Recently I had a back and forth here on saidit about how much the people who represent online trans culture live flat and boring characters in movies and TV because it allows them to overlay whatever they think that they are onto the characters.
I think this applies to Yaoi, porn, and all the other boring characters seen in movies today. It be omes so much easier for them to create their own ships and head cannon for each character if the character itself is not flushed out.
I was thinking about this in relation to video games from the 80s and 90s compared to today. I was thinking about "Oregon Trail" and how this was an actual game presented to children in elementary school in the 80s. A few years ago I was talking about the game to some zoomer friends and I ended up challenging all of them to play a round of the game because they were laughing at the idea that the game could be difficult. Basically they all died and lost rather quickly. They were all a bit shocked that they could lose. "How do you continue after you die?" ... "You mean I have to restart from the beginning? That's ridiculous!"
The point is that even in video games now, there is almost no way to permanently lose. This plays into the same idea of flat TV characters who are presented as if they have zero flaws even if the viewers can clearly see the flaws.
It's like the culture itself is pushing people to all have this "main character syndrome" and everything is going to cater to you at all times.
The culture at the time of Oregon Trail was saying here's this game and you will get a single life where you might try to get to the goal but you could lose. Chances are you might just lose most of the time.
You can add on layers with the performative nature of social media but I think you get the point. There is a giant generational gap being propped up by the media itself likely because it's more profitable to foster a culture of narcissism where.
[–]lunarstrain 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - (3 children)
[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun - (2 children)
[–]Q-Continuum-kin[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (1 child)
[–]lunarstrain 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)
[–]MarkJeffersonTight defenses and we draw the line 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)