There's also the possibility that in a society as deracinated and stripped of tradition and continuity [...] as our own, the void that emptily exists where common experience would ordinarily repose is filled by elements of popular culture so anchored to a specific time that they become part of the lingua franca, staples of the manufactured conversation, endlessly in medias res, that takes the place of shared heritage. In effect, trends in television, movies and popular music and fake nostalgia for their various incarnations are our shared conscious heritage (in other words, Nick at Nite is not kidding), in a way that literature can never be, since fiction blasts aside most temporal restrictions with its persistent availability, as opposed to the unavoidability of popular culture [...]