Free My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff Page A

Are They Now? cold case file was absolutely nothing.
    In any event, Kathleen was appalled to find out that the term “rickrolling” has been in widespread use since 2006. “But I pay attention to popular culture,” she protested. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard it!” He shrugged and swiveled back to his computer.
    I’d never heard of rickrolling, either. But that’s not the point. The point is in what Kathleen said: “But I pay attention to popular culture!” You only have to pay attention to pop culture if you are not part of it, if you are on the outside looking in and thus must make a conscious effort to learn it, as if it were Swahili. When you’re young, pop culture sinks in through your pores like the UV rays and free radicals that will someday make you look old. What makes you a Formerly is not ignorance of popular culture. It is the initial denial of your ignorance, and then the indignant reaction to your ignorance, because you pride yourself on not being ignorant, goddamn it. As if being a Formerly can be overcome by good, old-fashioned American industriousness.
    Which it cannot. To a degree, that ignorance can be diminished somewhat, if you work at it. Whether it’s worth the time and effort it takes to stay au courant as a Formerly, when the figurative song just plain isn’t about you and there is going to be a new song that isn’t about you every week, is a tough call. Few Formerlies have the time, especially if they have children. I used to see a movie a week. Now, whenever there’s a movie that sounds good, I go from missing it in the theater to missing it on cable, to having it expire off the DVR before I have a chance to watch it. By the time I remember to get it on Netflix, it’s been out over a year, several people have ruined the ending for me and the universe is abuzz about an entirely different film I’ll probably not see any time soon.
    On the one hand, you want to feel in-the-know enough to be able to discuss things like what’s “heating up the blogosphere”and the decline of print media and use words like “app” and know texting acronyms like “IMHFO” without having to look them up (like I did when I first saw it … In My Humble Fucking Opinion, in case you were wondering). And of course, you want to employ any technology that will truly make your lunatic life easier. On the other hand, you may just want to close your eyes and wait for the next wave of technology or music or film to wash over you, and maybe ride that one. Or not.
    Another option is to band together with other Formerlies and form your own little pop cultural bubble, where the measure of coolness is not whether you have heard the latest cutting-edge band or have the newest application for your iPhone, but the depth of knowledge you retain about the individual members of the cast of
Full House
. Finding that bubble is one of the big reasons I love going onto Facebook, along with discovering that we all worried about the same things in high school, even as we all thought everyone else was living the perfect life. What can I say? I was really sad when Bea Arthur died. There was always Maude and then all of a sudden there wasn’t. I hadn’t recently thought about the feminist goddess with the long cardigans I watched as a child who set the stage for my mom to grow up and grow a pair and strike out on her own, but I was glad to be able to join a Bea Arthur fan group on Facebook and read about the cool stuff she’d done. If this makes me a loser, I’m fine with that. Apparently I’m in good company.
    Whether or not you care that you’re largely left out ofpop culture naturally depends on whether you ever valued being in-the-know or relevant in the first place. I did, but as a private citizen. People who were once famous seem to find it unbearable to be so excluded, which is probably why so many of them agree to be on shows like
Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew
or the one that was all about Scott Baio and