It's not just teenagers
Talking to someone mid-20s about a parcel contents being "HP Lovecraft" stuff, the response was "Is that like World of Warcraft"
Now, I'm not THAT old not to know what WoW is (or indeed to refer to it as WoW)
I politely stifled my laugh and said, keeping it simple that Lovecraft was a quite well known horror writer. "Oh, like Steven King? I had a Steven King phase once.." she replied
"Well, not quite" I stupidly replied - "Lovecraft is a bit deeper a little more" (and I am aware of the inaccuracy but trying to keep it reasonably simple) "older stuff, maybe more like Edgar Allen Poe"
More blank looks.
Hang on, thinks I, this is a university graduate, I was a first term dropout..
"Poe - Pit and the Pendulum?"
more blank stares
"The Raven?"
not registering..
"NEVERMORE!?" (come on, I thought all the youngsters went through an emo stage these days, surely sorrow for the lost Lenore registers somewhere in the recesses of the mind)
No, no recognition at all. I may as well have said "毛豆起动机其次是豆腐在炎热的蒜蓉辣酱,配米饭。"
And though we are talking about what girls say, let's not be sexist it's not just girls/women...
Yesterday I was relating the tale to a male colleague, again early-mid 20s, who I consider to be of a reasonable standard of education, again another graduate. Not only had he not heard of Lovecraft (I can understand not knowing of Cthulu but surely the name Lovecraft must have been mentioned at some point - but again I had the blank looks when I mentioned Poe and The Raven.
Do 20-somethings really not know of The Raven? I'm hardly a literary snob, I eschew the highbrow stuff and barely scraped a D in English Lit. because out of the two works to study Twelfth Night bored me rigid, but thankfully To Kill a Mockingbird was something I could work with. I have HEARD of these things though.
To sound just like my late Father (although when he said it he was more concerned with technical drawing, planes and lathes and an open disgust that we were working with plastics which were no substitute for "proper" wood & metal) - What do they teach them in schools nowadays?