I just watched the Ballad of Buster Scruggs on my online internet provider. Excitedly, I mention at lunch the last story of the movie. My friends all look puzzled: The Ballad of whom? Buster what? The makers of the Ballad are not particularly niche: The Coen Brothers have produced Fargo, the Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, and won dozens of awards, including four Oscars and a Palme d’Or in Cannes. They are, by all means, famous. When No Country for Old Men was released, in 2007, I remember going to the movies, with the same friends, and discussing it at length afterwards. I change the topic, and mention the recent strikes in France. Strikes, really? Weren’t the protests over? We finish sharing the meal, though again each of us had ordered a different dish, and there is not much to compare regarding the taste of the lasagna.  

Informational bubbles - where, as former President Obama said, we live and think “surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook” - are coming under heavy criticism. So am I not sounding retrograde to regret the time where I could mention a movie by the Coen Brothers, or recent news, and reliably assume some of the people around would know what I was talking about?