So I just got around to seeing Palm Springs on Amazon Prime. It’s a pretty fun Groundhog Day clone and back in July this was rated as the best movie of 2020. I didn’t write a review on it as no one is going to care what I think of a movie that came out four months ago and besides it’s no longer the best thing to come out of 2020! Hell, that’s the reason I avoided reviewing The Trial of Chicago Seven or Over the Moon, not because I’m lazy but because they stopped trending on Twitter like a day after I intended to watch them.
I made a post a long time ago which discussed the relevant topic of Why do we favour older movies over the new? It’s not one of my proudest achievements because in his long winded ramblings, little did that young naïve critic know that he was only scratching the surface of this major issue. I should clarify I’m not saying that entertainment is going to be obliterated from existence in a few years, I’m more referring to it’s social status basically, so allow me to explain myself.
As a human race, it is inevitable that we’re going to get bored of seeing a certain face everywhere, playing a particular game or being reminded of the existence of the same old news story. This fact is never more true than when it comes to the internet, where we’re in such a privileged landscape in which having to wait a maximum of 3 seconds for one web page to fully load is a bloody nightmare. We can communicate instantaneously with long distant friends and of course we will forever be up to date on the most current trends going on around the world. A real luxury isn’t it? You will also be right there when it happens to react to whatever big reveals are coming from the latest episode of the Mandalorian or what big trick Marvel has up their sleeve but no matter what, this excitement will not last and you’re going to always move on to the next big thing and that thing is bound to stick around as long as the last thing you were ecstatic for.
This isn’t just a problem with the entertainment we consume its also the news stories around us and I’m putting the majority of the blame for this on the internet. Why’s that? Well back in the day of newspapers, TV and general gossip being the main sources of learning the big news stories, this helped our entertainment and other stuff tend to stay relevant for at least a few months. I remember films like The Dark Knight, Avatar and Mamma Mia were in cinemas for months, because audiences couldn’t get enough of these movies. I can’t say the same for many movies that came out in the last 10 years, maybe except for Avengers Infinity War & Endgame, as they were lucky to remain current for longer than a fortnight, but even so their popularity was diminishing each week as everyone is already moving onto the something else. I also remember when I was a young kid, back when my TV only had four channels, and one day before school all four of them were playing the memorial service for Steve Irwin, which I had never seen before, nor since as I doubt I will ever see that phenomenon happen again, especially for a celebrity death. The 2000’s were great as there was nothing to sidetrack people because the internet was still developing so everything had a longer shelf life.
Since the 2010’s the internet has turned everything into a rapid sprint along a 200m track. Stories and entertainment are being shared around faster than people can process, so nowadays its pretty difficult to know what’s going to stick and what will be forgotten. The reason for this is its not really the system’s fault, but the people using it. Experts have clearly identified our current society as having a “reaction culture“, meaning that one person’s work on the internet degenerates into screaming idiots displaying how overly delighted they were for this work and praising the author as their god, or how upset they were at this work and wishing the author to hurry up and drop dead. Its also no longer your opinion, it’s now the mobs and mob’s thoughts is what creators and companies normally look for.
Our reaction culture is always two sided and neither side wants to be challenged. I don’t subscribe to the notion of being forced to comply with the whims of the thought police. What did you think of when this thing happened? Wasn’t that amazing? Wasn’t that awful! You can’t like this because it had this controversial thing attached to it. You must love this thing because of the political stance it makes. You really can’t please anyone and I know this because I’ve seen these same tired questions and arguments popping up ever since I first started my site back in 2018. Its gotten worse as the years go on as the reaction mob gain more control of dictating what new film or show we all need to see and what is in need of being improved or must be censored. Everything needs to go through this stupid validator now which the big major companies will happily bend over for because it helps make them more money. This is exactly how you guarantee your movie to be forgotten about in a few years and spells the death of the legitimately great blockbuster.
Entertainment no longer lasts because we don’t have the attention span for it. The purpose of this post isn’t to stop the monotony of our culture, as that’s never going to happen. The goal was to bring more awareness to it and that’s it. To wrap this up on a more bittersweet note, there are some silver linings which I cannot skip over. As I said there is nothing wrong with the internet as its very handy to know exactly how people are reacting and its great to be able to have discussions with people from all over. Its also great that we have more power over what we want to see, however, any position of power can easily be twisted to become poison. That’s my thoughts on this issue and this is The Blog Complainer, and I’m done.
