You could poll people but thats a lot of work, far better to just search for it like this: You could do a 'google trends' search on the phrase to see how often it is repeated over time, relative to other phrases. Works for stuff after 2004, or which continues to have an effect after that.
You'd have to develop some kind of metric of comparison, like how movies and ticket sales look at fall-off, they look to see if the movie has 'legs' and has positive word of mouth by how well it continues to do. Weekend 1 might have 50m in sales, weekend 2 might have 3mil, implying bad word of mouth, while 30m in weekend 1 but then 20m in weekend two implies more positive word of mouth, and traction.
So do the same, find some lines and films, real icons that have stood the test of time like 'red pill' from the matrix, or 'i am your father' and then compare other lines to them with google analytics, looking not just a peaks, but for continued impact, look at the falloff in the use of that phrase. I suspect morbin won't have much legs because it doesn't mean much and it's just a joke about a dumb film, but things like 'red pill' left a cultural impact and then was used as a metaphor and analysed for its explanatory power, give things extra points for being meaningful memes rather than just a joke like 'knights who say nee', a once novel and absurdist joke that autists repeat endlessly.
It also works for rarer names, not just phrases. You can see which characters are still being talked about today.
This will only capture the linguistic zeitgiest, and will miss the visual and music/sound based stuff. For example, there has been a resurgence of neon and synthwave 80s aesthetic, and the bladerunner 2047 and tron and stranger things are likely both a contributing cause and results of this trend, but they don't have any quotable lines so your analytics search will miss this. This will be far harder to search for.
After that, you'd maybe want to analyse the actual content, and sort some mentions of the character into 'surface level mentions, "oh I really liked when archie fell on his ass"' as compared to more meaningful commentary "today's political climate wouldn't tolerate a character such as archie bunker..."
Oh, that goes even further back, and includes names like "Diedre" (came from a soap opera, iirc), and even "Wendy" (Peter Pan). Hell, one could even talk about religions introducing new and trendy names into cultures. "Peter" (Petros) is one of those. In New Testament times, it was just a nickname - Rocky.
But I think the real metric would, again, be sticking power. Do those trendy names still get given to kids two, three, or more generations after the movie/book/TV show came out/was initially popular? Or are all the "Rainbows" and "Moon Units" bitter and restricted to one generation?
You could poll people but thats a lot of work, far better to just search for it like this: You could do a 'google trends' search on the phrase to see how often it is repeated over time, relative to other phrases. Works for stuff after 2004, or which continues to have an effect after that.
You'd have to develop some kind of metric of comparison, like how movies and ticket sales look at fall-off, they look to see if the movie has 'legs' and has positive word of mouth by how well it continues to do. Weekend 1 might have 50m in sales, weekend 2 might have 3mil, implying bad word of mouth, while 30m in weekend 1 but then 20m in weekend two implies more positive word of mouth, and traction.
So do the same, find some lines and films, real icons that have stood the test of time like 'red pill' from the matrix, or 'i am your father' and then compare other lines to them with google analytics, looking not just a peaks, but for continued impact, look at the falloff in the use of that phrase. I suspect morbin won't have much legs because it doesn't mean much and it's just a joke about a dumb film, but things like 'red pill' left a cultural impact and then was used as a metaphor and analysed for its explanatory power, give things extra points for being meaningful memes rather than just a joke like 'knights who say nee', a once novel and absurdist joke that autists repeat endlessly.
It also works for rarer names, not just phrases. You can see which characters are still being talked about today.
This will only capture the linguistic zeitgiest, and will miss the visual and music/sound based stuff. For example, there has been a resurgence of neon and synthwave 80s aesthetic, and the bladerunner 2047 and tron and stranger things are likely both a contributing cause and results of this trend, but they don't have any quotable lines so your analytics search will miss this. This will be far harder to search for.
One I see mentioned a lot in boomer conservative circles is 'archie bunker', he's used in many conservative essays and discussions. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=archie%20bunker is what that kind of staying power looks like, while a less serious joke/meme with sticking power line from say lord of the rings in 2002 looks like this: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=boil%20em%20mash%20em or this: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%22they%27re%20taking%20the%20hobbits%22
After that, you'd maybe want to analyse the actual content, and sort some mentions of the character into 'surface level mentions, "oh I really liked when archie fell on his ass"' as compared to more meaningful commentary "today's political climate wouldn't tolerate a character such as archie bunker..."
Oh, that goes even further back, and includes names like "Diedre" (came from a soap opera, iirc), and even "Wendy" (Peter Pan). Hell, one could even talk about religions introducing new and trendy names into cultures. "Peter" (Petros) is one of those. In New Testament times, it was just a nickname - Rocky.
But I think the real metric would, again, be sticking power. Do those trendy names still get given to kids two, three, or more generations after the movie/book/TV show came out/was initially popular? Or are all the "Rainbows" and "Moon Units" bitter and restricted to one generation?