I'm submit scrips and am sometimes asked to insert 'trendy' jokes into things to make them "more relevant". Ex: Man writting on laptop wife asked "What are you writing hun." Hun says "Oh just my Jonah Hex/Elogated man fanfiction hastag lol" How would I tel

Barf.

That’s terrible advice…I have no idea what it is you are writing for, but random insertions of pop culture without context is what makes things like Family Guy so unwatchably grating. 

Editors are not infallible. Some are great, some are awful and some are in that vast weird space in the middle. Many times, people will make suggestions for you to put more fins on the Cadillac because it looked cool a hundred million years ago, with no more thought to it than that. 

Remember, your name is going out on this thing. Your name. The only indicator you have on the book, it’s right there. If you stick in some terrible Miley Cyrus joke that is already dated and is only going to be embarrassing two months from now, that’s your call, and you have to live with it.

I have quit books when asked to do something I knew would suck. That is always an option. 

If you CAN, there may be a way to subvert the request into something that’s actually cool. Go that route, if you can. Otherwise, give them another solution and stick to your guns. 

We only have one stock option in this stuff, and it’s our name. Don’t devalue it.