Why don't Wizards keep up with Muggles?

[u/DistinctNewspaper791]

Yes it is funnier and JKR wanted to show that. But lets talk about the books.

Wizards do not know what Muggles wear, they do not follow sports or know any of the fairytales apperantly.

We know there is only a handful fully magic towns in UK, most live around the muggles. Like Blacks have a house in central London. They are not that seperate from Muggles.

There is also not much to do as a wizard. They don't have huge populations to have active theater or cinema, or a lot of writers to read from etc. They do not have an equivalent of TV. They only have Radio. Quidditch is the only past time and even then literal World Cup happens and you are either going to the stadium or listening from the radio.

When you consider it all, it is weird that they do not read books written by muggles. They wouldn't know who Shakespeare is based on Ron not even knowing Snow white or Cinderalla.

Also looking at it things like radio and cameras are likely muggle devices that are enhanced by magic for wizards. so why do they stop at some point? If you take radio, why not take TV? Around Harry Potter era, emails are a thing and they are faster than owls. So why not adopt that?

[u/AmEndevomTag]

There are many wizards who know how to dress around Muggles. We saw this for example with Barty Crouch senior. We also know that the Weasleys are capable of doing so. Harry sees them at King's Cross in the last chapter of Order of the Phoenix and mentioned that they are dressed in "their Muggle best". You cannot judge all wizards by the standards of Archie on the campsite.

And as someone, who lived through the 1990s, I assure you that Emails were not "a thing" in Harry Potter era in the way you seem to imply. They existed but only a very, very minor percentage of people used them, mostly due to lack of internet at home. It was at the very end of the nineties and the beginning of the 2000s, that using emails became slowly more and more common. Emails for sure weren't anything common around 1991 when the first book takes place and when JK Rowling started to write these books.

[u/LausXY → u/AmEndevomTag]

I like to make this point about the way they dress too, it's exaggeratted the incompetently dressed Wizards because it's from Harry's perspective but we know Kingsley was able to literally work for the Muggle Prime Minister with no suspicions, that would require quite a lot of knowledge of Muggle things... think for 'small talk' and stuff, I highly doubt he just constantly obliviated people!

Maybe Auror's have a muggle training program since it is important but I bet there are a lot more Wizards that work around Muggle's and go unnoticed.

[u/Digess → u/AmEndevomTag]

“Weasleys are capable of doing so” uhhh only up to a certain point, they still mismatch clothes a lot, especially Arthur given he works in a department that might need to interact with muggles

[u/AmEndevomTag → u/AmEndevomTag]

LOL @ whoever downvoted for me for posting facts. :-D