@luci I'm pretty sure you are right about this effect existing, but there are also people who have trouble with the concept of "meta". You can recognize that by them implying at the end of an explanation that they thing a pointer is just the variable it refers to or something very close to that. Most often happens with children/early teenagers, but I have seen this with adults as well. It can still be explained then, but first requires explaining the concept of "meta" (with the name being optional, just the concept suffices), which is when people should use the silly examples. The problem is people try to short-circuit the process by starting out with this explanation, thus confusing the ones who understand meta as well as the ones who don't, and then you get the cultural problem you describe.