I too grew up in an age of movies like Star Wars fighting an overtly fascist empire, of Indiana Jones killing nazis, of countless kid’s shows and cartoons emphasizing values like being accepting and not judging people by appearances, of shows like Star Trek explaining the complexity of human societies and using aliens to relay messages of understanding and empathy with others, of science and educational shows like everything on PBS… I thought FOR SURE that these lessons being seen by everyone would lead to a brighter future of mutual compassion and understanding between people.
Holy shit was I wrong. People didn’t watch ANY of that shit, and if they did, they didn’t think about it, and certainly didn’t take any lessons from it. A vast majority of media-consumers don’t engage with their entertainment I’ve learned, they just experience it and move on without any attempt at making mental effort. Even the lightest mental effort is too much for most people. I’m literally shocked we have the society we do knowing now exactly how ignorant most people are.
It’s a hot take, but I sorta blame the late 90s anti-hero for this. Obvs there’s other stuff going on too, but the media influence had a hand.
I’m a millennial, I grew up with Mr Rogers and Star Trek, but then came my edgy teenage years and all the girls argued about whether to fuck Spike or Angel from Buffy and all the boys wanted to be Tyler Durden. Then I graduated and I was weird for thinking Sheldon from Big Bang Theory was annoying, and characters like House and Blender were cool and lowkey enviable.
I really think a segment of my generation never stopped trying to be the lovable jerk that only exists in the movies.
As Gen X, I think I’ve seen all these cycles over and over again, media makes ostensible “role models” that people pattern themselves after, then the pattern changes suddenly as it does and leaves a generation stuck without direction as new role models take the stage and make all the previous adopters resentful of society.
Yeah, I feel like we can draw a direct line between Musk and the typical 90s-00s antihero. He’s acting like Light Yagami from Death Note, not Picard.
I’m mostly responding to “I thought FOR SURE that these lessons being seen by everyone would lead to a brighter future of mutual compassion and understanding between people.”, because those lessons were seen, but then portrayed as fuddy-duddy optimism by the media of my teens. The message got switched from “lets work together to figure out the solution” to “collaboration is a waste of time because the protagonist is always correct”, and I think that was combined with latchkey kids being normal, and it fucked up multiple generations.
I too grew up in an age of movies like Star Wars fighting an overtly fascist empire, of Indiana Jones killing nazis, of countless kid’s shows and cartoons emphasizing values like being accepting and not judging people by appearances, of shows like Star Trek explaining the complexity of human societies and using aliens to relay messages of understanding and empathy with others, of science and educational shows like everything on PBS… I thought FOR SURE that these lessons being seen by everyone would lead to a brighter future of mutual compassion and understanding between people.
Holy shit was I wrong. People didn’t watch ANY of that shit, and if they did, they didn’t think about it, and certainly didn’t take any lessons from it. A vast majority of media-consumers don’t engage with their entertainment I’ve learned, they just experience it and move on without any attempt at making mental effort. Even the lightest mental effort is too much for most people. I’m literally shocked we have the society we do knowing now exactly how ignorant most people are.
It’s a hot take, but I sorta blame the late 90s anti-hero for this. Obvs there’s other stuff going on too, but the media influence had a hand.
I’m a millennial, I grew up with Mr Rogers and Star Trek, but then came my edgy teenage years and all the girls argued about whether to fuck Spike or Angel from Buffy and all the boys wanted to be Tyler Durden. Then I graduated and I was weird for thinking Sheldon from Big Bang Theory was annoying, and characters like House and Blender were cool and lowkey enviable.
I really think a segment of my generation never stopped trying to be the lovable jerk that only exists in the movies.
As Gen X, I think I’ve seen all these cycles over and over again, media makes ostensible “role models” that people pattern themselves after, then the pattern changes suddenly as it does and leaves a generation stuck without direction as new role models take the stage and make all the previous adopters resentful of society.
Yeah, I feel like we can draw a direct line between Musk and the typical 90s-00s antihero. He’s acting like Light Yagami from Death Note, not Picard.
I’m mostly responding to “I thought FOR SURE that these lessons being seen by everyone would lead to a brighter future of mutual compassion and understanding between people.”, because those lessons were seen, but then portrayed as fuddy-duddy optimism by the media of my teens. The message got switched from “lets work together to figure out the solution” to “collaboration is a waste of time because the protagonist is always correct”, and I think that was combined with latchkey kids being normal, and it fucked up multiple generations.