cool, witty is good... when done right. There's a specific type of "witty" that makes me cringe and want to vomit, and seriously negitvely impacts my opinion of whatever it is (book, movie, etc.) You saying doomslug makes me... jealous, or sad, or both. I won't explain why :3
O M G yessss. I think I definitely do that (trying to have things in common), or at least used to or do differently idk. But like I do things that "everyone does," *sometimes,* other times I just learn about it. But, like 6 7 is kinda a thing you can just do with nearly everyone these days, not just kids/teens/young-adults. Then there's just references/pop-culture, and popular memes and such. It's like... an asset/library pack, or arsenal, or whatever you wanna call it. A bunch of references most/many people understand that you can use to communicate and relate and share a laugh. I actually put off watching K-Pop Demon Hunters until, like, last week. It was actually really good lol, but I didn't watch it even though I knew about it probably pretty early, and knew it was "the thing." So it depends. I've watched all of MLP, just not in a while. But, things like Gravity Falls? I watched it maybe a year ago and I didn't know everyone knew about it. I haven't seen Digital Circus yet, but that's something everyone seems to know, too. It's funny, the things that become popular. It's not all these hollywood/MCU stuff, lol. If ya know what I mean.
As for classics... I've known about many for a while, but mostly by name or maybe a little about them. I've never read any, but have some now. Mostly philosophy though lol. Though I do have an Oscar Wilde one, which is probably a "regular" classic.