On one had, responding like that is definitely a sign that it's not going to work. On the other hand, that's a perfectly normal feeling for a person who doesn't live their life on the internet.
I mean, how is it any different than referencing movies, music, TV shows, stand-up comedy, or any other piece of pop culture?
Would referencing a movie somebody hasn't seen before make you terminally in-theater or something? Though, having said that, I am now going to take every opportunity I can to work the phrase "terminally in-theater" into my daily life anytime somebody mentions a Marvel movie or something.
Twenty plus years we could have shared pop culture. If it was on the radio or popular cable TV, maybe many people saw it. But now there's too much information, period. Everyone specializes. If you expect people to know their memes, you're pressuring them to consume the same media they do. Not cool.
So, float the meme, why not. But expect it to flop. Be happily surprised when it doesn't.
It's not. If you're really into pop culture and you frequently make such references then someone who is not will have a hard time communicating with you.
It's not about internet culture being bad, it's about the communication gap between people with very different cultural references.
If I keep showing you memes and you don't get them, I will start to question if you are even a human being since most memes are relatable to simply being human. Like, even a normie should relate to generic memes.
If you don't have in-jokes with the homies tf is up with you? Thats basically memes in a nutshell, though obv some memes are more localized to particular ingroups then others so I can understand the flipside... Spiders georg vs. jolly ranchers vs. todays main character sounds incomprehensible except to the right intersection of three websites (though with cross pollination being what it is you may only need one.)
I remember a native English speaker correcting my pronunciation of meme to maymay back in like 2015 and I felt so ashamed for pronouncing it meem back then... I didn't have friends who were into memes yet and was very insecure. I think about her often.
I was just having an argument with someone that got banned from a Lemmy instance because a meme from 30 years ago got him banned because the meme says " the man, the legend.. "and op was a she/her, while she/her was ignorant of the meme she/her didn't even bother to understand the old memes and got the dude a Perma ban from the Lemmy instance for " internationally misgendering " she/her. Moral of the story no matter what generation you are or how meme knowledgeable you may be there's always a she/her that will hurt you with the ignorance badge.