Robin Thede, Patton Oswalt, and Margaret Cho on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Here’s another one for my “Aging” catergory — although I suspect that’s not the whole story.

For quite some time — for decades, really — I’ve had this happen a lot: I’ll see someone on a magazine cover, or on a TV screen. This person is being presented in a context that indicates that he or she is a celebrity, and I as the beholder am expected to know who that is. There are hints. For instance, the magazine will be one that pretty much only features “celebrities” on its covers. Or the person will be identified by first-name only, as though I were a fantasist who imagines that I am on such intimate terms with that person. Or, the writer of that text believes that I would be insulted by anyone assuming that I would need to see a surname to know who it is.

As for television… I’ll give you an example from this evening. I was over visiting my mother, and she was watching “Celebrity Jeopardy.” Only I didn’t know who the people were. There was a man flanked by two women. The man looked familiar, but I couldn’t name him or recall where I had seen him. I had no clue with the women.

Fortunately, there’s the Web. I looked, and saw they were Robin Thede, Patton Oswalt, and Margaret Cho. Patton was the guy who seemed familiar, and now that I saw it, so was his name. And I had heard or read Margaret Cho’s name quite frequently in recent years, in connection with comedy, but I could not have identified her by her image. This was worsened by the fact that when I Google her image, she looks different. But I wouldn’t have recognized her when she looked like that, either.

I thought “Celebrity Jeopardy” had more recognizable names and faces. Admittedly, I’m basing that on those SNL spoofs, which at least in the past have been hilarious. My favorite might have been the one with “Sean Connery,” “Burt Reynolds” and “French Stewart.”

And I actually knew whom they were impersonating.

Now I’m going to really embarrass myself. When I was quite young, I watched pretty much everything on the three channels available, and that includes the game shows. And I knew who all those people were — even on “Hollywood Squares.” Do you know who all these people were?

Well, I did. Even though that’s a very blurry picture. (I probably wouldn’t have complained about that in 1968, though. I was also watching it in black and white.)

I’m pretty sure that if I were younger, I would have known who those affable people were on Jeopardy tonight. After all, I knew the guy’s face and one woman’s name! I must apologize to Ms. Thede, though — I had no idea.

But I knew all those people on the Squares, and looking back, some of them were pretty marginal celebs. But I knew them, and could tell you where I’d seen them. For instance, Wally Cox had once played a birdwatcher on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” I think I’d also seen him do standup. So there.

There were some people who were famous to me simply because they were on game shows a lot. I’d known Kitty Carlisle and Orson Bean for a couple of decades before I learned they were actors.

So some of it’s age. But here’s something I think is a significant contributing factor. I’ve mentioned this before in a different context:

It’s the profusion of available media in the post-cable, streaming world that makes it impossible to see and know everyone being beamed at us. So many people who are intensely famous within genres and subgenres of public entertainment, but not as known to the full population.

Back in the day, we ALL knew who all the “famous” people were.

I wasn’t the only person watching those three stations all the time in the ’60s. Everybody was, to some extent. Even old people saw The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Peter and Gordon, Robert Goulet, the inescapable Topo Gigio, and the guys who spun plates atop sticks. And with the possible exception of the guys with the plates, people of all ages could probably name them. That’s because they HAD to come to their fans and everyone else through the Ed Sullivan Show, or the Smothers Brothers, or Dean Martins’ show, or Andy Williams’, or Merv Griffin’s daytime talk show.

The supply was limited. That’s my excuse for sort-of knowing who “Charlie Weaver” was.