I think it being "woke" was one of its lesser sins. Sure, it had things like pride pins on a lesbian character that obviously had to let you know she was a lesbian at multiple points of the film so you wouldn't look past it, but in my eyes it was just another pale imitation of what came before it with shallow attempts at being "meta" or "clever" like the others.
What made the original Scream work was its fresh twists and genuine unpredictability. On a first watch you suspect everyone and hope characters you like aren't next on the block (or wind up being the killer). On subsequent watches you get to pick up on all of the subtle (or not so subtle) attempts at subversion, misdirection or genuine tells that you missed because it was so thoughtfully put together. This lessened with each sequel and died entirely with Wes Craven. Carefully crafted scenes and characters were replaced with "fuck it i'm flipping my murder switch" out of complete left field, and characters that did have tells or build up towards being the actual killer... just weren't. Subversion!! Ha ha ha.
Scream 5 is just a poor retread of borrowed and copied elements from its better predecessors while doing nothing clever or interesting.
You know what would've been a great twist? Dewey actually got one of the killers in the hospital. Boom. Suddenly you're questioning their connection with everybody else, wonder what the death of their accomplice will drive the other to do, watching for tells when people learn the news and what they do with the information after, tons of things we haven't seen in one of the other movies. A kind of mid movie climax that simmers back down before the big finale. Or to really subvert from the 'requel' idea, the main killer could've ended up being Stuart as hinted from the scrapped Scream 3 script back in the day - it'd be an actual out-of-left-field that'd fit with the series and be more entertaining than Richie (Jack Quaid) suddenly deciding he wanted in on the murder trend for no real justifiable reason.
tl;dr - Modern movie sequels lack the clever writing and direction that made their predecessors worth watching even all these decades later and will be forgotten about almost as soon as they leave the big screen.
It's just an expansion of the distrust all government and institutional organizations have accrued over the past ten-ish years since the left started becoming more and more authoritarian and unhinged. They just can't help making every single faucet of life some kind of political point scoring game, and the more they do it, the further any trust in anything they have a hand in is lowered, to the point where I can't name a single non-biased one that functions independently of ideology.
pretending the left are larger than they actually are
This has been a thing for about a decade now. Social media, "checking your thinking" visits and mobs-for-hire like the ones that spring up out of nowhere try to give the illusion that common sense values and viewpoints are uncouth at best and verboten at worst, but in reality they (the left) represent a very vocal (albeit powerful as they're in power at both sides of the political aisle and have an iron grip on almost every major institution) minority of the population.
If a typical town was taken to a field and asked to split on a common sense issue, I'd wager 7/10 would end up on the "right wing" response, 2/10 would be in the middle as unsure or shaky in their beliefs due to propaganda and indoctrination, and only 1/10 would be true believers in the garbage you're expected to swallow with a smile.
Good.
They decided a long time ago that the core audience who supported them was no longer who they cared about. Not only are they refusing to acknowledge that fact and refusing to make things people actually want to play, they've quadrupled down so many times in various aspects it's hard to keep track. I'd like nothing more than for them to shutter forever out of spite after how many beloved franchises they've desecrated through almost a decade of incompetence and greed.
I bought the game a while back (maybe two years ago?) and still didn't get around to it. If I could refund it I would.
I'm just done with the content treadmill in general.
You can also right click the search bar, go to the search submenu then disable "Show Search Highlights" if you like the bar big but not with iconography.
They can try and memory hole it all they like, I'll never buy anything from under their umbrella ever again.
The best parts of their articles are where they get "opinion" or "voice" sections which feature three to five paragraphs of far left political drivel from someone like Laura Kuenssberg. They slip those in there to (likely) bypass any sort of guidelines on inserting their organisational opinions into otherwise benign decisions or events in an effort to control the narrative.
It's been a thing online for a long time. The concept is that you're paying for someone who'll run "quality" sessions, know the rules, basically ensure you can just drop in and have fun with friends or other strangers without going to any lengths yourself aside from paying 'em.
These days you get a lot of insufferable people also looking for the "Critical Role" experience too.
It's awful. I watched it as a joke with a friend about half a decade ago and we barely managed to last through it while riffling the entire time. Zero redeeming qualities.
"And you aren't allowed to have that, bigot."
t. the executive producer, probably.
I've been doing it with Youtube as of late. The moment I even detect anything leaning towards that fabricated, twisted worldview? I just turn it off and never return to the channel. I'm not enduring it and rolling my eyes any more.
It's just the Ship of Theseus paradox in the form of a company. Really, nearly none of the companies we once enjoyed the games of are comprised of the same talent any more, so them making even comparable quality products with political activists and lower grade talent at the helm is incredibly unlikely.
That's another factor too.
Normies. That's as simple as it is.
Let them eat each other. I don't care at this point.