Ask Lemmy

People keep talking about divided media and a lack of shared shows - did nobody else see all the KPop Demon Hunter outfits last Halloween? I swear it was about 20% of the outfits at my kids' school. Nobody seeing the Stranger Things merch in stores for the new season?

There's still new shows most people see, and some are good ones - but the media landscape changed. Used to be, in the US, you had CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. The difference is now it's Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and so on. The quality mix is still pretty much what it was, but you've got to go to where they've moved to - YouTube doesn't have much professionally done content.

As for 67, that just seems like what memes have always been to me. The Beans meme here was random too, but no less meaningful for it.

I'm here to offer no answers, but a few fun activities that help me get out of that same mood. I feel you.

• Play some DOOM WADs. It's December, the Cacowards are here, and it's a beautiful time of the year to play through some of the most revered levels and mods. Pretty pure if you remember that the original devs open-sourced the engine, the community then built many source ports and now continues to churn out all levels of quality of mods and levels.
• Read some books. Feels bizarre and unusual these days to consciously choose something slower and ad-free and intentional, with nothing to interrupt you (per the power of the medium alone, alone). Not to mention the endless choice of genres and works to choose from. The bonus here is writing stuff yourself, which has a super low barrier of entry.
• Play THE FINALS. It's been going well for over 8 seasons now and offers the most unique FPS experience so far with its core gamemode and some twists on staple mechanics. As a long-term Counter-Strike player and a massive FPS enjoyer, this one is a breath of fresh air in so many ways.

That's on top of other wonderful suggestions in this thread.

But I think the most important would be to learn when to slow down and step away from the attention- and data-hungry apps and sites and whatever.

Entertainment is getting better overall

Old shows: 20+ episodes per season, little continuity between episodes (see: episodic vs serialized) and lots of filler

New shows: ~10 episodes per season, often with a story arc that lasts the entire season or longer and little filler

Streaming makes it easy to watch shows in order, which makes a serialized structure more feasible. It also offers greater flexibility in length and number of episodes. Ads are not a new thing but are easier to avoid now. The only time I really have to deal with ads are when I watch live sports.

You know it sounds like you were younger in the early 2000s. People have been saying this every generation and every leap Forward in technology. So you get the boomers talking about how they wish they could go back to the old TV and the old school everything. It really depends on as I keep saying on here how you consume your media and what you pay attention to. You don't know how many times I've said that on here. People are like I wish the internet was young again I wish I could not be influenced by so much politics so much strife so much negativity. I wish that I could go back to old school YouTube and see these things again. Hell most of those things are still available and are still on there you don't have to be influenced so much by all the negativity and all the politics around. You can just watch things as they happen and as they come out and still avoid a lot of that.

Yes.

I cut the cord from cable TV over a decade ago and never went back. It was getting bad then; I can't imagine how bad it is now.

A lot of the YouTubers from the 2010's are gone, but I've found enough new ones to justify getting YouTube Premium to skip the ads. I don't engage in individual videos, but I follow a set where YouTube can figure out what I want and I make sure to not watch any alt-right videos. I also subscribe to Dropout and Nebula, which shows the kind of videos I watch.

I've limited my news consumption to the Economist. It is expensive, but the bias is pretty muted in American News.

But overall, what we're seeing is a race to the bottom on all media. It used to be that media took up valuable space, either in physical space or bandwidth. Now, the cost is media space is near zero, so there is a drive to the bottom where that never existed a generation ago.

There's more good stuff to find than ever. It's just that it's hard to find. There's too much volume of content out there to sift through, and mainstream tastes have changed so it isn't as easy to find since the stuff that's popular really isn't your taste. You likely liked the stuff that's was popular back then. Look harder. Find the niche like-minded communities. Look for content related to what you already like. There are tons of new good movies, games, music, etc out now and you just need to find it. Even for news you can find the sources you like and filter out toxicity.

I do think its getting worse. Lots of media is just "hey remember that thing?". Sparingly its fine but for example the german movie "das Kanu des Manitu" a long awaited sequal, was all just "hey rememher this? That was in the first movie and it was great!".

Everything just is mainstreamed to get the most profit and no longer tell a story with emotions.

And this is defenetly me but older movies from the 60s-70s-80s, with their old microphones and cameras just feel like a story. How they catch the sound, it sounds like someone is retelling a tale.

Not just you. It’s worse. It’s all ads, not just the ad breaks, but the 14 billion product placements. Clickbait, rage bait, lies, exaggerated stories for views/sales. Rehash of the same plot/story again. Maybe a remake or reboot of a series that has already been milked to death. There still some quality out there. But it’s buried under a mountain of trash.

I don't see ads on my media aside from watching TV at a hotel every now and then. The secret ingridient is piracy but also privacy (tools) that block ads.

Those types of youtubers havent been replaced; they still exist, just hard to find because of so many low quality videos

Mathematically, music is getting less complex:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/04/melodies-chart-topping-music-less-complex-study

If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere...

I feel the same, but I just have a nas for my movies so I can enjoy them forever. Most of the current new movies are full of bullshit so I also mostly watch older movies where humanity still exists. You have to start gathering movies like this on physical media or they just will be gone whenever the streaming service wants them to.

I run Linux so I dont need to update my computer.

I dont have Facebook or Instagram.

I use Freetube app on my computer instead of YouTube so I dont have to see shorts, or ads for that matter.

I use Newpipe on my phone for the same reason.

So you can do some things to stay away from bullshit.

Just a reminder that COVID-19 shaves off 3 IQ points when you first get it, and 2 every time you're re-infected. Even more for long covid and hospitalization.

We can't keep pretending this hasn't had a noticeable, immediate effect on... everything.

I think there's a kernel of truth in what you say. I actually paid YouTube extortion to get premium but it doesn't matter. If the channel is large enough, they'll make the commercial as part of their "content". At my age I feel like I've already seen enough advertising for a lifetime. I'm so sick of being constantly solicited. If I really want to see something, I pay extra to avoid ads and if I can't I just walk away. Read a book.

literally

Okay, so we know you're 35 or 40 from the millennial signal.

You could be just getting old. You've lived long enough to have firm opinions and - more importantly - expectations. These are not being met, and you are coping less as your pragmatism wanes a bit with neuroplasticity.

But entertainment has gone a little shitty. Social media is a cancer on global communication, even as it offers the same. We're communicating now, so there's benefit, but the algorithm has definitely ruined us.

I say both.

There's just way more content today but probably the percentage of good vs. bad hasn't changed much. Finding the good in the sea of bad might be harder though. Actively maintain and curate your feeds.

And keep around indie web and federation etc. Internet used to be a niche domain of the nerds. It is happening again where some find it's just the time to depart from the mainstream web. Just don't get too attached to visible engagement.

For youtube you should use Revanced and the subscriptions feed. No ads, no garbage recommendations but just a small amount of effort.

I think movies are worse now, I may be getting old but I the time between "Wow, that was a great movie" seems to be getting longer.

On the other hand, TV shows are getting better, when I watched Firefly recently (don't kill me) it was good but not great while The Bear and Ted Lasso are just amazing.

Anime is also getting better, there are new animes that are great being released all the time. Chainsaw Man, Frieren, Solo Levelling, Delicious Dungeon and Dan Da Dan are all great picks that came out recently.

I feel like Steam is also really great these days, there's a bit of a downturn in AAA game quality but the indie scene is going strong. Slay the Spire, Hades and Balatro all came out semi recently. You're better served with getting some gaming recommendations since the catalog is so full of games that are worth playing you'll have to quit your job to actually get through them. I really would like to dump another 100 hours into Factorio to get through the Space Age DLC.

All in all, yeah, things are getting enshittified but there's still plenty of entertainment that's good being released every day.