It’s common advice that it is important to be yourself when it comes to dating, but this comes with a caveat. As you date and meet people, everyone automatically places you in one of many boxes. These boxes are of course the stereotypical boxes, but the definition, appeal and signals of those boxes varies based on current media.
The reason this is important is because depending on the current cultural zeitgeist you may not fit neatly into any one of the boxes. In other words if you do not posses the cultural knowledge to suggest what kind of person you are, people will not know what to expect.
This adds extra friction when others are trying to get to know you, which keeps peoples guards up.
The solution is of course to put some effort into keeping up with what’s “popular” in terms of media. This way (subconsciously) when meeting people you will have common ground to portray yourself in a way that the other person will likely understand. And you won’t mistakenly portray yourself as something that doesn’t describe you.
This is especially important today because people are so constantly immersed in media that real life examples fall away and people begin to expect characters from fiction instead of a real and unique person.
So when meeting someone within the first few interactions the other person will think “oh this person is like X from X tv show he’s friendly”. Instead of “this person is so strange and different, he’s nice but what if he’s crazy?!?”
Once that level of understanding is created depth can now proceed.
As someone who normally doesn’t go along with things just cause it’s popular it makes fast dating difficult. But in long term situations where people continuously get to see my character I have absolutely no problem. I didn’t realize this in college or high school but now that I have to go out of my way to meet and talk to people it highlights the issue.
Hope this helps!