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Friday Fun Thread for February 16, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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You have already successfully inoculated him. If he had found Nihilism on his own, it might have intrigued him. But now it's just 'that boring movie my uncle made me watch'.

On a more serious note, the hero's journey is inherently life-affirming, so there's plenty of media to go around. Most Shounen, for example. Lord of the Rings also manages to be quite dark and somber at times while still fundamentally being about hope and progress.

This probably sounds pretentious, but if he was still at that "adults are dumb assholes with terrible taste" stage we wouldn't consider him mature enough to watch movies like fight club. He watches movies with us because whether they are good or bad we have fun watching them (we were watching fight club that night, the conversation was whether my nephew was allowed in the room.)

The cute thing about it is that I'm pretty sure the movie that convinced him adults weren't dumb assholes with terrible taste was The Shawshank Redemption, which you could definitely say my dad (his granddad) made him watch (he sat all the grandchildren down in front of it and told them they could watch it or go to bed - at 3 in the afternoon.) The thing is though, when we watched the Shawshank Redemption the first time, my brother was a little younger than his son is now - and before that film, convinced that adults were dumb assholes with terrible taste. I don't know if that movie will cure any developing teen of that issue, but it's batting 1000 in my experience.

On the more serious note, you might be right and he's already inoculated against it anyway - he spent years pretending to be Aragorn and about the only tv he watches are shounen anime.

Sounds good, just continue what you're doing honestly. In general I wouldn't worry too much about this. Aside from probably overestimating the effect of a single movie, Nihilism is not only not very appealing to begin with for the great majority of people, the larger current media landscape just doesn't lend itself very well to Nihilism. I'd be more worried about Idealism, Escapism, Hedonism and Moralism given both people's natural inclinations and the general contemporary climate.