It really was the combination of George being a slacker and D&D going full retard that did them in. If just one or the other fucked up there would still be fans. It’s interesting to see how even GoT YouTubers have jumped ship.
Yeah, as long as people were waiting for the release of new books, they could stave off their impatience and frustration about Martin's shite work ethic by distracting themselves with the show. And even when important things were dumbed down or dropped, people would argue that the show has to cut corners somewhere due to its limited runtime/budget and after all, this shit will be fixed once the books come out and until then, GoT is the methadone to the ASOIAF-itch that people have.
Then the show imploded and the books are still nowhere to be seen. The entire ASOIAF/GoT-fanbase suddenly had this "The Downfall"-meme moment.
"The storyline in GoT is deviating too much from the books. They dropped various important characters and plotpoints and it's becoming a convoluted mess that slowly reinforces the tropes that ASOIAF set out to subvert."

-"The Battle for Winterfell and the ending will make up for it."
"Mein Fanbase... the Battle for Winterfell..."
>"The episode was an unmitigated desaster, the ending shapes up to be complete garbage."

"Those that have given up on this IP leave the room now."

"Fuck this shit, I should have listened to those fans that said this show went down the shitter once they ditched Tysha from Tyrion's and Tywin's last dialogue! How can these two Dumb&Dumber chucklefucks ruin the ending after wasting so many years of my life?! This show was so amazing in the early seasons, I thought they'd pull it all together towards the end, all I wanted was a decent fucking ending for this show until the books come out... Martin has started rewriting his existing script and the release of the books has been delayed indefinetly... Even if it ever comes out, it will be hot garbage. I'm done, I'm so fucking done."
Glad I never got into this show since by all accounts the last couple seasons were complete shit since they didn't have GRRM's novels to go off of. I really enjoyed the TellTale GoT game, though, and am sad there will never be a sequel.
Things started to go pear-shaped during season 4 and 5, stuff became worse but never truly bad until season 6 and 7 - and even those were still pretty watchable. Everyone was hoping for a satisfying end, that would tie up everything.
GoT/ASOIAF started out with very realistic foundations to everyday aspects such as travel times, logistics, issues of supplying troops with food and shelter and decisions had realistic and logical consequences. At a certain point, characters like Ramsay Bolton became way too powerful, illogical stuff just happened to move the plot along, bad decisions only backfired if convenient for the plot, characters were kept despite the writers having no clue what to do with them (Tyrion being the biggest offender, he spends the last 2 seasons being utterly worthless), but even so, there were glimmers of hope. S8E2 was one of my favorite episodes for showing warriors preparing for a last desperate battle. It had a nice somber atmosphere.
Then, the next episode was so utterly bad, I ditched the show even though it was only 3 more episodes - and it turns out I got out just in the nick of time before the show truly started to hit rock bottom.
And as has been said, you can't really rewatch the show from the beginning and stop watching in the middle once it goes bad, cause you'd not have closure for anything and everything that is enjoyable about those episodes (like Tyrion and Jaime's storylines) will turn to shit, so there is no way to get emotionally invested any longer.
Nah, I still see some Franxx waifu posting. While even GoT memes are super rare, which is usually a sign of irredeemable media when it comes to big productions.
I think GoT is what happens when the copium wears out. It's not just a bad final season, it's that already from the halfway point it dropped sharply in quality and people thought the ending will make up for it.
"The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference" is my favorite line when it comes to this.
Even the SW prequels got memes out the ass, with the sequels, there is nothing.
And I agree, the bad ending pulled the veil from everyone's eyes and they had to accept how bad a lot of the things had been all along. You can hope for a satisfying conclusion making up for bad decisions, but once the lackluster conclusion shits on the carpet, you just have to admit that it wasn't worth it and hasn't been worth it for a long time.
Up to S8E3, I was genuinely wondering how they'd tie up the story, causee defeating the White Walkers before defeating Cersei would never be a satisfying ending. I expected Winterfell to fall, some main characters to escape (maybe via dragon), to fall back and ultimately it ending with a siege on Kings Landing. lolno. Wine-aunt Cersei is the ultimate threat to Westeros and the literal embodiment of Death and his Army of Darkness, prophesized for Eight.
Thousand.
YEARS. is not even a speedbump to the protagonists.
