Why has Cartoon Network lately been trying so hard to integrate pop culture references that mostly only adults in their...

Why has Cartoon Network lately been trying so hard to integrate pop culture references that mostly only adults in their late 20s and older would understand? Is their actual child audience that low?

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children are too busy fucking your mom and sell crack to watch any of these stupid cartoons

only neet at home manchildren watch cartoons

>he asked on a cartoon board for adults.

That's not really a new thing. It's more for the parents/older siblings/anyone else forced to watch shit they don't particularly care about.

Sonic and cloud are still around today.

Besides cartoons have always done that. I remember a dexter's lab episode where they parody star trek cons.

It's probably because those cartoons are being made by people in those age ranges.
A lot of younger kids get some of them too, thanks to being on the internet all the time.

Welcome to pretty much every cartoon

>why are cartoons made by people 20 and older doing references that only people 20 and older would get?! WHY WHYYYYYY?!

Its almost as if people from that age period are the ones making the shows, #makesyouthink

this. Most children look at their phones all day and are fucking by middle school.
The biggest demographic for cartoons now are 18-30

That isn't Cloud though, so it's not really a pop culture reference. It's Hero, the main character from producer Ian Jones-Quartey old webcomic, RPG World. So that is more of an in joke to his roots.
As for Sonic, he is still popular enough among young children that you don't need to be in your 20s to understand.

SONIC'S ARMS ARE NOT BLUE!!!!!

this meme is older than you are, they're called 'easter eggs' and they're a fun thing that non autistic people enjoy

If that was really true teen titans go would not get the great ratings it has. Face it grandpa kids still watch cartoons.

What does anything I said have to do with Teen Titans ratings? I just pointed out that one character there is a self insert joke and that Sonic is still well known.

Opps meant to respond to

There isn't any need to force these old references so hard since the intended audience (children) probably wouldn't understand it anyway, it feels very poser like imo. Although that makes sense since certain people and groups have been trying to integrate cultures initially perceived as something only nerds and geeks would like and recognize as the social norm for the past several years now. It's especially more apparent in shows with a girl power theme to them.

Not to mention this

Don't call anybody!

That's always been the case bro, watch looney tunes or shit like animaniacs and notice how many jokes are references to people that existed in the forties or fifties, or even earlier.

Basically: the creators are adults, and references are one of the easiest ways to make a joke or connect to an audience.

Did you get upset when 90's and 80's cartoons made plethora of references to what was topical at the time? It's nothing new. Animaniacs was built on nothing but references

I hate SU and how shamelessly derivative it is, but I think we can all agree that cartoons attempting to shoehorn in current pop culture references is even worse.

Because the creators of that show are all adults in their late 20s?

Bingo. Remember, the people who make these cartoons are, themselves, fans of cartoons/videogames/etcetera and love to put references to the things they grew up with.

Who do you think makes cartoons? These are entirely self-serving and not for the audience.

my little bro is 13 and he understood the sonic reference because of the sanic meme

to be honest he understands all the references but its mostly because i explain them to him

I think it's more about this tha anything. Parents in their twenties watch this with their kids and explain and introduce them to what parts they don't know. Nothin wrong with that.

One of Steven's dolls was Gitaroo Man.

They aren't even pop culture references, they are just culture references.

Pretty much this.
It's not really surprising that creators input things form their childhood or things of their personal interests into cartoons. People of an older crowd just happen to notice them.

Do you really think it's the Cartoon Network execs who do this?

Are you retarded?

That's how most pop culture references work. You have to give the adults supervising the kids something to laugh at too.

First, it's self-indulgence in the part of the creators, it's the reason for most references in cartoons and it has been a thing for ages; second, that shot lasts like three seconds, pretending it's anything other than a small joke is retarded.

you're only just NOW nothing this in cartoons?
youtube.com/watch?v=_WBCZ-11VWk

They aren't forcing it in? aside from the figures and shit appearing in the bg, its never really mentioned.

...

Because it's people in their late 20s early 30s that arequire making them

Millennials.

>insert pop culture reference
>internet makes "X SHOW MADE [pop culture] REFRENCE!!!! SMASH DAT MF LIKE BUTTON" threads, tweets, posts, etc.
>free advertising

Millennials shit themselves over references. I dont know why. Aknowledging another IP exists is hardly groundbreaking, much less interesting.

>Can you believe these hipster art degree students played FF7, one of the most popular video games of all time? Whoa....

Execs approve and give changes to boards/scripts, so yes they have control over that fucking idiot

>Lately
Cartoon Network has been doing this since it started making original series.

The example you gave was a 2-second reference. Classic PPG had an entire 11-minute Beatles reference.

Animaniacs did this too and everyone loved it.

just sayin.

Are you over 35 or under 16? Because if not, you're a millennial too.

Of course, generation classifications are bullshit anyway, you can't take a group of people born over a few decades and pretend they are all the same.

They've been doing this since the early 90s man....

You forget that adults are the ones making these shows, so "adult" references always bleed into shit, and also many pop culture references don't go over every kids heads as easily as you think

I grew up in the 90s and I knew who Prince was despite never hearing a single song

the fact is this what it takes to entertain the average person in these ranges
ages 1-5: furry porn
ages 6-11: retarded potty humor
ages 12-?: retarded sex + weed jokes

>FF7
It's not fucking Cloud. It's Hero from RPG World.

has his rancid new "vagina" killed him yet?

Its because adults in their late twenties work on shows and every writer ever for any fiction likes to slip in references to stuff they like without any cares of if others will understand it because no one needs to understand it because it's not such a big deal anyway that you're making it out to be.

Because cartoons are now being created by Millennials who grew up with those things. Pretty simple really.

t. Millennial like 90% of Sup Forums (unless you're on underaged territory like Sup Forums)

PPG also referenced South Park. OP should be mad that the writers would put in a reference that kids wouldn't get, because obviously if kids don't get it then there's no reason it should be there.

>Implying the older cartoons didn't have pop culture references

Remember the "All the Monkees had lockers" joke from "Rocko's Modern Life"? It's said by the pirate with wooden legs, eyes and arms.

>execs allow something = execs are LITERALLY forcing it to be put in
ok

We need to go back to the old ways, when all fictional video games were copyright friendly parodies of Frogger or Pong with Donkey Kong noises randomly thrown about.

it has always been this way, but now you're the same age as the people making the cartoons. you're getting all the references because it's all shit you (and they) grew up with.

Haven't you noticed that people born in the 90's and later have no nostalgia, no pop-culture to call their own? Just look at shit like Nostalgia Critic. He reviews stuff that generation Y grew up with, yet his only fans are people from generation Z. I guess CN doesn't have any pop cultural reference jokes that are fit for kids these days since they don't have any pop culture.

>Le epic sjw meme

Yeah, but every kid knew what South Park was, even if only by word of mouth.

What's the orange robot supposed to reference?

>Says the self loathing millennial

They've always done it.
>that entire episode of PPG devoted to Beatles references, some of them highly obscure

Do you not realize how many children there are on the internet, user?
Every fucking kid these days is watching minecraft and fnaf videos. I'm sure they've heard of sanic.

>rpg world reference

I thought I was over this

A lot of people like making references because most people are shallow and seeing two things they like together is enough to make them go nuts.

Trying to get us back, despite the fact that CN causes shows to fail cuz CN is trying for toy money, as if

1: CN is doing business like it's still the 80's

2: they think everyone watching cartoons is 10

and

3: CN doesn't understand that videogames have replaced toys decades ago.

user you have literally not even seen Cartoon Network for five years.

I know losing Symbiotic Titan hurt but that doesn't mean the world stands completely still after that.

>3: CN doesn't understand that videogames have replaced toys decades ago.
Like fuck man are you retarded? Mobile app games are practically all they advertise .

Wasn't Animaniacs full of old pop culture references and it worked out well? Even whenever Slappy is like "THIS GUY HERE REMINDS ME OF [old comedian]" it still works.

Because it's people in their late 20s making cartoons now?

What age do you think the animators are?

I think it's more likely that an artist on the show just made a couple references to things he likes for fun, rather than it being some company mandated thing for appealing to millenials.
I think your just grasping for straws autist.

I'm sorry, is that a 'Keep on Glidin' reference there?!

I left when Young Justice got shitcanned.