The first seasons were captivating. This last one? I walked out of the room, to do some housework, came ban 10 minutes later, asked what happened? Answer was a simple sentence.

I was also gradually switching to treating this season as a background noise, as it fails to be better than that. It is insultingly bad at places even consumed this way.

People were clearly watching through at least season 4. That show used songs that nowadays most viewers would consider to be oldies that became hits again after the episodes containing them were released.

For example Kate Bush's 1985 "Running up that Hill" because a huge worldwide hit after appearing in season 4.

“Running up that hill” becomes a huge worldwide hit approximately every ten years.

I never watched the show but I did catch the revival of interest in Kate Bush by osmosis, so I think the show probably does have some cultural impact.

I see a tonne of “fan” content on the video sites tagged #strangerthings, which is strange since I have that tag blocked. It's almost like it's all paid promotion…

I hope you don't imply that the 10 star ratings on IMDB are not organic... The system is definitely not rigged :D

I think people paid attention to at least season 1 back in the day.

Just for the synth intro

Ironically the Apple TV Netflix app really wants to soup the intro - going so far as to mute the intro to offer the “skip” button. You have to hit “back” to get the audio back during the intro.

Not she why Netflix is destroying destroying the experience themselves here.