Because people don’t *want* to name their kid (or fictional character or pseudonym or whatever) the next fad name and end up being this generation’s Karen or Lisa, so they actively try not to, but it happens anyway! How do we all accidentally keep making the next fad?

— Aella (@Aella_Girl) October 3, 2020

This is where scientists, as they often prove to be, are wrong about culture and how it works. They deny and disdain the idea of “generations,” but because certain cohorts of people born around the same time swim in the same cultural milieu, they tend to think fairly similarly and have a congruent cultural background.

This is how they semi-independently arrive at doing things like naming their kids similar names, liking the same books, having broadly similar political attitudes as their peers (even accounting for partisan differences), etc.

This is exactly how my parents thought they were giving me a unique and unusual name at the time (the 1970s), and I ended up going to school with a dozen kids with my same name — and I didn’t go to a large school.