When did pop culture really go bad?

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Social Media and the "Mainstreaming" of the internet.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Thankfully we have a ton of great shit to mine from the past. It's rather stark how much better old movies and music are.

Any of you guys think the arts will ever get great again? We live in a disgustingly degenerate, stagnant at best, culture.

I think they will, but it's going to rely on self-publishing and low-budget works distributed via the internet and other platforms, especially at first. The COVID-19 pandemics could end up helping level the playing field, especially if you can get struggling movie theaters to air your low-budget films or if entrepreneurs bring back grindhouses/dollar theaters since the overhead on them is a lot lower than the chain multiplexes

The digital revolution has brought one big thing that can help this along, and that's reducing the costs to make a low-budget movie and making self-publishing books and comics actually viable for the first time since it's cheaper to make a PDF and sell it online than to order a large run of printed books.

Honestly, the issue with movies is that it often becomes "indie" and not independent. Aside from guys like The Asylum or Blumhouse who both predated the Great Recession, all the low-budget independent stuff tends to be pretentious femme arthouse hipster garbage aimed at pseudo-intellectual snobs.

Low-budget genre movies need to make a comeback, as do low-budget dramas that aren't pretentious indie arthouse shit. Scorsese's early works like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets were pretty low budget.

But you'd have to start with genre fiction and genre movies, since they're a lot more viable of a market for low budget movies and self-published books and they're also generally more enjoyable than "real art" films and literary fiction (seriously, the vast majority of literary fiction made after the 1960's has been pretentious boring garbage) and genre works are more likely to have a direct impact on pop culture too.

You can't rely on the corporations to do this, it'd have to be DIY, especially at the start of it

The truth is pop culture started to go to shit all the way back in the 1990s, think Michael Bay, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Batman & Robin, Armageddon (Michael Bay again), The Phantom Menace (easy to be more forgiving of the Prequels now after Disney, but they're still not great movies)

Then you had some really horrendous shit in the 2000s like those absolutely rancid spoof "Movie" movies (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie) and Michael Bay's Transformers movies, which might have been what got the ball rolling on Hollywood caring more about China's box office then the US's.

Things just kept getting stupider and stupider until suddenly there was a turning point where things were no longer just stupid but started to become genuinely evil, which is what today's "woke" media is, but that's kind of like the final nail in the coffin, not the start of things going bad, but as an aside I would say the woke era of media really started in a big way in 2016 with the all female Ghostbusters.

I'm focusing mainly on movies but this applies to music and TV as well, although I have less expertise on those things, but it seems to me like the "golden age" of TV that started with The Sopranos ended when Mad Men ended in 2015 and music never fully recovered from the boy band, Britney Spears era of the late 90s.



It's especially stark when you listen to something like Pink Floyd, no modern musician could hope to match the brilliance of something like Dark Side of The Moon or Wish You Were Here.

It's also especially stark when you compare the Spielberg blockbusters, your Raiders of The Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park etc with today's blockbusters.

It is sad, and I think a lot of it has to do with corporate consolidation. Music went to shit earlier and keeps getting worse since it got consolidated a lot earlier than TV and movies did.

As I mentioned earlier, I think we need to get together and make low-budget and self-published works that are a direct antithesis to the Woke Left and mainstream culture. But it'll have to be largely apolitical or done via subtext at first to avoid the wrath of the payment processors. An apolitical counter-culture is going to be far more effective than the abortive attempt at a right-wing one that was the Alt-Right.

This kind of countercultural media would work as a way to say "Let's have fun again. No more brand lifestyles. No more identity politics or pretentious and dubious notions of artistic depth. Life sucks, let's enjoy what we can." and I think after the nightmare of 2020, a lot of people will flock to that.

Yes, it'd be based on escapism (cue the pseudo-intellectuals clutching their pearls) but it's a different kind of escapism. One that is more edgy and cathartic as opposed to Tumblr rainbow woke punk garbage and soy beardo consoomer capeshit.

To use a music analogy, we need something that's a lot less pretentious punk and indie but is a lot more fun heavy metal and classic rock instead.

 

[Garm]

Thankfully we have a ton of great shit to mine from the past. It's rather stark how much better old movies and music are.

Any of you guys think the arts will ever get great again? We live in a disgustingly degenerate, stagnant at best, culture.

On the one hand, humans only have so many emotions and stories to be told.

On the other, once people start doing their own things instead of consuming things might get better.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Social Media and the "Mainstreaming" of the internet.

It made it worse but it started before most people used the internet or social media took off.

American culture was already getting stupid, think Jerry Springer, Reality TV, the internet only made things that much worse.

It’s always been shit. The good to shit ratio is the same for all eras. Nostalgia and the passage of time filters out and memory holes all the bad pop culture garbage of the good old days.

There's always been dreck but the dreck to quality ratio has only favored dreck more and more.

Even yesterday's dreck has a newfound charm these days in the woke era, seriously, just about any movie from the past just feels so refreshing because the goal is usually only to entertain you, not sell you on an evil ideology.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

American culture was already getting stupid, think Jerry Springer, Reality TV,

That wasn't stupid though, that was cheap. Jerry barely makes more than Rachel Maddow.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

Can't pinpoint exact moment but when we started the politicization and pseudo-intellectual of it.

I remember it starting when steampunk and zombies were the talk of the internet. The overabundance of Steampunk and zombie were annoying but what was even more annoying was the protosjw writing how anybody who liked steampunk was an romanticizing the horrible social/work conditions of the Victorian era and if you enjoyed zombie apocalypse fiction you were just a cryptoracist who wanted to "other" a group to act our your violent fantasies on.

 

[Starscreams Cape]

I trace it back to, as the OP said, the Whedonization of drama, where every character is a snarky, smarmy jackass. But also when unfunny, safe, PC, "millenial humor" started to make inroads. Cringy as fuck. Look at the first few seasons of something like "The Office" and "Parks and Rec" compared to their final seasons. Night and day. The ascendance of the Mindy Kalings and the Whitney Cummings of the world was the herald of doom for good TV comedy.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

People who say pop culture always has sucked forget that a lot of the good stuff we look back to WAS pop culture. The Beatles, Kinks, Who, Rolling Stones were all good bands and they were THE bands of the mid to late 60s (Kinks and Who moreso in the UK, but still).

The mainstream 80s movies like Bladerunner were big back in the day and are considered classics today and rightfully so. Today, we're just rebooting these old franchises endlessly because imagination is running on empty.

Cyberpunk is the new big thing. Will anyone actually invent anything new? Something past cyberpunk, steampunk, zombies, wizards, swords 'n scorcery, anything? Even Lovecraftian stuff is starting to get stale as people are just poorly aping Lovecraft (who we must never name because he was R A C I S T!!!)

 

[NevskyProspekt]

It's especially stark when you listen to something like Pink Floyd, no modern musician could hope to match the brilliance of something like Dark Side of The Moon or Wish You Were Here.

I would qualify this by adding that there is some really brilliant music being produced out there, and if you dig deep enough you can find it - especially internationally/outside the U.S. and U.K.. Russia has some brilliant neo-new wave and post-punk acts that have popped up recently, like Molchat Doma and Tesla Boy, Niger has produced Bombino - a brilliant guitarist from the nomadic Taureg people, Cambodia has the Cambodian Space Project reviving the huge psychedelic scene of Phnom Penh pre-Khmer Rouge takeover, Hungary has the Qualitons and Shugo Tokumaru of Japan is one of the most brilliantly creative songwriters and musicians I've heard in quite some time. The dude practically created his own genre. The problem is that creativity on that level isn't getting the platform it used to have, and the Anglo west's popular culture has entered a severe state of creative dryness.

 

[Dom Cruise]

That wasn't stupid though, that was cheap. Jerry barely makes more than Rachel Maddow.

Jerry Springer was a cultural phenomenon in the 90s though and it set a bad tone, it was the first time mainstream culture celebrated idiocy and made it "cool", you can trace Springer to later Reality TV like Jersey Shore giving total idiots a platform and making them "cool"

The 1990s and 2000s were preferable to today, but you can't deny that they had their own problems which I think is part of the reason why we're in the shape we're in now.

Basically there was an element in 1990s and 2000s culture that was very hedonistic and very idiotic, think the whole spring break type culture, mainstream culture as a whole just got pretty dumbed down and I question if it was all by design, because how many people today chanting Black Lives Matter and preaching other SJW talking points thought Jersey Shore was worth watching a decade ago and thus their minds were easily malleable by Marxist influence?

Of course that's not the whole story as I know some people who would poo poo Jersey Shore back in the day but drink the SJW Kool-Aid now, but still, American culture as a whole was dumbed down, then it started promoting Marxism, almost as if the goal was to first break down traditional morality and make things very hedonistic and nihilistic so that it would be easier to sell people on a new type of morality.

Can't pinpoint exact moment but when we started the politicization and pseudo-intellectual of it.

I remember it starting when steampunk and zombies were the talk of the internet. The overabundance of Steampunk and zombie were annoying but what was even more annoying was the protosjw writing how anybody who liked steampunk was an romanticizing the horrible social/work conditions of the Victorian era and if you enjoyed zombie apocalypse fiction you were just a cryptoracist who wanted to "other" a group to act our your violent fantasies on.

In David Wong's second John Dies At The End book a character thinks about another character who is obsessed with zombies how much they would love to "slap them and slap them and slap them"

I trace it back to, as the OP said, the Whedonization of drama, where every character is a snarky, smarmy jackass. But also when unfunny, safe, PC, "millenial humor" started to make inroads. Cringy as fuck. Look at the first few seasons of something like "The Office" and "Parks and Rec" compared to their final seasons. Night and day. The ascendance of the Mindy Kalings and the Whitney Cummings of the world was the herald of doom for good TV comedy.

I think an aspect of "Whedonization" isn't just snarky dialog or whatever but also a deconstructionist view of things, while I really enjoyed the movie Joss Whedon wrote, The Cabin In The Woods and still do, looking back on it today, with how the whole thing is a metaphor for the horror genre itself and how it ends with a literal apocalypse, as if saying that Whedon believes it's time for the horror genre to end, it nows seems like a metaphor and a warning (since it came out in 2012) for the cultural apocalypse SJWs have been enacting in the years since.

They are so narcissistic and so full of themselves that they think they've "cracked the code" for how society and culture function and since they dislike a lot of what they see they think they have the right to tear everything down, that history should end with them.

To use The Cabin In The Woods as a metaphor for this again when some of the characters learn the awful truth of the world they decide that the apocalypse needs to happen, they stop the people trying to prevent it, it's hard not to look at that and see SJWs learning the "truth" that America is a "racist society" and deciding it all needs to be burned down because of it.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

it was the first time mainstream culture celebrated idiocy and made it "cool",

Oh please as if anyone celebrated what went on in Jerry Springer. The show was at it's absolute worst..the same thing that this website is founded on..pointing at Retards and laughing.

The entirety of Jerry's supposed popularity were "Oh god look at those retards" and that is even if you really believe that Springer was all that popular and not blown out of proportion by The Media so that they could put out stories about how "Terrible it is people watch this." in their era's version of click bait.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Oh please as if anyone celebrated what went on in Jerry Springer. The show was at it's absolute worst..the same thing that this website is founded on..pointing at Retards and laughing.

The entirety of Jerry's supposed popularity were "Oh god look at those retards" and that is even if you really believe that Springer was all that popular and not blown out of proportion by The Media so that they could put out stories about how "Terrible it is people watch this." in their era's version of click bait.

Maybe you're right, I was only a kid at the time and under the impression that people wanted to be idiots so that they could get on TV, but maybe I was wrong.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Oh please as if anyone celebrated what went on in Jerry Springer. The show was at it's absolute worst..the same thing that this website is founded on..pointing at Retards and laughing

Jerry Springer was a cultural phenomenon in the 90s though and it set a bad tone, it was the first time mainstream culture celebrated idiocy and made it "cool", you can trace Springer to later Reality TV like Jersey Shore giving total idiots a platform and making them "cool"

I'll give my personal anecdote: I was in my pre-teens at the height of trashy talk show mania. My parents loved Springer (as well as other shows at the time like Maury), kids from school watched it, my friends parents loved it, and no one that I remember in the media ever condemned the show sans for the typical religious right mouthpieces like in the religious section of the newspapers. This was long before social media and YouTube, so obviously there were no cancel brigades nor commentary channels to slam the show, but most people I knew legitimately enjoyed trashy talk shows and watched the hell out of Springer...my parents especially, and they were both Christians. Whether they watched it for the same reason why we're all on Kiwi Farms (i.e. laughing at retards) is debatable, but the general consensus from everyone I knew was that it was great and enjoyable. I remember there was even a show on E! called "Talk Soup" that showed clip highlights of shitty talk shows from the 90's, and my parents were glued to the TV when that show aired.

 

[Dark Emporer Dood]

Pop Culture went kaput when it decided to stop and chase its tail for the next 20 years onward, endlessly trying to necromance dead franchises while replacing any genuine craftsmanship with "efficiency" . Be it cartoons or movies, many of them spend more time researching references and their source material instead of actually making something fresh and putting some work into making it any good. We've forgotten that it was people that made these old ideas work, not just how they drew a pair of eyes.

Of course this isnt just the studios, its us too.

 

[Xerxes IX]

Joss Whedon's writing style has ruined storytelling (perhaps more than Bad Robot). These days it's near impossible to have a dramatic scene or tense sequence without one character making a quip, like if the whole thing was just a joke.

I think that's what's so infuriating about how steeped in irony modern culture is. It's like these writers are pathologically incapable of being sincere about anything. The only thing creators seem to be sincere about, or have any passion for, is their political views. And that makes everything feel like the low quality Christian media people used to mock.

Michael Bay's Transformers movies, which might have been what got the ball rolling on Hollywood caring more about China's box office then the US's.

The MCU is really just Bayformers done successfully, isn't it? The consensus on Bayformers was it was disposable trash, but MCU simultaneously managed to be fast food for mindless consumption and convince others it meant something. Since all other attempts to copy the formula failed and the MCU looks like it's done for, what with the pandemic shutdowns and the death of one of their future major players, I really think the MCU was just in the right place at the right time. It started at the right time. It exploded in popularity at the right time. Hell, it even ended at the right time. The MCU and safe CGIfest summer blockbusters are a fad and studios definitely can't rely on them anymore if they want to survive.

As I mentioned earlier, I think we need to get together and make low-budget and self-published works that are a direct antithesis to the Woke Left and mainstream culture. But it'll have to be largely apolitical or done via subtext at first to avoid the wrath of the payment processors. An apolitical counter-culture is going to be far more effective than the abortive attempt at a right-wing one that was the Alt-Right.

This kind of countercultural media would work as a way to say "Let's have fun again. No more brand lifestyles. No more identity politics or pretentious and dubious notions of artistic depth. Life sucks, let's enjoy what we can." and I think after the nightmare of 2020, a lot of people will flock to that.

Yes, it'd be based on escapism (cue the pseudo-intellectuals clutching their pearls) but it's a different kind of escapism. One that is more edgy and cathartic as opposed to Tumblr rainbow woke punk garbage and soy beardo consoomer capeshit.

To use a music analogy, we need something that's a lot less pretentious punk and indie but is a lot more fun heavy metal and classic rock instead.

I think "having fun isn't hurting anyone" will be a winning countercultural message. Before culture wars went off the rails SJWs were poorly regarded precisely because of their NO FUN ALLOWED attitude. It'll be a relief especially after this year, where the loudest voices on the Left are shouting at the top of their lungs that if you don't care hard enough about the miserable state of the world you are a monster.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

I think that's what's so infuriating about how steeped in irony modern culture is. It's like these writers are pathologically incapable of being sincere about anything. The only thing creators seem to be sincere about, or have any passion for, is their political views. And that makes everything feel like the low quality Christian media people used to mock.

The MCU is really just Bayformers done successfully, isn't it? The consensus on Bayformers was it was disposable trash, but MCU simultaneously managed to be fast food for mindless consumption and convince others it meant something. Since all other attempts to copy the formula failed and the MCU looks like it's done for, what with the pandemic shutdowns and the death of one of their future major players, I really think the MCU was just in the right place at the right time. It started at the right time. It exploded in popularity at the right time. Hell, it even ended at the right time. The MCU and safe CGIfest summer blockbusters are a fad and studios definitely can't rely on them anymore if they want to survive.

I think "having fun isn't hurting anyone" will be a winning countercultural message. Before culture wars went off the rails SJWs were poorly regarded precisely because of their NO FUN ALLOWED attitude. It'll be a relief especially after this year, where the loudest voices on the Left are shouting at the top of their lungs that if you don't care hard enough about the miserable state of the world you are a monster.

Phase 4 is gonna be interesting the only thing I’m excited for are Black Widow and Dr Strange 2. Thor 4 and Wandavision have the potential to go either way. On the one hand Watiti is returning for Thor 4 but it’s also adapting the femthor shit. Wandavision will either be brilliant or absolutely pretentious trash. Eternals will likely be the first mcu film to actually be bad rather than just be mediocre. It will also likely be the first flop. I’m indifferent to the rest. Phase four will be the beginning of the end... and that may be a good thing

 

[Dom Cruise]

Pop Culture went kaput when it decided to stop and chase its tail for the next 20 years onward, endlessly trying to necromance dead franchises while replacing any genuine craftsmanship with "efficiency" . Be it cartoons or movies, many of them spend more time researching references and their source material instead of actually making something fresh and putting some work into making it any good. We've forgotten that it was people that made these old ideas work, not just how they drew a pair of eyes.

Of course this isnt just the studios, its us too.

I think the failure of The Matrix sequels is what kind of killed off new ideas for movies, everyone reacted so negatively to them and mocked them so thoroughly Hollywood has been afraid not to shelter everything in irony and make everything a new take on a well established idea ever since.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I think the failure of The Matrix sequels is what kind of killed off new ideas for movies, everyone reacted so negatively to them and mocked them so thoroughly Hollywood has been afraid not to shelter everything in irony and make everything a new take on a well established idea ever since.

The Wachowski Brothers are untalented hacks and proof that troons ruin everything.

I'll be honest, I didn't even like the first Matrix but I get why it was very popular and a big deal at the time. The issue was that the sequels were shit and the Wachowski Brothers are all flash and no substance most of the time. The Matrix is very much a movie that was successful partly due to spectacle and the novelty of the film at the time it came out, and it did tie in really well in the wider cultural zeitgeist. But it's also the kind of movie that only works one time and the sequels were just pointless.

Now, if they kept them to being Direct-to-DVD fare like the surprisingly good Animatrix, I think the impact the sequels had wouldn't be as bad.

The Matrix tried to be sincerely cool but the sequels ruined that and I do think that is part of why Whedon's style of irony, pseudo-intellectualism, and pretentious snark became increasingly dominant. Nobody wants to try to be sincerely "cool" because you set yourself up for ridicule if you fail.

At this point, maybe we should give it a second chance and don the trenchcoat and sunglasses, shave the beard, and ditch the dangerhair punk and soy hipster garbage. No more attempts at being "deep" or ironic or "self-aware". Embrace being "edgy" and "problematic" but don't go out of your way to overdo it.

I think the most successful kind of counterculture would be a "let's just unironically have fun again with no strings attached", especially after the woke malaise of the 2010's and the horrors of 2020 in particular.

@Harbinger of Kali Yuga mentions that we haven't had a new genre or aesthetic in a while, and that may be true, but at the same time, there's nothing new under the sun so to speak.

At this point, merely taking a neglected or dead genre and playing the tropes and aesthetics completely straight without any irony, snark, or subverted take on it would be seen as novel and refreshing in and of itself. Especially if it's a "problematic" genre like Westerns, war movies, or certain subgenres of horror like slashers and cannibal movies.

Horror would probably be one of the easier routes to start in, since it lends itself well to low-budget affairs and has a built-in audience.

Imagine if you made a low-budget horror movie in the vein of Deliverance or Texas Chain Saw Massacre but the bad guys are inner-city blacks instead of typical white trash hillbillies or a old-school slasher where the killer is mainly going after SJW's, punks, hipsters, and the like but it's played dead straight with no irony or self-awareness.

While that may be subversions on the surface, it would get people talking. Especially if you don't play up the undertones of race or politics. Like a murderous gang preying on the stranded suburban family might be inner-city blacks or maybe even drop a few subtle hints they're hardcore black supremacists, but don't play it up and don't draw any explicit attention to it if you don't have to.

To the protagonists, it doesn't matter who the attackers are and why it's happening, it's just happening and they have to find a way to survive it. Same goes for the slasher movies.

A lot of the slashers of the 80's played on the pop culture tropes and archetypes of the time like the typical jocks, spoiled Valley Girls, nerds, pranksters, maybe even the occasional punk or delinquent. The earliest slashers like Halloween and Friday the 13th and the proto-slashers of the 1970's like The Last House on The Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre even dealt with the remnants of the hippies and subcultures of the late 60's and 70's

Imagine if you did a new slasher movie that wasn't a remake/reboot or an ironic snarky take on the genre like Scream.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Because people don't innovate anymore, either because they can't or most often because they're unable to thanks to the corporate suits, payment processors. One thing that's easy to notice in the past 10-15 years is how rare anything truly innovative is. It's pretty much just imitation or at best sliding the puzzle pieces around to make simple new patterns or refining the puzzle pieces to make them look better. You almost never see people making up entirely new pieces like in the decades before and when they do it's something totally unappealing, novelty for novelty's sake.I think a big part of the problem is that people mistake slamming a bunch of influences together with actual creativity. Like take (classic) Star Wars, it's influenced a lot of people but how many of those people will ever try and immerse themselves in George Lucas's own influences when making Star Wars?

Now, the consolidation of corporate media is one of the worst factors. Like they can't even get smart or clever messages about how fragile white people are or why we need to burn, loot, and murder for racial justice, they just hire their friends in a nepotistic network and let them write for pennies. You see this at work with Disney Star Wars and at Marvel and DC with writers like Chuck Wendig. These people get jobs because they're willing to work basically for free and when they do have a job they hire their friends who also are willing to work basically for free. It's a huge part of why SJW culture sucks. I notice you don't see it as much in music since talented SJW artists (they exist, just like how there's good Christian rock) and it's easier to get new music out there and noticed than it is a new book, movie, etc.

Rising cost of production and studio conservatism has ultimately strangled and killed so much creativity. People were bringing up anime, there's a reason pretty much everything is a manga/LN adaption or a sequel/remake nowadays. They want something they know will sell without a doubt, not just taking a chance on "this is a cool idea, I bet it will sell big if we make it." I think around 2011/2012 there was a huge dropoff in quality, originality, and just willingness to take risks. This would be the second dropoff after sometime in the early 2000s. While it is a novel adaption, it blows my mind they made three seasons worth of Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars which for better or worse is insanely dense in worldbuilding and with a very unique sort of writing and aesthetic. You would never even see a single season of something like that now because it's too difficult for your normie Jap to follow and doesn't have enough fanservice and waifu figures to sell.

But people still like originality and well-written, well-produced works, it's just now the only place to turn is independent distribution which is a pain to sort through the generic, the garbage, and all manner of trash. At the same time, it's even harder for a good writer, musician, etc. to get their stuff noticed with spending a ton of time on self-promotion. That used to be the role of publishers and businesses but it's blatantly obvious those people either no longer exist, are utterly abysmal at their job (i.e. the nepotism), or are too compromised by the big corporations to be of any use. And then there's stuff like crowdfunding, which while in theory great, actually small creators struggle to get anything out of it and it ends up being used by washed-up has-beens to crowdfund their own stuff based on nostalgia which in many cases fails due to them overpromising and having no one to rein them in.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

I think it all started when we gave women the right to vote. That was our first mistake. Our second mistake was not revoking that right the moment they started ruining everything wholesome about anything and replacing it with their own sick brand of degeneracy.

I'm only joking, mostly.