When did pop culture really go bad?

[jorgoth]

We all can name off all kinds of stupid shit in the current year/year before, but I'm thinking from more of a grand-history perspective.

IMO the one person to really start all the degenerate strains in pop culture is Joss Whedon. Buffy was good, Angel was good, Firefly was AMAZING, but he started this trend where it was acceptable to make everything laden with references to everything else. He made passing off fanfiction as original work acceptable. And of course SJW-ism in pop culture can be traced to him as well.

And his Avenger movies... oh my fucking god. I fucking HATE his Avenger movies, the dialogue most of all. It's just so simplistic.

 

[Μusk]

"Going Bad" implies that it was once good, which it was not.

 

[Beautiful Border]

It really does feel like everything started turning to shit sometime after the beginning of the new millennium, the good things about the 2000s were just the remnants of the 90s. It seems like most of the best music and movies of the 2010s deliberately tried to emulate media from the past.

 

[Judge Holden]

While I dont particularly subscribe to the idea that "everything is uniquely terrible now in pop culture", I have voiced my opinion that much of what is wrong now can indeed be tracked back to joss whedon, and to elaborate on that I would like to echo something I have seen suggested quite a number of times now. I.e. that this current rot we see is due in large part to the WGA strike of 2007-2008.

The theory is that corporate media higher ups decided in the wake of this shitshow that it would be cheaper and easier to ditch any halfway decent writer who could argue for more pay and would be more likely to openly interfere with production with Z list nobodies whose entire concept of pop culture began and ended with fanfiction, Joss Whedon, and Joss Whedon fanfiction with the obnoxious mix of "lolsosnarky" writing with soap opera melodrama and pop culture/internet references along with an unhealthy amoung of shitty nostalgia shoved in every orifice quickly becoming the hot new trend.

This then echoed through pretty much every creative industry over the months as more companies were pressured by shareholders/marketing teams to follow this model due in large part to the success of the marvel films as efficient popcorn cash cows and various cheaply made tv series as modern day soap operas, and eventually even the halfway decent writers who remained on payroll started actively pandering to this same crowd until it became the norm in around about 2010ish. However since so much shit was cribbed off the normie side of the internet, this wound up causing the already insufferable consoomer culture sphere to become rapidly infected with wokesped SJW shit since that was fashionable on twitter among these specimens at the time, and from there everything just kept snowballing

 

[The Pink Panther]

As much as you guys fucking hate that I'd say it, I'd say the 90's.

That's when degeneracy went mainstream. Despite it being good degeneracy, good degeneracy doesn't stay good for long, if you can even call it good.

 

[DumbDude42]

it has been bad and terrible ever since it began. mass media was a mistake.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

When all culture became pop culture. Probably the 80s and the rise of blockbuster movies, pop hit singles that were shorter and formulaic, cartoons that sold toys, all media was becoming advertising, advertising was becoming psy ops, etc.

It was never good to begin with, but I agree it was more tolerable and had more creativity, now pop culture has pidgeonholed and exhausted itself , at least big dumb expensive media from 80s and 90s was not actively insulting you and was fun the same way mcdonald's is tasty even though you know it's not nutritious. Now pop culture is neither tasty nor nutritious and in fact is be becoming poisonous.

With anime is after haruhi susumiya and k on, Moe was basically anime holocaust, even shonen now has Moe style and everything is drawn all rounded and is waifu centered. But anime has never been fully ruined, there's still cool shit if you look, I don't feel the same about mainstream american media after the last 10 years.

 

[jorgoth]

American media is more expensive to produce and more centralized, Japanese media has more room for mutation.

 

[Jeff_the_Thriller]

There's a degree of truth to that. I want to say things really slid in the 2010s. The idea of satisfying customers was replaced with creating as much mass appeal as possible. If you don't like mass appeal you are just a gatekeeper.

I had a discussion about this the other day with an irl chum regarding Ubisoft (probably belongs in a gaming thread but fudge it). In the 00s Ubisoft took chances and made interesting games. Some may not have been good but they were at least original. Now it's like they use an AI to design games to create the broadest appeal possible and separate rubes from their cash. That's why Assassin's Creed has the same gameplay loop as Ghost Recon now.

But this applies to marvel and star wars too. All the marvel movies follow the same formula and JJ Abrams is a hack who just follows successful formulas of past directors smarter than him. The Last Jedi was trash but at least Ryan Johnson made his own original story. Don't gatekeep and just consooooome what your benevolent media erverlords toss on your plate.

 

[Miller]

2007 with TBBT.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

Music? That's been in decline since around the late 90's. I was in my pre-teens around the time nu metal was big, and I admittedly liked it at first, but soon realized it was shit along with the pop punk of the early 2000's. I used to love Limp Bizkit and Deftones until my dad introduced me to 70's prog-rock, and I've never looked back since. New rock music is basically dead at the moment; the closest thing to rock is whiny, indie crap that appeals to effeminate hipsters. As for pop music in general, every new fucking song I hear is just autotune garbage with shitty trap beats and some jogger mumbling.

Movies? Same time frame. I remember being a little boy in the 90's and being excited to see films like Jurassic Park and Home Alone in the theater, but as time went on and CGI took over, I found myself less interested in cinema. Probably around the time of the Matrix sequels, Resident Evil movies, and the Scary Movie franchise was when I realized movies just didn't have the same charm as they did before. Seeing everything that comes out now, Martin Scorsese was 100% right about his capeshit rant.

TV? Probably some point in the mid-2000's. That was the start of zombie Simpsons, when Futurama kept getting rebooted with cringey movies, Family Guy stopped being funny IMHO, Spongebob started to suck, and Adult Swim stopped being interesting. Call me jaded, but every show I see on Netflix is just lame.

 

[Syaoran Li]

it has been bad and terrible ever since it began. mass media was a mistake.

OK Puritan

Now, to answer OP's question, I agree that it was the rise of Joss Whedon combined with the Great Recession and the WGA strikes in the late 2000's.

Music was already going to shit earlier thanks to alternative rock and the later styles of hip-hop becoming the dominant genres in the 90's. Alternative killed rock in the long run and hip-hop going mainstream more or less ruined the genre. But music has a different dynamic than narrative media like movies and TV.

 

[NevskyProspekt]

Music? That's been in decline since around the late 90's. I was in my pre-teens around the time nu metal was big, and I admittedly liked it at first, but soon realized it was shit along with the pop punk of the early 2000's. I used to love Limp Bizkit and Deftones until my dad introduced me to 70's prog-rock, and I've never looked back since. New rock music is basically dead at the moment; the closest thing to rock is whiny, indie crap that appeals to effeminate hipsters. As for pop music in general, every new fucking song I hear is just autotune garbage with shitty trap beats and some jogger mumbling.

Movies? Same time frame. I remember being a little boy in the 90's and being excited to see films like Jurassic Park and Home Alone in the theater, but as time went on and CGI took over, I found myself less interested in cinema. Probably around the time of the Matrix sequels, Resident Evil movies, and the Scary Movie franchise was when I realized movies just didn't have the same charm as they did before. Seeing everything that comes out now, Martin Scorsese was 100% right about his capeshit rant.

TV? Probably some point in the mid-2000's. That was the start of zombie Simpsons, when Futurama kept getting rebooted with cringey movies, Family Guy stopped being funny IMHO, Spongebob started to suck, and Adult Swim stopped being interesting. Call me jaded, but every show I see on Netflix is just lame.

Man, I can relate. Can you imagine any major western music artist putting something out like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Close to the Edge or Tarkus these days?

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

Man, I can relate. Can you imagine any major western music artist putting something out like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Close to the Edge or Tarkus these days?

Just look at 80s new-wave and post punk compared to the stuff today. Lady Gaga was praised for half-assing what 80s artists did naturally long before, and that is just on fashion alone.

 

[tehpope]

At some point during Obama's admin, it was decided that all major media had to be a recruting tool for the DNC.

And they've fallen into the same trap as Christian media usually dose: they focus so much on the message first and formost that entertainment falls to the wayside. And that's why its countercultural to be Conversative now of days.

Joss might have had an effect on this too by putting a lot of snark into his material

TBBT for making nerd culture chic.

Whoever decided everything had to be a part of one's personality. And if someone critiqued it in any fashion, it was taken a personal attack on you. That has really fucked up everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING.
Basically:


The rot probably started around 2007-2008 but it really took hold in around 2011-2013.

 

[Beautiful Border]

TV? Probably some point in the mid-2000's. That was the start of zombie Simpsons, when Futurama kept getting rebooted with cringey movies, Family Guy stopped being funny IMHO, Spongebob started to suck, and Adult Swim stopped being interesting. Call me jaded, but every show I see on Netflix is just lame.

I'm not sure if you're talking about TV in general or just animation, but Breaking Bad and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia both started in the mid-2000s and they were pretty good. TV is actually one of the few mediums that IMO still produces good new content on a regular basis.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

I'd say around 2010's, the 2000's weren't bad (We did get the LOTR trilogy, absolutely no way that'd get made in the same way by a major film studio nowadays) but for some reason culture started to get woke around the time of the Occupy Wallstreet movement in 2011.

 

[Joe Swanson]

when so called "nerd culture" went mainstream

 

[Xerxes IX]

While I dont particularly subscribe to the idea that "everything is uniquely terrible now in pop culture", I have voiced my opinion that much of what is wrong now can indeed be tracked back to joss whedon, and to elaborate on that I would like to echo something I have seen suggested quite a number of times now. I.e. that this current rot we see is due in large part to the WGA strike of 2007-2008.

The theory is that corporate media higher ups decided in the wake of this shitshow that it would be cheaper and easier to ditch any halfway decent writer who could argue for more pay and would be more likely to openly interfere with production with Z list nobodies whose entire concept of pop culture began and ended with fanfiction, Joss Whedon, and Joss Whedon fanfiction with the obnoxious mix of "lolsosnarky" writing with soap opera melodrama and pop culture/internet references along with an unhealthy amoung of shitty nostalgia shoved in every orifice quickly becoming the hot new trend.

This then echoed through pretty much every creative industry over the months as more companies were pressured by shareholders/marketing teams to follow this model due in large part to the success of the marvel films as efficient popcorn cash cows and various cheaply made tv series as modern day soap operas, and eventually even the halfway decent writers who remained on payroll started actively pandering to this same crowd until it became the norm in around about 2010ish. However since so much shit was cribbed off the normie side of the internet, this wound up causing the already insufferable consoomer culture sphere to become rapidly infected with wokesped SJW shit since that was fashionable on twitter among these specimens at the time, and from there everything just kept snowballing

You're onto something. The internet autism cesspool known as TvTropes also started as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fansite (and used to use lots of fandom terms from them including "Jossed" to refer to a creator debunking a fan theory), so Whedon was pozzing fan communities at the same time as he was pozzing pop culture.

 

[Übertroon]

One thing I've noticed is that modern western culture really needs better quality control and people reigning in the spergs in the writing room and director's chair.
They're also really uncreative.
I've got an example I noticed just recently, not movies or tv related, but bear with me

Compare this story trailer for Star Wars Squadron

With this story trailer for Ace Combat 7

Same length video, both new titles in existing franchises, both about being a flying ace. But where the western produced Star Wars Squadron has nothing new to show, it's just things lifted from earlier works in the franchise, even the music. Variety seems smaller. And it has a voice over that tries to hype you up for it like those commercials you probably saw on children's tv when you were younger.

Meanwhile Ace Combat combines both old and new elements. Just allows the visuals, gameplay, and story to carry its presentation, and shows a wide variety of aircrafts and scenarios to showcase the gameplay.

And yet Star Wars Squadrons is likely to sell more just because it's Star Wars.
Why would you ever feel the need to put effort into it or try to contain the ideological bullshit that is happening behind the scenes? Just pump out more star wars.