I actually think the lockdowns in 2020 hastened the fall of western media. Because people were locked inside with nothing to do, they tried the standard media and realised how shit it is and couldn't relate to celebrities in their mansions as they were trapped in their small homes.
By comparison, there's been a huge rise in podcasts since they've been able to relate more to people by just shooting the shit. Vtubers rose too along with anime and manga for the fantasy escapism angle.
It was always going to fail on the path it's been on but 2020 just sped up the process.
That's a fantastic take on VTubers and may well be the piece of it I didn't understand.
People want escapism -- but celebrities revealed themselves to be vapid and out of touch to the normies. Something we have all known was suddenly laid bare for all to see. So, fake celebrities were the next best thing. A pure fantasy to get that same escapism.
I still think the whole thing is/was weird and cringey -- especially the kind of stuff you saw on /r/all for a long time in 21 and 22. But at least this helps me understand some theory as to why it came about.
I hope you have gotten off of reddit. When you help reduce their real human traffic you get em where it hurts, because the expense associated with fake traffic and narrative curation hinge on the substance of real traffic that you provide by being tolerant of them and interested in x sub
Western celebrities aren't a form of escapism any more because they're constantly on social media breaking the illusion. They're no longer just their characters. They're real people with bad opinions and horrible takes just like the rest of us, so the illusion has been permanently dispelled.
You don't have to worry too much about an anime or video game character getting drunk and calling all their fans Nazis on Twitter because anime characters aren't real. This keeps the fantasy real. Even when writers decide that your beloved childhood character is suddenly a pedophile, you can simply dismiss it as bad writing and refuse to accept it as canon. You can't do that with an actor who embodies a role in every way.
I think another issue is that so many celebrities are increasingly so fake in everything they do. Limited life experience, limited ambition and drive, and still being paid the big bucks in spite of being soulless husks compared to some of their predecessors.
And top of that they've become the most outspoken and whiny bitches, despite being well off financially and career-wise. It's of little surprise that "influencers" and vtubers seem to command just about as much attention and respect now, comparatively.
Yes. I consider that to be one of the worst effects of the lockdowns. It's actually worse than the millions dead. Holy fucking shit, every random knob goblin has a le podcast now. Total podcaster death.
My favorite part was when, at work, our internal software tooling team started doing podcasts instead of release notes. So instead of sending us a short list of changes in a new release that I could skim in two minutes, they shat out a 60-90 minute audio file where they jacked each other off about how they worked super hard. I would have murdered them but they were all in Australia. They all got shitcanned since, and I sincerely hope they're now sucking dick in a truck parking lot for a bowl of soup.
That sounds like the most dull thing in the world, and worst part is unlike YouTube you can't skip to the parts you want..
It's the same with streamers, vtuber, YouTubers etc for every successful one there are thousands of failures. The difference with podcasts is they see these people shooting the shit successfully and think why can't they do it.
Not realising the talent it takes to storycraft, engage with your fellow presenters and/or guests and the charisma it takes to draw someone you have never met in.
I think the long form, highly edited and greatly researched videos you find on youtube or odyssey are what is killing western media also. Why watch a movie about how bad white people are when you can learn about this very niche but interesting ARG someone made, have people lead you through it. Or why even bother with documentaries? Youtube's got thousands to any kinda topic you want and often times more accurate or interesting.
I think some parallels can be drawn to how awful some media in the 70's was for quite a while. And then the golden age of the 80's and 90's were born out of that boring hellscape (along with many technical advancements).
Not that everything in the 70's sucked mind you, but a lot of TV shows and movies, especially from the earlier part of the decade, were just bloody terrible. A lot of awful trends that had low entertainment value, like blaxploitation, hippie centered flicks, some of the grungy urbanite flicks, and a wide range of preachy and "artsy" lefty films that parallels today's so-called "storytellers".
There were exceptions of course, especially in film. And I think the music scene was probably one of the positive highlights of that era (which continued into the 80's, only to be slowly drowned into irrelevancy by the 90's and early 2000's).
It’s been a while since I’d last heard about the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.”
Here’s some information about it for those unfamiliar:
The term came from Michael Crichton’s speech “Why Speculate?” regarding misinformative, opinionated speculation in news media, delivered in 2002. This is the passage that originated the term:
Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann [the quantum physicist who won the 1969 Nobel Prize], and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.
But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
Pretty much just without lockdowns, I think they might've lasted till early 2030
Because people were stuck inside so were limited in entertainment options, people quickly realised how shit and TDS infected they were. A lot of the gains we are getting is because the lockdowns became a catalyst event that shortened the normie patience.
I actually think the lockdowns in 2020 hastened the fall of western media. Because people were locked inside with nothing to do, they tried the standard media and realised how shit it is and couldn't relate to celebrities in their mansions as they were trapped in their small homes.
By comparison, there's been a huge rise in podcasts since they've been able to relate more to people by just shooting the shit. Vtubers rose too along with anime and manga for the fantasy escapism angle.
It was always going to fail on the path it's been on but 2020 just sped up the process.
That's a fantastic take on VTubers and may well be the piece of it I didn't understand.
People want escapism -- but celebrities revealed themselves to be vapid and out of touch to the normies. Something we have all known was suddenly laid bare for all to see. So, fake celebrities were the next best thing. A pure fantasy to get that same escapism.
I still think the whole thing is/was weird and cringey -- especially the kind of stuff you saw on /r/all for a long time in 21 and 22. But at least this helps me understand some theory as to why it came about.
Thanks!
I hope you have gotten off of reddit. When you help reduce their real human traffic you get em where it hurts, because the expense associated with fake traffic and narrative curation hinge on the substance of real traffic that you provide by being tolerant of them and interested in x sub
Oh yeah. Barely check it for baseball news these days, but never even go on /r/all anymore.
When they killed their API they lost me as a user. I would never use their cancerous app or give them a dollop of revenue.
Western celebrities aren't a form of escapism any more because they're constantly on social media breaking the illusion. They're no longer just their characters. They're real people with bad opinions and horrible takes just like the rest of us, so the illusion has been permanently dispelled.
You don't have to worry too much about an anime or video game character getting drunk and calling all their fans Nazis on Twitter because anime characters aren't real. This keeps the fantasy real. Even when writers decide that your beloved childhood character is suddenly a pedophile, you can simply dismiss it as bad writing and refuse to accept it as canon. You can't do that with an actor who embodies a role in every way.
I think another issue is that so many celebrities are increasingly so fake in everything they do. Limited life experience, limited ambition and drive, and still being paid the big bucks in spite of being soulless husks compared to some of their predecessors.
And top of that they've become the most outspoken and whiny bitches, despite being well off financially and career-wise. It's of little surprise that "influencers" and vtubers seem to command just about as much attention and respect now, comparatively.
Yes. I consider that to be one of the worst effects of the lockdowns. It's actually worse than the millions dead. Holy fucking shit, every random knob goblin has a le podcast now. Total podcaster death.
For every good one, you got 20 copycats that are really shit at it
That'll never change unless EVERY person is capable of introspection which will happen at the heat death of the universe..
My favorite part was when, at work, our internal software tooling team started doing podcasts instead of release notes. So instead of sending us a short list of changes in a new release that I could skim in two minutes, they shat out a 60-90 minute audio file where they jacked each other off about how they worked super hard. I would have murdered them but they were all in Australia. They all got shitcanned since, and I sincerely hope they're now sucking dick in a truck parking lot for a bowl of soup.
Man, I thought the mandatory Monday meetings that could have been an email were bad.
That sounds like the most dull thing in the world, and worst part is unlike YouTube you can't skip to the parts you want..
It's the same with streamers, vtuber, YouTubers etc for every successful one there are thousands of failures. The difference with podcasts is they see these people shooting the shit successfully and think why can't they do it.
Not realising the talent it takes to storycraft, engage with your fellow presenters and/or guests and the charisma it takes to draw someone you have never met in.
I think the long form, highly edited and greatly researched videos you find on youtube or odyssey are what is killing western media also. Why watch a movie about how bad white people are when you can learn about this very niche but interesting ARG someone made, have people lead you through it. Or why even bother with documentaries? Youtube's got thousands to any kinda topic you want and often times more accurate or interesting.
I think some parallels can be drawn to how awful some media in the 70's was for quite a while. And then the golden age of the 80's and 90's were born out of that boring hellscape (along with many technical advancements).
Not that everything in the 70's sucked mind you, but a lot of TV shows and movies, especially from the earlier part of the decade, were just bloody terrible. A lot of awful trends that had low entertainment value, like blaxploitation, hippie centered flicks, some of the grungy urbanite flicks, and a wide range of preachy and "artsy" lefty films that parallels today's so-called "storytellers".
There were exceptions of course, especially in film. And I think the music scene was probably one of the positive highlights of that era (which continued into the 80's, only to be slowly drowned into irrelevancy by the 90's and early 2000's).
It’s been a while since I’d last heard about the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.”
Here’s some information about it for those unfamiliar:
The term came from Michael Crichton’s speech “Why Speculate?” regarding misinformative, opinionated speculation in news media, delivered in 2002. This is the passage that originated the term:
Pretty much just without lockdowns, I think they might've lasted till early 2030
Because people were stuck inside so were limited in entertainment options, people quickly realised how shit and TDS infected they were. A lot of the gains we are getting is because the lockdowns became a catalyst event that shortened the normie patience.
They still weren't worth the death toll though.