When did pop culture really go bad?

[Red Hood]

Fortunately, at least every now and then, we still get something good out of all media. New great shows like Chernobyl, The Expanse, movies like Joker or... uh... Twisted Pair?... well. Okay, movies are contaminated to hell and back, but every now and then, there's a gem.
In video games, quite some decent things come out, mainly thanks to indy games that cover a lot of stuff that the AAA companies would never try - so I would say, video gaming is doing best, when you go beyond AAA games. When you focus on AAA games alone , it's one of the most affected areas... music is easily the worst thing when it comes to mainstream media. Pop music is trash, pure and simple.

I think one big issue that has been overlooked in this whole debate: How do awards, """journalism""" and the public discourse on social media treat media?
It's not so much that there are absolutely no good new movies, Joker proves that wrong, what is more concerning is that when a movie comes out that plays by different rules (like Joker did), it is villified to a degree that is simply mind boggling.
Joker dared to be a tiny bit different and we ended up with a shitshow of "This movie is incel propaganda and will cause mass shootings". It's the Potter Witchcraft Sacre from 15 years ago, only now it's about Gamergate, Incels, Conservatives and so on.

This really brings me to my point, that I think wasn't made in this thread up till now:

Many people point out that pop culture started to suck when it became "chic", but you need a place to be publically "chic" on.
This directly ties into social media, as it was the window for putting oneself on public display, to whore oneself out, one's opinions, tastes and so on, to gain attention. This acted as a catalyst to turn buyers into cultists, cause it gave people a medium to show off their cool collection of status symbols and labels, like your newest Apple product and that you're "lol such a nerdxD".

Incidently, that's also what I consider the main reason why we have all these gender-special snowflakes around. If you want to gain attention by being different, you need to be different from those that are different. So you're not "bi". You're "greysexual". Or a "demi-boy". Or "queercurious" or whatever. But whatever the fuck you are, you have to be different (ie: not boring).

Social media also helped embed politics into this mess, to further continue the trend downwards. I am a fairly liberal person myself, I do think every person should be allowed to express themselves freely as long as they don't infringe on the rights of others, but holy fucking shit, do I hate liberal media. I'd rather eat broken glass then be lectured about sexism by Hollywood sexpests. With every. Single. Fucking. Movie. they made in the past 5 years. Same with racism.

Blind brand loyalty far predates the internet. See any two boomers at a car show arguing Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge and you'll see that turning your consumption into an identity is nothing new.

 

[Beautiful Border]

For society in general, it's pretty ironic that for a War on Terror, there was plenty of terror going on back at home. Everyone was still reeling from Columbine into the 2000s, and after that, the proto-SJWs going on and on about Bush and how the rest of the world sees us came into the mix full throttle. I blame all of this shit for why everything wimped out post 2010 and got to it when the Great Recession made headway, and I blame all spectrums for this garbage. It was everything. Self pitying faggots thinking that America needed to be "less boorish and act more reserved like its other sophisticated first world neighbors" and worrying about Canadians patchworking flags on their carry on luggage, to dumbasses caring about what the fuck the French had to say to get asshurt enough to change french fries into freedom fries and think every neighbor was a pedophile lurking on the internet and on that 4chan because NBC and FOX decided to bankroll themselves with Chris Hansen and Alex Wuori so hard that it made Real TV and Hard Copy look like Dateline.

It's like in that decade, America was pretending to be something that it wasn't and forgot everything in the centuries prior that made America great and allowed it to strive against all of the bad things and darkest times, all because its problems showed and shit happened. I know this is pretty "deep" and thunkful, but this lack of standing up for yourself and insightful patriotism lead into the war machine and the corporate giants to take hold when the government and the people were at its morally vulnerable, soaked in its own fear, and distracted it from its real problems before working to exploit them even more. Then, everyone began to believe their own bullshit and became a part of the pile. I believe in that America can become great again, but again, I don't believe either sides that are playing Trump Mental Disfigurement Syndrome will win, because he's just a puppet and playing everyone by the strings that pull him. Honestly, this plays into a lot of how the world is like nowadays. It's why everything feels cold and sterile and fake moreso than any other decade pre 2010.

This sounds a lot like how British liberals have started saying that they're ashamed to be British ever since the Brexit referendum in 2016, always contrasting so-called "little England" with the EU, which they fetishise as a progressive, multicultural utopia run by the wise queen Angela Merkel. I've actively seen British liberals claim that they want the UK to suffer as a result of Brexit to serve as an example to other countries wanting to leave the EU. Keep in mind that the vast majority of them didn't give a single solitary fuck about the EU until the day the UK voted to leave it. The British left has to be the most treacherous, self-loathing, unpatriotic political faction of any country in the world. Not even the worst American progressives hate their country with as much fervour as their British equivalents.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Blind brand loyalty far predates the internet. See any two boomers at a car show arguing Ford vs Chevy vs Dodge and you'll see that turning your consumption into an identity is nothing new.

Public display of brand loyalty isn't new, that is correct. But to have a stage to play that off to a truly global audience, that was new with social media.
Bob and Steve arguing Chevy over Ford mostly happened at the local neighborhood BBQ meet-up. Samsung vs. Apple happened across continents with an army of people ready to take up sides.
And I am willing to bet that the arguments in favor of, say, buying a Chevy over Ford might have been more intricate than the "Apple products are magically better than anything the other companies produce cause I said so" brand of arguments from Appledrones, too. Well, at least in some cases.

 

[Empty]

Pop culture lost its identity when it ceased to be actually enjoyable. This is perhaps a very subjective statement, so naming a date when it actually went dogshit is brutally hard. For me personally, this happened ever since pop culture and politics became correlative with each other at the end of the 2000s.

 

[Eris!]

Hello, my name is Edward Bernays. I am responsible for everything that you hate in the modern world.

 

[Inventor of the Telephone]

but as time went on and CGI took over,

Affordable computer-generated visuals caused a decline in craftsmanship the same as affordable computer-generated/based home music production.

 

[Cybertonian]

2010's is when I started noticing a big decline, but there's still good stuff out there.

 

[Garm]

Late 2000's. TV shows started feeling "formulaic" to me by then. Name some drama (House, Law and Order) and I figure that they would hit the same story beats within a few minutes of each other. Comedy shows (The Simpsons and King of the Hill) would always have "the status quo."

Then Cracked pointed out a few years down the line that there is a "blockbuster formula" that describes what the majority of humans consider "a good movie." (Marvel movies follow this formula.)

Centralization has only made this worse.

Better to just unplug and let the system collapse on its own. Or attempt to start your own video production since there isn't a law that says, "video production can only happen in hollywood." Not saying it would be easy but take a stand at it.

 

[Eris!]

Late 2000's. TV shows started feeling "formulaic" to me by then. Name some drama (House, Law and Order) and I figure that they would hit the same story beats within a few minutes of each other. Comedy shows (The Simpsons and King of the Hill) would always have "the status quo."

Then Cracked pointed out a few years down the line that there is a "blockbuster formula" that describes what the majority of humans consider "a good movie." (Marvel movies follow this formula.)

Centralization has only made this worse.

Better to just unplug and let the system collapse on its own. Or attempt to start your own video production since there isn't a law that says, "video production can only happen in hollywood." Not saying it would be easy but take a stand at it.

Any system can only last as long as it takes for someone to figure out how to game it. Once one person games it, everyone must, and the system becomes an unrecognizable abomination.

 

[Moguro Fukuzou]

I think it's kind of tough to pin down exactly what caused the mainstream pop culture to get so bad or the exact moment when, but from my personal observations of the kind of pop culture works that get put out now a lot of them just lack creator passion. There's a clear corporate sheen because it's now widely known how much money can be sucked out of peoples pockets. I don't really know how to put it but back in the day it feel like pop culture was lead by fans of things while now it's like corporations having taken over as the steering agent. Thinking about stuff like Star Trek and the sheer drop in quality with the newer series, one of the biggest complaints I hear is that "it doesn't feel like Star Trek" anymore. People that are writing the newer seasons don't get what people liked about Star Trek and have thrown aside its core themes to use the show as a mouthpiece for whatever pet cause they have. A lot of the people that complain about modern pop culture are those that feel alienated with the direction series they have traditionally enjoyed have taken, they no longer feel like the target audience.

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.

I think you're really underestimating just how long Moe has been a part of anime and otaku culture, they can at least trace back it's usage to the late 80s into the 90s, it was in no way the "anime holocaust" that has ruined modern anime. Waifu culture has also been long attached to otaku culture, it's nothing new. Anime has long been escapist media for Japanese Otaku that are typically isolated from society and it's reflected in what kind of shows are largely produced, the current isekai boom is just the newest spice. I'm not saying every show fits into this though.

Shows like K-on fall under the Iyashikei or Healing anime genre that are just another form of escapism for those feeling stressed out. You'll notice that many series that fall into this genre focus on living in the Japanese countryside away from the fast paced nature of the city, usually there's also hints around return to nature themes or the idea of taking time to appreciate the little things. It's not even just anime, there's many Japanese dramas that all follow the plot line of stressed out salarywomen returns to the countryside and gets a new appreciation for life. There's a lot of interesting discussion to be had around the subject, but I've already veered too far off the discussion at hand.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I think these four things

>Celebrity Culture

By making the celebrities get a really bloated ego from the public combined with the media enabling them for more attention.

>Nerd Culture becoming mainstream

Gave the rise of most movies just being reboots and such with a heavily exploitable customer base.

>Politicization

It started somewhere between the Clinton to Obama administration where popular culture has gotten more political and became a tool for political messaging of those in Hollywood.

I think the big one though is

>Pandering to the Chinese

Nowadays every single movie has to be pandered to the Chinese government where many movies can not be made or heavily restricted in order to appease President Winnie.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

I think it's kind of tough to pin down exactly what caused the mainstream pop culture to get so bad or the exact moment when, but from my personal observations of the kind of pop culture works that get put out now a lot of them just lack creator passion. There's a clear corporate sheen because it's now widely known how much money can be sucked out of peoples pockets. I don't really know how to put it but back in the day it feel like pop culture was lead by fans of things while now it's like corporations having taken over as the steering agent. Thinking about stuff like Star Trek and the sheer drop in quality with the newer series, one of the biggest complaints I hear is that "it doesn't feel like Star Trek" anymore. People that are writing the newer seasons don't get what people liked about Star Trek and have thrown aside its core themes to use the show as a mouthpiece for whatever pet cause they have. A lot of the people that complain about modern pop culture are those that feel alienated with the direction series they have traditionally enjoyed have taken, they no longer feel like the target audience.


I think you're really underestimating just how long Moe has been a part of anime and otaku culture, they can at least trace back it's usage to the late 80s into the 90s, it was in no way the "anime holocaust" that has ruined modern anime. Waifu culture has also been long attached to otaku culture, it's nothing new. Anime has long been escapist media for Japanese Otaku that are typically isolated from society and it's reflected in what kind of shows are largely produced, the current isekai boom is just the newest spice. I'm not saying every show fits into this though.

Shows like K-on fall under the Iyashikei or Healing anime genre that are just another form of escapism for those feeling stressed out. You'll notice that many series that fall into this genre focus on living in the Japanese countryside away from the fast paced nature of the city, usually there's also hints around return to nature themes or the idea of taking time to appreciate the little things. It's not even just anime, there's many Japanese dramas that all follow the plot line of stressed out salarywomen returns to the countryside and gets a new appreciation for life. There's a lot of interesting discussion to be had around the subject, but I've already veered too far off the discussion at hand.

it could be explained, defended and justified by people who liked it but theres no denying that there was a major boom at some point and those "cute loli doing mundane slice of life stuff" shows became the norm and not the exception specially after 2006ish. Its even hard for people to hear "anime" and not immediately think "cute loli doing something mundane and the waifuist pillowfuckers that love them" by how intensely they overrode everyone else in anime communities(i actually remember forums in 2007 where those loli avatars would be called faggots and people would banter at them, rather than moe avatars being the standard embassadors of anime everywhere).

The good thing about anime is that is not as centralized , as another user said, even when everyone is obsessing over dime a dozen waifuist shows and isekai one can just drop out, ignore itand and just pay attention for specific things that seem interesting or different and theres usually some of that every year. I think i said it in the weeaboo thread, theres really no need for derangement syndrome because not every show is catered to everyone even when some people feel they have to consume it all or else they are not "real" anime fans. American media is making harder to do just that since it insists of everything being for everyone and everyone aligning to a sectarian group of californian and new york jews current zeitgeist.

 

[Eris!]

Shows like K-on fall under the Iyashikei or Healing anime genre that are just another form of escapism for those feeling stressed out. You'll notice that many series that fall into this genre focus on living in the Japanese countryside away from the fast paced nature of the city, usually there's also hints around return to nature themes or the idea of taking time to appreciate the little things. It's not even just anime, there's many Japanese dramas that all follow the plot line of stressed out salarywomen returns to the countryside and gets a new appreciation for life. There's a lot of interesting discussion to be had around the subject, but I've already veered too far off the discussion at hand.

Non Non Biyori is the greatest anime of all time.

 

[Amused_To_Death]

Many of the posts here got the gist of things. I'll chime in a few more points based on my observations on the movie industry:

• The mixture of media consumption and political activism. Companies like Disney have managed to equate watching their movies to participating in social activism. Just look at how black Americans rallied around Black Panther and women flocking in cinemas to watch Captain Marvel, with countless articles commending them for "diversity" and "representation"

• Traditional studios mindlessly chasing trends for short term profits. Ever since The Avengers broke box office records, the other major studios have tried and failed to imitate their buisness model with mixed successes. They buy into the sunk cost fallacy, thinking a movie with a 9-figure production budget is the key to success. On the other end, smaller studios produce movies with minimal budgets with high profit margins like Blumhouse Prodcutions. Mid-budget movies are dead, with Joker and John Wick 3 being the exception rather than the rule due to name recognition.

• Lack of respect on older properties. It is annoying to me how classic movies are treated these days. It either gets #cancelled for being problematic, exploited through sequels and remakes due to a dedicated fanbase, or used as cool name drops by contemporary artists. The old movies themselves are stripped away of any kind of distinct identity.

• No gatekeeping. I would argue that gatekeeping is sometimes necessary as you really don't want the things you love to be exposed to a group of people with little relation to it to alter things to their liking, especially people who love politics

• Decline and death of movie industries in other countries. Currently, the only countries with a healthy movie industry are South Korea and India (even though the movie industries in India don't have much presence in the international stage). Before that, you have relatively steady output from the likes of Italy, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia etc..., but the movie industries have suffered due to audiences in those countries preferring American movies since it's the "cool" thing

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

Late 2000's. TV shows started feeling "formulaic" to me by then. Name some drama (House, Law and Order) and I figure that they would hit the same story beats within a few minutes of each other. Comedy shows (The Simpsons and King of the Hill) would always have "the status quo."

Then Cracked pointed out a few years down the line that there is a "blockbuster formula" that describes what the majority of humans consider "a good movie." (Marvel movies follow this formula.)

Centralization has only made this worse.

Better to just unplug and let the system collapse on its own. Or attempt to start your own video production since there isn't a law that says, "video production can only happen in hollywood." Not saying it would be easy but take a stand at it.

Thankfully we have a ton of great shit to mine from the past. It's rather stark how much better old movies and music are.

Any of you guys think the arts will ever get great again? We live in a disgustingly degenerate, stagnant at best, culture.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The truth is pop culture started to go to shit all the way back in the 1990s, think Michael Bay, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Batman & Robin, Armageddon (Michael Bay again), The Phantom Menace (easy to be more forgiving of the Prequels now after Disney, but they're still not great movies)

Then you had some really horrendous shit in the 2000s like those absolutely rancid spoof "Movie" movies (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie) and Michael Bay's Transformers movies, which might have been what got the ball rolling on Hollywood caring more about China's box office then the US's.

Things just kept getting stupider and stupider until suddenly there was a turning point where things were no longer just stupid but started to become genuinely evil, which is what today's "woke" media is, but that's kind of like the final nail in the coffin, not the start of things going bad, but as an aside I would say the woke era of media really started in a big way in 2016 with the all female Ghostbusters.

I'm focusing mainly on movies but this applies to music and TV as well, although I have less expertise on those things, but it seems to me like the "golden age" of TV that started with The Sopranos ended when Mad Men ended in 2015 and music never fully recovered from the boy band, Britney Spears era of the late 90s.

Thankfully we have a ton of great shit to mine from the past. It's rather stark how much better old movies and music are.

Any of you guys think the arts will ever get great again? We live in a disgustingly degenerate, stagnant at best, culture.

It's especially stark when you listen to something like Pink Floyd, no modern musician could hope to match the brilliance of something like Dark Side of The Moon or Wish You Were Here.

It's also especially stark when you compare the Spielberg blockbusters, your Raiders of The Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park etc with today's blockbusters.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

The truth is pop culture started to go to shit all the way back in the 1990s, think Michael Bay, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Batman & Robin, Armageddon (Michael Bay again), The Phantom Menace (easy to be more forgiving of the Prequels now after Disney, but they're still not great movies)

Then you had some really horrendous shit in the 2000s like those absolutely rancid spoof "Movie" movies (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie) and Michael Bay's Transformers movies, which might have been what got the ball rolling on Hollywood caring more about China's box office then the US's.

Things just kept getting stupider and stupider until suddenly there was a turning point where things were no longer just stupid but started to become genuinely evil, which is what today's "woke" media is, but that's kind of like the final nail in the coffin, not the start of things going bad, but as an aside I would say the woke era of media really started in a big way in 2016 with the all female Ghostbusters.

I'm focusing mainly on movies but this applies to music and TV as well, although I have less expertise on those things, but it seems to me like the "golden age" of TV that started with The Sopranos ended when Mad Men ended in 2015 and music never fully recovered from the boy band, Britney Spears era of the late 90s.



It's especially stark when you listen to something like Pink Floyd, no modern musician could hope to match the brilliance of something like Dark Side of The Moon or Wish You Were Here.

It's also especially stark when you compare the Spielberg blockbusters, your Raiders of The Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park etc with today's blockbusters.

Agreed. Some prog rock asshole might say something like Porcupine Tree or more likely The Dear Hunter, but I'm not super into prog although I respect it.

Imagine a Klaus Nomi, Nina Hagen (of my avatar fame), anything that sounds like a Banshees album, The The, Kate Bush, or a bands that not enough people heard of, like The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, or Foetus. Dream pop or Shoegaze bands still haven't really been better than Cocteau Twins. Fuck man, imagine a modern day Adam Ant. I can't. Imagine a Millennial writing emotionally evocative lyrics like Simon and Garfunkel or Tom Waits. Will anything ever push the envelope like The Residents or has the computer era made sure that will never happen again? Could you imagine anything fun like The Cramps again, that had no problem with a little objectifying of women in the name of fun macho sleaze that had no problem celebrating the (using the term metaphorically) male "Id"? What about Nick Cave or PJ Harvey, for that matter, as she's in that video)

Now we're assaulted with this garbage (TW: absolute horseshit) here. Highly produced, Obligatory Black Man Rapper Stereotype, well-edited, inauthentic horseshit designed to get played in clubs. The exact same message in all other rap songs: shallow materialism and sex. The autotuned "artist" (I won't acknowledge them by name)'s biggest job is staying in shape and getting a boob job.

If there ever is a "thoughtful" message in modern music, it is infantile and really basic stuff that everyone agrees with, like an episode of the original Star Trek today.

Now for the real clincher, here's how low-effort music videos have gotten. I just showed you odd, creative, and unique music videos from the 80s, this is what they're making today, stuff like the above and this Billie Eilish shit. (compare that musically to an actually good contemporary artist barely known outside of Europe, Soap&Skin, not her lyrics but it fits her style). Modern bands rarely show the bands actually playing instruments, maybe in a couple of shots. Because there is nobody playing instruments. It's all computer samples put together in a program made by artless hacks, designed to be catchy and sold by a talentless pornographic sex icon. People in the 80s did that in a sense, like the aforementioned Foetus/JG Thirlwell, but they pushed the limits of available technology, and had vision, and still had to put in an effort. They didn't have GarageBand or whatever, just a 24-Track tape machine or such.

There's a few modern good bands but the creativity and spark is pretty much G-O-N-E. I could name a hundred more bands or artists that push the boundaries. Bands that were famous and well-respected, showing pop-culture didn't aways suck. There's obvious ones like The Beatles and the other British Invasion bands, the B-52s (Love Shack is definitely not their best song though!), Gary Numan, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Devo, Kraut Rock bands like Can and Neu!, Roxy Music, The Specials, the list just goes on and on and on.

I think I've heard it's a bit better in Europe, where they rely less on rap--though, more on soulless electronica, but that's still better than rap.

edit: If you got through this long post here's your reward, the kind of jokes you could tell back in the 80s that were MEANT to be subversive but are now considered bigoted by thin-skinned artless adult children:

 

[Amused_To_Death]

Thankfully we have a ton of great shit to mine from the past. It's rather stark how much better old movies and music are.

Any of you guys think the arts will ever get great again? We live in a disgustingly degenerate, stagnant at best, culture.

If there's one thing I love about the current era, it's that the advancement of technology allows people to restore old media to it's intended condition and give those movies a new breathe of life for a passionate audience.

 

[SnowBall]

It’s always been shit. The good to shit ratio is the same for all eras. Nostalgia and the passage of time filters out and memory holes all the bad pop culture garbage of the good old days.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

It’s always been shit. The good to shit ratio is the same for all eras. Nostalgia and the passage of time filters out and memory holes all the bad pop culture garbage of the good old days.

I disagree. Most rap and hip hop is shit so it tends to skew the averages.

I found this article an interesting read on the topic:

http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2016/04/in-city-of-decadents.html

"If you examine our achievements today, they have much to do with the supposed social progress we have made since the fifties. Much of this progress is a matter of outlook, rather than in reality. We are better because we are morally superior. Not because we actually do more.

Despite the disdain for the past, decadent civilizations struggle to do more than deconstruct and then helplessly imitate the past. Chaotic deconstruction of past creative arts is followed by retro copying of them, first ironically and then earnestly. Nostalgia becomes the central industry of a dying civilization mired in irony and incapable of mining its own culture for creative energies.

The central cultural critique becomes updating older works to more politically correct forms. A classic character is remade black or gay. Problems with diversity or sexism are tackled. The critic becomes a commissar whose job is to sanctify the transformation of an old politically incorrect work as politically correct. That is the role of the social justice warrior.

All this energy makes it appear as if there is cultural ferment when nothing is actually being produced. Instead older works are being "cleaned up" in keeping with new social values by a civilization that frantically chews up the past in a desire to forget the problems of the present.

People living in decadent civilization have a greater need for entertainment due to leisure time, extended adolescence and the breakup of the family. But their lack of meaningful work, family engagement and adult responsibilities leaves them less able to produce it. Instead they become children putting together pieces of stories that "Daddy" once told them while taking the credit."