Pop Culture Isolation / Real Life

• Most major sci-fi/anime/comics conventions (except for San Diego ComicCon, which has become very mainstream and a crucial stop on many promotional tours) are not nearly as well known outside of various geek communities (and the locals of the particular city where the con is usually held). For instance, Dragon*Con is well known to geeks and Atlantans, but not very many else.
  • ComicCon itself used to be a case of this up until circa 2005. Now judging from the sheer amounts of game (and movie) related announcements, one would think the event is now E3 2.0.
  • Similar regarding furry cons and meets - there are multiple ones in most major countries, to the point where people can make a lifestyle out of travelling to different ones when they are on. It's also a great financial boost for the local economies when they are held (often to the pleasant surprise of hotel staff). Yet, the fandom has sprung up largely due to the Internet and doesn't widely advertise itself. Generally speaking, furries don't want the media covering them because it's historically presented the fandom as consisting solely of fetishists (who are a vocal minority, but a minority nonetheless).
  • The same problem happens in the mini-conventions going on during big events: Comiket, Haru Comic City, and others are home to both original and fan-based meetups where con-goers can share and talk about specific works; heck, there are even sites to keep track of them all throughout the year. Outside their respective fandoms, however, they're mostly unheard of (a person who isn't in the Touhou Project fandom may never get acquainted with the Reitaisai conventions, for example).
  • As a specific example, FanimeCon in San Jose is regarded as the premier anime convention of Northern California, is the second-largest anime convention after Anime Expo in Los Angeles, and attracts attendees from all over the state for being more laid-back and fan-focused than AX, which has a reputation for being hectic and crowded despite having a much larger venue. Outside of California, however, FanimeCon is virtually unknown - "why would I go to some community-focused convention with no industry presence when I can go to AX and have a front-row seat at all the latest anime and manga swag and localization announcements?"
• Back in the times of the Cold War, it was possible to receive West German TV programs in most places of East Germany - except in the area of the Dresden Basin and the area around Rügen, but next to nobody lives there. Because of this lack of information regarding Western news coverage and of course also Western pop culture, it was accordingly called the "Valley of the Clueless". In turn, few West Germans bothered to consume East German pop culture, which now can cause Pop Culture Isolation in re-unified Germany.
• TONS of Internet models and celebrities that are made famous through the net are more or less obscure in pure mainstream media. Basically any model or obscure female actress that's ever appeared on or in Stuff magazine, Maxim, or FHM. Sure people on the net are familiar. But to the general public, they might as well be nobodies
  • Their attractiveness is what helps them get noticed in the first place despite being D-Listers. Case in point Jaime King pre-Sin City. You'd be hard pressed to find someone in the mainstream who knew who she was. But Maxim magazine and people on the internet did. Interestingly enough she hasn't done anything mainstream since, at least not until Black Summer. Likewise with Emmanuelle Vaugier prior to CSI: NY.
    • Some of these actors/models/actresses careers can be chalked up to a combination of this trope, Critical Dissonance, Hype Backlash, and I Coulda Been a Contender! all rolled up into one. Usually in that order too. (see also Hollywood Hype Machine)
  • Cindy Margolis probably being the Ur-Example. From the way the Internet treated her, you'd thought she was a breakout star or something.
  • Then there's Tila "Tequila" Nguyen.
  • Amber Rose as well is gradually heading down this road thanks to photoblogs. Dating Kanye West and later Wiz Khalifa probably helped.
• Music video models are the same way obviously. Lots of rock fans know who Bobbie Brown and Tawny Kitaen are. While urban music video watchers are probably only vaguely familiar if that. Same goes for models that appear in urban music videos like Esther Baxter, Melyssa Ford, and Summer Walker, etc...Even in that context, there's not a lot of people who know them outside certain internet circles (I.E. Hip-Hop Image Boards, where they're well known and popular). But bring their names up in certain mainstream social circles and you would get blank stares.
• Unfortunately, Black History Month has become this instead of being seen as part of American history too. Especially Native American History Month, which is November.
• Most popular porn stars who aren't Jenna Jameson or Ron Jeremy...although some might get some mainstream attention primarily from news outlets because of some type of controversy surrounding said performers or the industry itself, like the Belladonna and Sasha Grey Primetime Live/The Insider news interviews (respectively) for example.
  • Interestingly enough even the most obscure porn star can have tens of thousands of twitter followers. Of course, they do say that The Internet Is for Porn...
  • Stormy Daniels is also well known, although only for her involvement in a sex scandal surrounding President Donald Trump.
• This trope with a dusting of racism might be the cause of all of the numerous segregated proms in the south, which have offended black teens and other minority teenagers.
  • Sorority pledges are the same way. There's usually flame wars on and off the net over whether people are "forcing" groups to accept them (usually saying it makes people secretly accept them less), while another group claims why would you wanna be apart of said racist group anyway. Or they'll accuse the group of wanting to be white if there was likely a black sorority they could have joined.
• E! network host Sal Masekela noted in an interview with Jay-Z that entertainment news media and tabloids generally don't cover black celebrities. Quite frankly, black celebs should probably see that as a blessing in disguise.
  • Unfortunately, on the flip side there's urban gossip mags and blogs to compensate for this, especially during the past ten years.
• The aforementioned magazines like FHM, Maxim, Stuff, and so on run on this trope. It's a pretty safe bet that most people outside the internet have never heard of half of the listed people in Maxim's Hot 100. Just mention the name Gemma Atkinson^note No, not the chick from Quantum of Solace to some random American and they wouldn't know who the hell you're talking about.
  • These mags have black counterparts as well like King, SMOOTH, and Black Men Magazine. And most of the models within are hardly known outside of Hip-Hop message boards.
  • Playboy Playmates fall into this category as well. Although some Playmates have crossed over into the mainstream (Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Anna Nicole Smith), others are virtually unknown to those who aren't avid Playboy readers. For that matter, it's been noted that Marilyn Monroe was the only actress to have a smash career after appearing in the magazine.
  • Victoria's Secret models can be a case of this trope too, depending on the social circle. The biggest name Victoria's Secret model is arguably Adriana Lima, and probably Giselle Bundchen^note And she's probably best known to Americans for being married to NFL player Tom Brady. You probably could make a argument for Tyra Banks as well. But outside of that it gets real difficult to name drop other models.
  • Same goes for runway fashion models. Unless you were into high fashion most of those models weren't known outside of the pop-culture bubble, except for Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, and the aforementioned Tyra Banks, and Naomi Campbell. But that's basically it.
• If a country has regions that speak different languages they tend to develop their own cultures based on these languages.
  • In Canada, Quebec has many musicians, actors, and comedians that are unknown in the rest of Canada unless they also do English-language work. Céline Dion is a classic example of this; a pop singer since childhood, and already a massive French-language superstar in The '80s, winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988 (representing Switzerland, oddly enough) virtually no English Canadians had ever heard of her until she crossed over and released her first English-language album Unison in 1990.
• Linux is widely used in internet servers, embedded systems, mainframes, supercomputers, render farms, and so on. If we count Android (which uses its kernel), it is the most popular operating system in the world, period. But as Windows and macOS still rule the desktop market, it is still seen as "that weird system that only geeks use".
• If you walk into a store that caters to wargamers, a store that caters to model train hobbyists, and a general crafts store, you will see very similar merchandise on the shelves, but the staff is likely to be completely unaware of their "competitors". Similarly, stores where wargaming is king vs. stores where roleplaying and/or TCGs are king vs. stores where video gaming is king.
• This is pretty common with universities in the United States, For example, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University are the two top universities in Michigan and both attract huge numbers of students from all over the state. However, go to a more distant state like New Jersey, and you'll find plenty of Wolverines but far fewer Spartans. But that's nothing compared to, say, the University of Washington, which has almost zero presence in the Garden State.
• Belgium is a literal example of this trope. The country is divided by a language barrier and as a result, people from Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part) and Wallonia (the French-speaking part) will often not be familiar with celebrities from opposite the language barrier. There are exceptions, of course, but while singer and TV star Annie Cordy, for instance, is an icon in Wallonia, she is practically obscure in Flanders. Flemish singer Will Tura is a huge star in Flanders, but unknown in Wallonia. Similarly, Flemish comic strips like Jommeke and Piet Pienter en Bert Bibber are well known in Flanders, but completely obscure in Wallonia. Le Chat is a pop-culture phenomenon in Wallonia, but despite some translations into Dutch, this newspaper comic strip has never gained the same amount of praise or popularity in Flanders. Actor Benoît Poelvoorde is a huge star in Wallonia, even voted in the Top 10 of "The Greatest Belgians" in the Walloon version of that contest, but in Flanders, most people only know him from starring in Man Bites Dog, if they would recognize him at all.
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as motor neurone disease). People in the field of medicine probably know all about it. The general public knows almost nothing about it aside from a) also being known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, b) Stephen Hawking having had it, and c) the Ice Bucket Challenge.
• Most music/film/TV reviewers are only known within their respective journalistic circles and among those who admire them.
• Russefeiring is an end-of-the-year high school celebration entirely exclusive to Norway and Sweden. The celebration involves students going out on a theme together, and it’s tradition for Nordic musicians to create special music for this time of year.
• The state of Utah has two important times of year that the rest of the country is blissfully unaware of.
  • Pioneer Day on July 24, commemorating Brigham Young leading his Mormon followers to the Salt Lake Valley, is a state holiday that generally functions as "the 4th of July, part II", with parades (including a large one in downtown Salt Lake) and fireworks.
  • The third week of October. For decades this is when the Utah Education Association held its annual convention for teachers. This translated to schools being closed on Thursday and Friday of that week, creating a four-day-long "UEA Weekend" for Utah kids that was often treated like an informal holiday, with parents taking the days off as well. It's still called "UEA Weekend" even though the state legislature officially changed the name to "Fall Recess" in 2007, and the UEA itself stopped holding a convention in 2018. School districts even tried to drop the break from their calendars only to meet resistance from parents. One place outside of Utah that's well aware of UEA Weekend is Orange County, California. Since many families elect to spend UEA Weekend at Disneyland, it gets overrun with visitors from Utah, leading to the joke that UEA actually stands for "Utahns Entering Anaheim".
• Despite Christianity being the world's largest religion, not that many people (indeed, not that many Christians) are aware of some of the religion's most prominent events and historical figures. Certain saints might be a big deal in Church History but not too famous elsewhere. Go ahead, pick a random person in your local church and ask if they know what the Council of Nicaea was about and why it was important. Now pick a person in a seminary and ask the same question.
  • To add to this; The Da Vinci Code might be one of the biggest instances of Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer when it comes to the Council of Nicaea and The Bible. It became a big sell among the general public, but people who were familiar with the history of the Bible.
• Even when it comes to car culture there's a cultural divide. All the way down to car magazines themselves. Lowrider mags, vs custom car mags (like DUB magazine), sport tuner car mags, and American muscle car mags. There's over-lap but they're somewhat significantly separated. Mags like "DUB" almost always have black girls AND Hispanic females, whereas the lowrider mags are more or less exclusively Hispanic, the tuner mags are almost always southeast Asian, and the muscle car mags are almost always white.
  • For another example of this: Ask a gearhead what a "Donk" is and he/she will reply that it's any car with huge rims, very thin-walled tires, a very expensive and flamboyant paint job and other hallmarks of "bling." Ask an editor at a Lowrider mag (or any "authentic" Lowrider enthusiast) and he/she will tell you that it's specifically a 1970s Chevrolet Caprice (independent of whether or not it's stock or blinged out - it's just a slang term for that specific type of car. He/she will also tell you that "Bricks" are 80s Caprices and "Bubbles" are 90s Caprices due to their general shape). Of course, ask an average person on the street and expect to get a blank stare.
  • Even the car moding community is diverse. Opinions on how to mod certain make and model cars vary WILDLY depending on the culture.
• The popularity of several cult actors fall under this, at most they'll likely just be Hey!, It's that guy/girl!! But in certain circles they're as popular as Tom Cruise  and Will Smith. A few Examples are....
  • Bruce Campbell
  • Tony Todd
  • Michael Jai White
  • Tiffany Shepis
  • Julie Strain: Basically a female Bruce Campbell
  • Jeffrey Combs
  • Sybil Danning
  • Debbie Roshon
  • Summer Glau (arguably anyone who was in Firefly/Serenity aside from Nathan Fillion)
  • Asia Argento
  • Tom Savini
  • Beverly Lynne
  • Don Wilson
  • Christine Nguyen
  • Shannon Tweed
  • Kane Hodder
  • Misty Mundae
  • Lance Henriksen
  • Shannon Whirry
  • Brad Dourif
  • Meg Foster
  • Cynthia Rothrock
  • Tane McClure
  • Scott Adkins
• In the UK, Charlie Brooker is seen as a cult comic genius, especially for hosting the Caustic Critic review show Screenwipe and the TV panel show You Have Been Watching, and for creating the cult comedy series Nathan Barley and the horror-comedy miniseries Dead Set. In America, he's best known for creating the mega-hit Black Mirror and nothing else. Many Americans, especially casual fans of Black Mirror, would be surprised by his prior work.

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