A Boring Dystopia

I'd like someone to call out for once how most media "for adults" nowadays is, by default, extremely violent and sexually explicit... call it the GoT phenomenon.

To be clear, I'm glad that media is no longer bound by the puritanical and often hypocritical FCC standards, and that subscription cable like HBO and streaming networks like Netflix have freedom of expression. But now everything aimed at adults, it seems, is also rated for adults. Where are the emotionally/intellectually mature stories that are also fun and joyous? That there are adults singing along to KPop DH in theaters as the article mentions shows that there's clearly an untapped market here (imagine a similarly bright and flashy movie with catchy music but also a decent plot? How popular could that become!). The article also calls out cozy games and other "childish" things... How much of this is because of arrested development vs a desire to engage with entertainment that isn't a deluge of blood, sex, and misery?

I'm sure some of these people genuinely enjoy their childish media because it's childish, but many are just trying to engage with something bright, cheery, fun, and not reminiscent of the nightmare that is reality.

If an adult can get some escapism out of a trip to Disney, more power to them. But Disney is making money off of its customers, you say? What a weird article.

Let's stop getting butthurt about the preferences of others. There are real problems right now. Lots of them.

I don't see the connection between the "Disney adults" described by this article and the wider "kidult culture" that's supposedly characterized by playing Stardew Valley and watching K-Pop Demon Hunters.

On the one hand, this article points to people spending huge sums of money to permanently live in a constructed escapist fantasy, and on the other hand you have (relatively) cheap media where someone might spend a few hours engaging with in their free time each day.

Calling out "cozy games" where you "tend vegetable gardens" is especially odd: The clearest connection to escapism in those games is about living in a community where everyone is connected on a personal level. You know, the very thing capitalist society abolishes for profit every day. I don't see where enjoyment of that media connects to living a Disney-themed life, basically the complete opposite.

Who cares? Look around, the world is shit. Is it really surprising that there are people who try to escape this reality for a few days by spending their money to visit a place specifically built to provide joy and wonder?

Like damn, don't y'all have better things to do than shit on people's coping mechanisms?

Some people just like Disney world. It's not some in depth cultural phenomenon. Disney is an escape. Some people like it.

Others play video games, jerk off to anime feet, or argue about which Linux distribution is best for jerking off to anime feet on a chrome fork.

Sounds fun!

Thats not describing "kidults" , but basically your regular basic normie consumer; just with "disney" tints, or a "geeky" millenial. People trained and raised to believe someone else always has the answer and the responsibility, and that the only thing they can do to somehow change their situation in life is to buy/consume something different.

American culture is stuck in adolescence because culture has shifted towards the complete annihilation of any and all significant rites of passage into adulthood.

A child is someone that needs to be told what they can and can't do.
An adolescent is someone who tests the limits of what they can and can't do.
An adult is someone who enforces socially responsible limits of what they themselves and others can and can't do.

Never telling people "these are now your responsibilities towards others and we all expect you to take them seriously" in an in-equivocal ceremonial way is how you destroy a society.

No families can afford theme parks in this economy.

Arrested development/immaturity, hedonism and consumerism are often comorbid. 🤷

The symptoms are not as important as the sources, though.

Really didn't expect that reference...

In Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard once wrote that Disneyland is “presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”

Baudrillard now says he was off base with that book, but it's hard to write it off after the last decade.

Disney adults are the most cringe shit ever.

Capitalism exploits compulsions to extract resources causing markets to neglect investing in themselves.