Does anyone else feel disconnected from the pop culture of their own generation?

This concept is hard to put into words, and might just be my autism speaking. So I'll give an example.

As a kid in the late 80s and 90s, I just consumed whatever media I liked best. I'd go to the music store and buy a classical CD, a 50s jazz CD and/or 70s rock. I'd go rent whatever movie looked good, no matter how old it was. My favourite books were from all over the 19th and 20th centuries. And the same continued throughout life. Most of the video games I bought after the year 2000 or so were old and obscure at the time I bought them, because i had read about them and sought them out.

Sometimes people would bully me, and say "That thing is old. You have to enjoy the newer thing'". and I couldn't understand it. 'Why not just get the things you like best', I thought.

It increasingly became clear throughout life that most people operated differently. In 2008, most people listened to music that came out in 2008. In 2017, most people watched TV shows that came out in 2017. In 2024, people were playing the games that came out in 2024. Even though I don't understand it, it seems to be the obvious default position for how people consume pop culture. And this forms the basis of how pop culture is divided up into generations on subs like this.

And that makes the categories all confusing.

For example, when people say 'This is nostalgia for 2012', they will post a collage of music, games, films etc that all came out in 2012. Yet to me, none of that stuff is nostalgic for 2012. Around that year, I was on a long binge of collecting and playing 90s PlayStation JRPGs, whilst in a bebop jazz phase (Charlie Parker etc), an ancient Greek reading phase, and so on.

Or they will post a video game that was released in 2010, and everyone will say 'this makes me so nostalgic for 2010!' And I think to myself 'I first played that one in 2020, though. So wouldn't it make me feel nostalgia for 2020?'

Do you see what I mean? Most of the posts on subs like this have a core underlying assumption about all works of pop culture, and it is this: people consume any given item of pop culture in the specific year it is released. And thus it forever becomes associated with that year.

But does everyone do this in reality? It seems like most people spend at least some time watching older films, listening to older music etc. And maybe some others are completely disconnected from the grapevine, like me. But surely this creates a fundamental problem for the idea of classifying years, generations and decades by the pop culture that was released in them? Does it really make sense to classify these things by release year? Does anyone else find this equally confusing?