I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that’s true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn’t happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.
J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He’s also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that’s better than presents you open–failing to see that there’s a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.
You’ve got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with “trilogies” that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.
You’ve got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.
On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.
Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they’re unwilling to form their own expectations of what’s coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what’s in front of them! The media they’ve been consuming has trained them well.
the beds are at best no bigger, and often smaller, than older models
heavier = less efficient
higher bumpers make them less compatible with most other vehicles, therefore more dangerous in a collision
higher tailgates make them harder to load
higher hoods give them an enormous blindspot in the front
higher center of gravity makes them less stable
higher seats give the driver a worse view of their immediate surroundings
higher bumpers also make them more likely to collide with a pedestrian’s chest as opposed to their legs, as well as making the victims more likely to go under the car, leading to more deaths
oh also market research suggests people who buy trucks and SUVs are more likely to be assholes lmao
basically, watch this video if you need more reasons to hate trucks:
LAPD detonated 5000 lbs of fireworks in the middle of a residential area, injuring at least 17 people and causing $900 million in various damages in a low-income, majority-POC neighborhood.
They then continue to pursue caging the person whose fireworks they stole while news media misreports to cover for police incompetency and destruction.
It took TWO YEARS to get the names of those involved with this incident. There are people still protesting, still living in hotels, still with unfulfilled claims to the city from this shit
i’m gonna be honest i didn’t even read the tweet because i had to hit reblog too fast when i saw this guy’s name is “i like hitting police because i am homosexual”
“Think of the two major possibilities here: Either the studios owe untold millions to their talents and paying it out will decimate their stock prices, or they owe so little because there really is no money in streaming and the bubble of their entire 21st century business model will burst in spectacular fashion. And make no mistake: this is a bubble. This is the inevitable climax of a stockholder-driven hunger for infinite growth, despite the fact that, by design, such a thing cannot and should not exist. The infection of Wall Street has overwhelmed the entertainment industry beyond repair, leading to cultural vandals like David Zaslav to be appointed with the callous duty of strip-mining decades’ of artistic beauty for pennies of tax write-offs. The past and future are frivolous in comparison to the short-term demands that the line keep going up.”
I think this is a conversation that fandom needs to have in general.
When you encounter something that makes you uncomfortable while you’re playing a video game, reading something on AO3, browsing Twitter, or scrolling through Tumblr, you have the power to remove yourself. You can stop reading, you can hit the back button, you can block/mute, you can turn the device off entirely.
“Consent” has a very specific meaning. When you’re consuming a piece of media that a creator has posted on their own personal account, you are in their space. That is a one-sided interaction. They’re not at all involved, they can’t reach through the screen to hit the back button for you. They’re not “violating your consent” or “pushing your boundaries”, because you are the one in control.
We need to stop acting like creators are 100% responsible for the mental well-being of every person who could possibly encounter their work, and instead start taking responsibility for our own online experiences.
Remember when Persona 5 came out, and then people got upset because the game required you to acknowledge on starting the game that it was a work of fiction without any direct connection to reality.
And that if you refused to do so, the game would kick you out entirely.
People got actually honest to god MAD over the idea that they were expected to treat fiction like fiction.
There was at least one big name professional “journalist” who claimed he couldn’t get past the first minute of P5 because it refused to proceed until he admitted that this was a work of fiction and he was apparently incapable of doing that.
This is such a bizarre concept to me because media is inherently passive–you choose to watch, to read, to play, etc. A movie or a book or a game can’t “violate” your consent, because you can stop anytime things become uncomfortable. You are in control of your experience. If you can’t acknowledge fiction as fiction, maybe you shouldn’t be interacting with it.
