Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
Do you see an end to pop culture within our lifetimes?
Undeniably, we've reached the bookend to the 80's blockbuster era of mega franchises like Star Wars. But the vibe of recent years is not only "These corporate products suck" but a subtle apathy toward media in general. Songs are going viral on TikTok, hitting #1 for a single week, then disappearing. Obscure songs from the past are going briefly viral and then disappearing. We see and consume more media than ever, yet paradoxically we care about it less than ever too. There are no new phenomena like the Deadheads or 80s goths where media spearheads an alternate lifestyle. There are no new games we continue talking about for years after release. Fanbases are less passionate, less distinct, and shorter lived. Fanfiction is less popular. Being a gen Z fan of the smiths or deftones means having their greatest hits in your playlist while not knowing any of the band members besides Morrissey, Marr and Chino, let alone their history, their gear, their influences, famous gigs, etc. Modern artists get this treatment too. People just don't care anymore.
Do you guys notice that in your hobbies too? I.e. younger "fans" totally lacking the ability to nerd out? Do you sense the general level of passion drying up?
I'm 21, which places me well on the younger tip of my two biggest strictly recreational interests: MLB and menswear, and I would generally say I make a serious attempt at nerding out in those areas. What I think has changed is how atomized the communities are from broader audiences. Being a baseball fan 60 years ago meant arguing over whether Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle was better. Today, it means arguing over whether or not to use defense-adjusted or fielding-independent statistics to measure the value of pitchers, which is a much more interesting question (Mays was clearly the better player), but also far more granular and inaccessible to casual fans and passive bystanders. Similarly, I think a lot of people are surface-level fans of the Smiths than in the past, but I think past Smiths fans are probably pretty comparable to present Bladee fans in terms of depth of knowledge (although Bladee is probably a much bigger leap for a non-fan than the Smiths are). I think it's actually gotten harder than ever to start getting interested in a lot of subjects because most of the in-depth communities are in so deep that there aren't really any clearly visible footholds to start off with.
I agree with you but it’s also a very online thing. In real life an autistic hardcore fan is happy to talk to a casual fan at a party because it’s still better than talking to the 90% of other people who don’t care about [baseball / The Smiths / coffee] very much at all.
Аs an autistic hardcore fan, I definitely agree. Another thing worth noting is that you have to kind of obscure your level of knowledge around people you don't know well. Being a SABR member might embellish my resume among baseball fans, but it's not gonna help me much when I'm talking to a girl at a bar. I suspect we see a lot more hardcore enthusiasts on a daily basis than we realize, but there's a sort of social contract we sign to make casual conversations more bearable.
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I have found that I can't stand reading anything written by most fanbases of the things I nerd out over, but I am happy to discuss with those I happen to meet in person. People can really be insufferable assholes online.
This may work both ways, because then there's the Motte. Which makes me wonder how recognizable any of us on the Motte would be to one another in real life, or if we would have anything at all to say to each other. Probably not nearly as much as we type.
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What I see is a general culture of superficiality, short-lived interest and discarding yesterday's investments behind seven layers of irony and distraction. Maybe what I'm gesturing at is a general aversion to sincerity and commitment. It's not just media consumption. People shamelessly speak in nothing but crass hyperbole, waste their attention on worthless trash that changes by the day, and cannot be pinned down on any opinion or behavior, are in fact panically anxious to avoid ever needing to stand by anything they might have said or done in the past, are deathly afraid of who they were yesterday. Much better to pretend that today is all there ever was. Everyone else is doing it, too.
When was the last time someone made you a promise and kept it? Speaking for myself, I can't remember. Appointments are made and ignored, assurances given and immediately forgotten, grand statements given with full conviction and their ever having been uttered is denied on the next day. Obvious lies are spoken with the expectation that they will be accepted, and failure to do so is seen as a grave faux-pas. Try to tell someone that you respectfully do not buy their excuse on any given renegation and see what happens - adamant insistence on the validity of the excuse, even in the face of damning evidence, followed by indignation at your hostile behavior.
It's probably always been this way and I'm just being grumpy. But let's assume for a moment that no, something is changing.
So pop culture. We don't need it anymore. We used to need some constancy in culture to rally around it; it took time to do so. A fanbase grows, you join it, make friends, or even share some media among your friends and bond about it. Nowadays you just join a fad online, ride it for a few minutes, enjoy the parasocial relationship, and hop off before anyone can actually associate you with it or it grows stale or you miss out on the next thing. And there is always a next thing. Media consumption isn't social anymore; instead we enjoy a much more direct algorithmically powered producer-to-brain pipeline. Which may soon be an AI-tailored-to-your-predelictions-to-brain pipeline, obviating even the need even for pseudo-social platforms like youtube.
We're wireheading. Shamelessly and effortlessly and increasingly efficiently.
Wireheading, definitely.
Another perspective that's been knocking around in my head is that for ~150 years, we've been burning through residuals from Christianity, and we're discovering that things we took for granted aren't human universals. Your point about promises is exactly right. The last few years have made me feel exactly like those Great War veterans who complained about the decline in manners, values, and behavior in the youth. It seemed like we'd reached a new equilibrium but something tells me we're about to slide even further.
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