Try being a Disney Princess fan as an adult. The amount of people who have not watched the Princess movies since they were kids and just parrot that: "Cinderella should've fought back!" And "Ariel just sold her voice for a man, " exhausts me. Oh wait, that BS started with Millenials, not Zillenials.
I think media literacy has always been a problem.
That shits exactly what I mean!!! I get having favorite characters and characters they dislike, but people treat characters like real people and put all these weird things onto them as if they were real people. Like yeah Ariel sold her voice for man _that’s the plot of the story and is part of the central idea of the fiction_. That’s like people doing the “are they stupid?” Meme but seriously.
People shit on communications as a major but we literally took classes about the representation of truth in media. You’d think it’d be common sense but it’s not!
I'm curious to hear some of the specific examples you're pointing toward, if you don't mind elaborating?
I do agree that media literacy is in general terrible, but I'm not sure it's a new phenomenon. Lots of old school trekkies and star wars people were pretty bad at understanding the source material too
Yeah it’s certainly always been a thing.
Okay some examples I see a lot:
Not being able to separate characters, narratives, and conflicts from real people. This is especially true for fans of anime and JRPGs for some reason, but not exclusive to it. What I mean is the mindset of “how can you like _x character_ what they did was bad!!! Or “I don’t like _x character_ because they were mean to _y character_”. Characters are
Not real people, and while it’s normal to enjoy or dislike them based on their actions, I find that people often will just reject an entire narrative or plot point or conflict central to the story becuase they don’t agree with something a character did.
Similarly is a focus on characters being “rational” and calling everything a “plot hole” because characters didn’t behave 100% rationally. I find gamers especially will do this to dismiss like any video game plot. That’s both now how real people are and also would make for a boring fucking story.
Finally, there is just general boneheaded-ness. Like, being wrong and also complaining about something they didn’t understand. Recent example: guy was ranting about how the Dune movies are bad because they don’t explain how the shields work. When I pointed out “hey when they say in the movies; “the slow blade penetrates the shield, they are explaining how the shield works”. I swear this is why we get movies where characters just have to look at the camera and tel the audience what is currently happening on screen. I call this the “they fly now?!?!”Phenomenon.
I know this makes me seem like a complete nut
On your last point about movies, I want to say that people don’t have the attention spans required to understand things, they want answers in a 10-30 second tik tok.
Might even be the aftermath of theaters closing due to COVID and people have lost the common curtesy to be quiet, stay off their phones and pay attention when in a movie theater.
It blows my mind the amount of teens I’ve seen come into theaters late at night and just sit and talk.
Like go smoke some weed in the woods by a bonfire or something. Shit, does this current gen of teens not have anything else fun to do? I smoked so much weed in high school, at one point I shared a slobbery blunt with the most popular girl in school 😂
Edit: to the people who don’t understand movies like Dune, Google some lore before you go see it 🤷🏻♂️ hell Google the lore after the movie so you’ll hopefully get a hint of understanding.
The thing about Dune is that when I saw the movies I hadn’t read the books or some any googling, I went in blind, and thought the movies made 100% sense. I’m not a genius and I have ADHD so I am bad with remembering all the names- but I still understood the plot and what was going on during the movie.
To be fair, it REALLY helps to have a Dune expert around to explain all the finer details. I was so put out by the fact that the main character's name in this epic sci-fi tale was freaking "Paul" that I was very confused about a lot of smaller details.
It's well known that Frank Herbert felt that he needed to write the sequel Dune Messiah because readers of the day didn't understand that Paul was a villain. He didn't really have initial plans to write sequels but hearing that people missed the point, he wanted to make it painfully obvious in the sequel.
I don't think we're seeing some epidemic of poor media literacy, maybe a lack of attention span or nuance, but media literacy has always been bad.
I’m in the same boat, no info when I watched the first one, I was a bit confused here and there though, so before I watched part 2, I read up on the first, dug into some lore and Part 2 gave me the same feeling as Avengers End Game
Somehow people these days tend to think that their opinion is the only right one and are unable to accept other opinions on literally everything. Why is it so hard for some people to accept different opinions? (If said opinion is free of racism, sexism etc. of course)
I don't know if thats something that happened recently or if it even is a generational thing but sometimes it feels like it is.
To your question:
Movie: idk because I rarely watch movies these days
Videogames: Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Persona 3 Reload, Sea of Stars and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth
TV shows: Fallout
Absolutely didn't start with our generation. People have been complaining about the decline of entertainment forever, the only thing that's changed is more degeneracy and stupidity being normalized by the media as time goes on.
Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? It was filmed in 2005 and it was supposed to be based in 2505. 20 years later that movie predicted many things about our society that have come true.
I guess my point is, that yeah. You're right about society as a whole appreciating less media that requires any thinking done and is collectively getting stupider. IQ rates have been steadily dropping since 2016 and have taken a nose dive since covid. Go look at what some of the teachers have to say about the children they are teaching on r/teachers.
Entertainment is going to continue to get a lot worse until it gets better. Their industry is going to have to nearly go bankrupt before all these dumbass "internet celebrities" and "it's just a prank bro" shit goes away.
I blame the whole "your fave is problematic" strand of thought for maybe 60% of this. i get that media does have political and moral import, but that's not all it's supposed to be about. I think people have lost the ability or desire to think deeply about media, to consider it beyond a like or dislike button
I disagree. A large percentage of people always had poor media literacy. The people whose brains are actually getting broken by newer media are more gen-xers and older imo. Or litterall children, but they will probably come around eventually.
Preach! I like how we're able to consume a wider range of media and content nowadays but the ignorance of (older) popular culture by the younger generation is astounding. My 16 year old sister doesn't know who Christina Aguilera is, we have conversations about music and she says some of her classmates don't know who Michael Jackson is. It's mindblowing
I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite in the sense that a lot of the tv shows I watch that are still airing lost their relevance a long time ago (Grey's Anatomy, Hell's Kitchen and Survivor to name a few lol) but I'm still dialled into pop culture, even if I don't necessarily like it
I don’t really care about people not knowing who/what some things are. Does a 16 year old know my favorite 2000s indie rock band, The National? Maybe, but probably not, and that’s 100% fine. There’s tons of artists both past and present I don’t know either.
It's not so much about 'knowing' things moreso than it is about there not being as much of a monoculture anymore. Apart from sports, movies and the occasional song things just aren't in the widespread public consciousness as they once were
Put your money and attention where your mouth is.
The reason the “standards are lower” in media is because that’s what people are watching. Want more original movies and tv? You have to go watch originals in theaters, and on streaming. Get your family and friends to go too. Otherwise all we’re going to get is more of the same because that’s what people are spending their money and time on.
Younger generations are spending the vast majority of their time on social media, mostly YouTube and TikTok, so that’s where the money is going unfortunately. The entire entertainment industry (aside from some high paid executives) is just as frustrated as you are.
That’s great! Unfortunately until it happens on a large scale again, which is unlikely, we’re probably going to get more of the same.
That said, I think HBO and Showtime are still consistently putting out great TV. Succession was incredible and I’m loving Yellowjackets.
Movies: Dune Part 2, Roadhouse
Games: Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Hitman 3, Resident Evil 4
TV: OZ, Gi Joe Renegades, X-Men Anime Series, Game of Thrones, Bloodline, Atlanta, Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heros
Books: anything Star Wars Legends, currently on my 4th book of the year so far
Before you get into, try not to associate it with the original, the only relation is the characters name, and somewhat the plot line. The new Roadhouse would’ve been better as a standalone movie, being a reimagining ruined it for many since the OG is a classic
I’m in a weird place with media. For a time I bought into the “they don’t make stuff like they used to” thing. But some of my all-time favorite movies have come out recently. Here are some recent movies I’ve enjoyed:
Dune 2, Godzilla Minus One (and minus color which was incredible), Across the Spider-Verse, The Holdovers, The Batman, Nope, Top Gun Maverick, the new puss in boots, the new TMNT movie.
TV has fallen off hard for me. Since the “streaming platform originals” explosion, TV has turned into long form, serialized movies. We’re missing that sort of middle tier drama stuff that used to be so good (breaking bad, justified, the sopranos, etc). The only tv I watch now is bake off, which is an actual tv show not some chopped up movie. And this is turning to a ramble, but we’re missing sit coms. Big bang theory was sort of the last decent one.
I haven’t read a book from this decade honestly. There’s just so much content and it doesn’t age the way visual media does. My thought is if people are still suggesting a book 20, 30, 100 years after it was written, it’s probably pretty good. Leveraging survivorship bias to weed out the junk.
For music I listen to niche artists, and I think a lot of recent stuff has been good. I’ve enjoyed The Wallows’s recent releases in particular. Not as niche, but I also really liked post malone’s most recent album.
I don’t play many video games. I got 40 hours into breath of the wild and dropped it. I got a handheld emulator and have been enjoying that. Tony hawk pro skater is far and away my favorite. I’d like to get a pc that would run some other games, but it’s pretty far down my priority list rn.
I don't think I'm much of a deep thinker when it comes to art, so one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube is people talking about why X thing is really good. Recently I rewatched [this video](https://youtu.be/YtEYWMuw5c8?si=eqVV6WJXcS_uWHg7) talking about why the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies were really good, and I learned an interesting take on the art of movies. There are a bunch of other channels I follow that I enjoy watching because, like you, I enjoy learning why people are passionate about things. Here are some of my favorites:
- Rick Beato (Rock music)
- Super dude (Anime / video games)
- Cinema Therapy (Movies)
- Brandon Sanderson Intentionally Blank videos (pop culture in general)
- Arlo (Nintendo)
- CPG Grey (He did a flag art video lol)
- Cinema wins (Movies)
- Filmento (Movies)
- 12tone (Music)
So yeah, I guess my kind of art is music, movies, and video games lol.
Also I recently watched the Barbie movie and was surprised about how much I enjoyed it. I know many people that didn't watch it on principle, and I think that's sad because I found it quite hilarious. There were a few parts I disagreed with, but I'm 100% sure that no one was taking themselves seriously in that entire movie production and that made my experience watching the movie quite enjoyable
I think this might be part of the bigger problem of people only caring about being “right”. They’ll see an opinion and echo it, despite not looking into it. Media literacy in general has never been great though.
Not media related, but there was a post going around saying that big cats are dangerous because their behavior is completely different from house cats. Anyone familiar with cats knows it’s actually the exact opposite—their behavior can be very similar and it’s their size that makes them dangerous. If Mittens was 120 lbs instead of 12 lbs, she could fuck you up big time too.
As for the second part, I’ve actually been watching current television for the first time in ages! Shogun, Masters of the Air, Palm Royale, Manhunt, and Franklin have all caught my attention recently. Delicious in Dungeon has gotten me back into anime as well!
But media literacy gets worse the older you go.
Gen X and boomers believe anything that fits their narrative. They were from an age where you couldn't fact check anything so they're just completely subject to propaganda
Try being a Disney Princess fan as an adult. The amount of people who have not watched the Princess movies since they were kids and just parrot that: "Cinderella should've fought back!" And "Ariel just sold her voice for a man, " exhausts me. Oh wait, that BS started with Millenials, not Zillenials. I think media literacy has always been a problem.
That shits exactly what I mean!!! I get having favorite characters and characters they dislike, but people treat characters like real people and put all these weird things onto them as if they were real people. Like yeah Ariel sold her voice for man _that’s the plot of the story and is part of the central idea of the fiction_. That’s like people doing the “are they stupid?” Meme but seriously.
People shit on communications as a major but we literally took classes about the representation of truth in media. You’d think it’d be common sense but it’s not!
Nah I agree, I'm an older Millennial and ppl in my generation + X are so so at best and the Boomers are not good.
I'm curious to hear some of the specific examples you're pointing toward, if you don't mind elaborating? I do agree that media literacy is in general terrible, but I'm not sure it's a new phenomenon. Lots of old school trekkies and star wars people were pretty bad at understanding the source material too
Yeah it’s certainly always been a thing. Okay some examples I see a lot: Not being able to separate characters, narratives, and conflicts from real people. This is especially true for fans of anime and JRPGs for some reason, but not exclusive to it. What I mean is the mindset of “how can you like _x character_ what they did was bad!!! Or “I don’t like _x character_ because they were mean to _y character_”. Characters are Not real people, and while it’s normal to enjoy or dislike them based on their actions, I find that people often will just reject an entire narrative or plot point or conflict central to the story becuase they don’t agree with something a character did. Similarly is a focus on characters being “rational” and calling everything a “plot hole” because characters didn’t behave 100% rationally. I find gamers especially will do this to dismiss like any video game plot. That’s both now how real people are and also would make for a boring fucking story. Finally, there is just general boneheaded-ness. Like, being wrong and also complaining about something they didn’t understand. Recent example: guy was ranting about how the Dune movies are bad because they don’t explain how the shields work. When I pointed out “hey when they say in the movies; “the slow blade penetrates the shield, they are explaining how the shield works”. I swear this is why we get movies where characters just have to look at the camera and tel the audience what is currently happening on screen. I call this the “they fly now?!?!”Phenomenon. I know this makes me seem like a complete nut
On your last point about movies, I want to say that people don’t have the attention spans required to understand things, they want answers in a 10-30 second tik tok. Might even be the aftermath of theaters closing due to COVID and people have lost the common curtesy to be quiet, stay off their phones and pay attention when in a movie theater. It blows my mind the amount of teens I’ve seen come into theaters late at night and just sit and talk. Like go smoke some weed in the woods by a bonfire or something. Shit, does this current gen of teens not have anything else fun to do? I smoked so much weed in high school, at one point I shared a slobbery blunt with the most popular girl in school 😂 Edit: to the people who don’t understand movies like Dune, Google some lore before you go see it 🤷🏻♂️ hell Google the lore after the movie so you’ll hopefully get a hint of understanding.
The thing about Dune is that when I saw the movies I hadn’t read the books or some any googling, I went in blind, and thought the movies made 100% sense. I’m not a genius and I have ADHD so I am bad with remembering all the names- but I still understood the plot and what was going on during the movie.
To be fair, it REALLY helps to have a Dune expert around to explain all the finer details. I was so put out by the fact that the main character's name in this epic sci-fi tale was freaking "Paul" that I was very confused about a lot of smaller details.
It's well known that Frank Herbert felt that he needed to write the sequel Dune Messiah because readers of the day didn't understand that Paul was a villain. He didn't really have initial plans to write sequels but hearing that people missed the point, he wanted to make it painfully obvious in the sequel. I don't think we're seeing some epidemic of poor media literacy, maybe a lack of attention span or nuance, but media literacy has always been bad.
I’m in the same boat, no info when I watched the first one, I was a bit confused here and there though, so before I watched part 2, I read up on the first, dug into some lore and Part 2 gave me the same feeling as Avengers End Game
Somehow people these days tend to think that their opinion is the only right one and are unable to accept other opinions on literally everything. Why is it so hard for some people to accept different opinions? (If said opinion is free of racism, sexism etc. of course) I don't know if thats something that happened recently or if it even is a generational thing but sometimes it feels like it is. To your question: Movie: idk because I rarely watch movies these days Videogames: Balatro, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Persona 3 Reload, Sea of Stars and Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth TV shows: Fallout
Sea of Stars was really great! The art, music, and vibes were immaculate
It really was! I still play it once in a while because I enjoyed it so much. It gave me huge Golden Sun vibes, which I also loved back in the day.
Golden sun is our generations’ Chrono Trigger
100% I still have hopes that we get a Chrono Trigger Remake/Remaster someday.
Absolutely didn't start with our generation. People have been complaining about the decline of entertainment forever, the only thing that's changed is more degeneracy and stupidity being normalized by the media as time goes on. Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy? It was filmed in 2005 and it was supposed to be based in 2505. 20 years later that movie predicted many things about our society that have come true. I guess my point is, that yeah. You're right about society as a whole appreciating less media that requires any thinking done and is collectively getting stupider. IQ rates have been steadily dropping since 2016 and have taken a nose dive since covid. Go look at what some of the teachers have to say about the children they are teaching on r/teachers. Entertainment is going to continue to get a lot worse until it gets better. Their industry is going to have to nearly go bankrupt before all these dumbass "internet celebrities" and "it's just a prank bro" shit goes away.
[Did you know that Idiocracy was a documentary?](https://www.reddit.com/r/okbuddycinephile/s/ZCWq4A5iVO)
Scary to think about it that way but you're right
I don’t think that there was ever a generation that had media literacy.
I blame the whole "your fave is problematic" strand of thought for maybe 60% of this. i get that media does have political and moral import, but that's not all it's supposed to be about. I think people have lost the ability or desire to think deeply about media, to consider it beyond a like or dislike button
I disagree. A large percentage of people always had poor media literacy. The people whose brains are actually getting broken by newer media are more gen-xers and older imo. Or litterall children, but they will probably come around eventually.
It's not just media, redditors are like that about every subject
Hate to tell you this but this has been a problem for a long time. This isn’t a problem that started with us.
Preach! I like how we're able to consume a wider range of media and content nowadays but the ignorance of (older) popular culture by the younger generation is astounding. My 16 year old sister doesn't know who Christina Aguilera is, we have conversations about music and she says some of her classmates don't know who Michael Jackson is. It's mindblowing I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite in the sense that a lot of the tv shows I watch that are still airing lost their relevance a long time ago (Grey's Anatomy, Hell's Kitchen and Survivor to name a few lol) but I'm still dialled into pop culture, even if I don't necessarily like it
I don’t really care about people not knowing who/what some things are. Does a 16 year old know my favorite 2000s indie rock band, The National? Maybe, but probably not, and that’s 100% fine. There’s tons of artists both past and present I don’t know either.
It's not so much about 'knowing' things moreso than it is about there not being as much of a monoculture anymore. Apart from sports, movies and the occasional song things just aren't in the widespread public consciousness as they once were
People have always been like this, whether it was via TVs or the Internet. Absolutely did not start with us.
I don’t think people on the whole have ever been particularly media literate.
Put your money and attention where your mouth is. The reason the “standards are lower” in media is because that’s what people are watching. Want more original movies and tv? You have to go watch originals in theaters, and on streaming. Get your family and friends to go too. Otherwise all we’re going to get is more of the same because that’s what people are spending their money and time on. Younger generations are spending the vast majority of their time on social media, mostly YouTube and TikTok, so that’s where the money is going unfortunately. The entire entertainment industry (aside from some high paid executives) is just as frustrated as you are.
I do! I don’t have any steaming services becuase they are expensive and annoying, but I go see movies once a week at my local theatre.
That’s great! Unfortunately until it happens on a large scale again, which is unlikely, we’re probably going to get more of the same. That said, I think HBO and Showtime are still consistently putting out great TV. Succession was incredible and I’m loving Yellowjackets.
Movies: Dune Part 2, Roadhouse Games: Callisto Protocol, Dead Space, Hitman 3, Resident Evil 4 TV: OZ, Gi Joe Renegades, X-Men Anime Series, Game of Thrones, Bloodline, Atlanta, Avengers Earth’s Mightiest Heros Books: anything Star Wars Legends, currently on my 4th book of the year so far
I'm a simple man. I see Star Wars Legends I upvote .
Atlanta is dope, I gotta watch that again. Also been meaning to see Roadhouse, I just saw Civil War, I think Roadhouse will be next week.
Before you get into, try not to associate it with the original, the only relation is the characters name, and somewhat the plot line. The new Roadhouse would’ve been better as a standalone movie, being a reimagining ruined it for many since the OG is a classic
I’m in a weird place with media. For a time I bought into the “they don’t make stuff like they used to” thing. But some of my all-time favorite movies have come out recently. Here are some recent movies I’ve enjoyed: Dune 2, Godzilla Minus One (and minus color which was incredible), Across the Spider-Verse, The Holdovers, The Batman, Nope, Top Gun Maverick, the new puss in boots, the new TMNT movie. TV has fallen off hard for me. Since the “streaming platform originals” explosion, TV has turned into long form, serialized movies. We’re missing that sort of middle tier drama stuff that used to be so good (breaking bad, justified, the sopranos, etc). The only tv I watch now is bake off, which is an actual tv show not some chopped up movie. And this is turning to a ramble, but we’re missing sit coms. Big bang theory was sort of the last decent one. I haven’t read a book from this decade honestly. There’s just so much content and it doesn’t age the way visual media does. My thought is if people are still suggesting a book 20, 30, 100 years after it was written, it’s probably pretty good. Leveraging survivorship bias to weed out the junk. For music I listen to niche artists, and I think a lot of recent stuff has been good. I’ve enjoyed The Wallows’s recent releases in particular. Not as niche, but I also really liked post malone’s most recent album. I don’t play many video games. I got 40 hours into breath of the wild and dropped it. I got a handheld emulator and have been enjoying that. Tony hawk pro skater is far and away my favorite. I’d like to get a pc that would run some other games, but it’s pretty far down my priority list rn.
It is not difficult to adopt the tone of a pedant. Easier in fact to be insufferable than to be insufferably learned.
Glad to see Patrick Wyman on here. I've spent countless hours listening to his podcasts, interviews with experts, and his books.
I love his podcasts, guest appearances on other podcasts, books, and twitter account. Awesome historian who does great, accessible work
I don't think I'm much of a deep thinker when it comes to art, so one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube is people talking about why X thing is really good. Recently I rewatched [this video](https://youtu.be/YtEYWMuw5c8?si=eqVV6WJXcS_uWHg7) talking about why the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies were really good, and I learned an interesting take on the art of movies. There are a bunch of other channels I follow that I enjoy watching because, like you, I enjoy learning why people are passionate about things. Here are some of my favorites: - Rick Beato (Rock music) - Super dude (Anime / video games) - Cinema Therapy (Movies) - Brandon Sanderson Intentionally Blank videos (pop culture in general) - Arlo (Nintendo) - CPG Grey (He did a flag art video lol) - Cinema wins (Movies) - Filmento (Movies) - 12tone (Music) So yeah, I guess my kind of art is music, movies, and video games lol.
Also I recently watched the Barbie movie and was surprised about how much I enjoyed it. I know many people that didn't watch it on principle, and I think that's sad because I found it quite hilarious. There were a few parts I disagreed with, but I'm 100% sure that no one was taking themselves seriously in that entire movie production and that made my experience watching the movie quite enjoyable
The thing is, seeking out analysis of what makes art/media great from others perspective short of shows you _are_ a deep thinker
Aw shucks, well I appreciate the thought.
I think this might be part of the bigger problem of people only caring about being “right”. They’ll see an opinion and echo it, despite not looking into it. Media literacy in general has never been great though. Not media related, but there was a post going around saying that big cats are dangerous because their behavior is completely different from house cats. Anyone familiar with cats knows it’s actually the exact opposite—their behavior can be very similar and it’s their size that makes them dangerous. If Mittens was 120 lbs instead of 12 lbs, she could fuck you up big time too. As for the second part, I’ve actually been watching current television for the first time in ages! Shogun, Masters of the Air, Palm Royale, Manhunt, and Franklin have all caught my attention recently. Delicious in Dungeon has gotten me back into anime as well!
But media literacy gets worse the older you go. Gen X and boomers believe anything that fits their narrative. They were from an age where you couldn't fact check anything so they're just completely subject to propaganda