it targeted.

I could have jumped on it and played it but I figured just another toy craze, it'll be over before long.

Same age as you. I have a lot of friends in the Philippines. I swear the Facebook employment info of half the people in the Philippines says they work at the Krusty Krab. (And for most filipinos, the internet = facebook.) For some reason I never asked what that meant, and for many years I thought that was just some odd joke, and was vaguely puzzled about how widespread it is. Eventually I happened on the Spongebob connection!