Thankfully my interests change so often I am never competent enough to ramble as long as I would like to about them.
I remember my mental spasm about sequels vs prequels, it was months long delirium. I have this kind of intense interest in finding out why something is fun to watch or play. What exactly constitutes for a good experience. What are the objective measures that we can use to decide if something is a work of art or not. Because if art is subjective then why we have famous artists at all and critics that deem some works classic?
Experience; knowledge; understanding. When where and how we acquired these heavily dictate our subjective experience with… well, everything, including media and the art within.
Based on my own observations, the average person follows a very basic pattern and have not bothered to grow as a person beyond this. They want to absorb entertaining content with minimal energy. We all do at our core, but some of us can move beyond it. For those of us that haven’t yet, our media conglomerates are happy to cater with over-saturation such as with Marvel. We can observe the market, but the average person literally doesn’t care. Are they unaware of critical analysis skills? Is there no energy to ponder these things after a 10+h work day? Sometimes both. Perhaps neither.
The Rock was in a lot of famous movies and he has a great public personality. Now he is in low-quality spit-out productions because his face generates money nostalgia in his viewers. I can flip this from movies to video games as well with Nintendo. How delusional people were with Violet / Scarlet and the outrage that Palworld caused. PKMN Violet / Scarlet was one of the worst games I’ve played on the Nintendo Switch (which objectively it isn’t but rather is more like the antithesis of what we’re talking about… I sadly digress). As a game, it’s terrible. But some people are eating up the story and pokemon experience. There was a common denominator amongst this group though, and they didn’t care about the garbage quality of the game because they weren’t experiencing it - they were experiencing their pokemon. Likewise my family praises a lot of movies I… rent for them. I always watch them and they’re typically rehashed ideas featuring famous actor(s). I can barely tolerate the experience - Red Notice? It wasn’t even ironically good where it’s so bad it’s good again, but they love it! They’ll eat it up every time and then enjoy the social experience of talking about it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have famous artists and critics because humans like to take the path of least resistance.
I’m still ultimately unsure what a good objective measurement would be for works of art, but I think it’s something to do with how the piece may expose peoples thoughts and ideas. Perhaps not just as a socially engaging experience, but something that stirs your soul into a tasty broth, ya know? Something that causes an introspective change within. Outer Wilds, How to Read, The Good Place, these are all works of art to me under this premise.
So ya, I also have an intense interest in the subject and I’d love to hear your own thoughts on the matter :) Please, do ramble on~
Edit: It’s a discussion, not a statement of fact ya downvotin’ goobah and goobahs to be~
I have a fairly functional form of autism, but I sometimes struggle finding balance in points of interest I get enthusiastic about, and nobody really matches my enthusiasm, even though they try. It often feels like rejection, but this post really puts it in perspective for me. I’m not always reasonable/flexible when I’m like that. Thanks for sharing.
(To give an example related to this post; I wouldn’t assault someone for having a different opinion, but I could definitely debate them with a passion that’s a little out of place and not as reasonable as I’d like to believe it is. “Building with concrete blocks? What is even wrong with you, where you never thought proper construction? What do you mean cheap building costs? People who want to build cheap buildings shouldn’t be allowed to build anyway”.
if even after asking for an explanation your explanation is " try googling it" I’m going to assume you dont want to be understood.
If I’m trolling I’m definitely not doing it consciously. I know “I’m not a troll” is about the most suspicious thing on the internet, especially from a baby account, but sadly I cant be fucked to make a better point
Unfortunately for folks with genuine curiosity, feigning ignorance on information that is perceived to be commonly known or understood is a very common tactic of bad faith actors who attempt to slowly erode a discussion as part of trolling or manipulation. It has put a lot of folks off to the point where they would rather advise to look it up and disengage rather than take a chance it’s another game down the rabbit hole. Reading your dialogue as a third party it illuminates as such even if unintentionally so.
I think I understand? Thanks for claring things up, and sorry if I accidentally distracted from the actual topic (although mentioning the bad faith trolling has probably done that more effectively… but whatever)
A bad faith troll is a troll that makes arguments in bad faith. Read more about bad faith arguments here or you can search the web for “bad faith arguments.”
“Building with concrete blocks? What is even wrong with you, where you never thought proper construction? What do you mean cheap building costs? People who want to build cheap buildings shouldn’t be allowed to build anyway”.
The internet suddenly makes a bit more sense to me
Your point about matching enthusiasm resonates with me. I am fortunate nowadays that many of my friends are neurodivergent, and we seem to enjoy each others’ enthusiasm. We have some shared interests, but I think in a context where I can just listen and learn and not necessarily be expected to be a part of a “regular conversation” (i.e. when the primary mode of conversation is neurodivergent), I really enjoy listening to my friends nerd out about things outside of my own interest, as well as sometimes explaining my things to other people.
Outside of that framework though, before I had my current friends, I often felt like it was a smarter social strategy to just not talk about my interests at all because tempering my enthusiasm was difficult and seemed to never been enough.
There’s this interesting balance within my MTG group where some guys are happy to devote a fair part of their life to learning all the individual cards by heart. They can go on tangents that are just rows of card names describing a turn (think if the F6 to G8 takes rook babble of chess people). I can’t be fucked, but I still love the hobby, so when we get together its trying to find the middle between all these levels of expertise that works. Overall that went well but there was one guy who flat out told me: “Maby if you would just dedicate a bigger part of your life to the game, we wouldn’t have to bother talking around you so much.” Yeah right. Not everyone makes their hobby into their profession.
That being said, its kinda heartbreaking so many people struggle with just letting their enthusiasm about a certain topic flow. If you’d rather not talk about something because you’re afraid you can’t reel it in, that sucks :(
IT ISNT EVEN CONCRETE! YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT BRITTLE, ROUGH, MOLD AND FUNGUS FARMS THAT DEGRADE IN NO LESS THAN 20 YEARS CINDER BLOCK.
BRICK, in a technical sense is concrete BUT EVEN BRICK AND MORTAR ARE INFERIOR TO A SIMPLE WELL EXECUTED CONCRETE POUR.
LAZY INCOMPETENT CONTRACTORS DECIDED TO SKIP THE CAST MAKING STAGE AND JUST STARTED GOING TO TOWN WITH SHITTY ASS BRICK AND POROUS ASS MORTER.
WAS THAT ENOUGH?!?!? NOOOOOOOOO.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH. THEY NEEDED TO FIND A WAY TO MAKE THE BLOCK SHITTIER THAN THE BONDING AGENT SO THEY MADE....
30 straight seconds of visceral panting
DOG SHIT POLLEN ABSORBING WATER SOLUABLE FUCK ME IN THE ASS SNEEZE ON IT AND IT CRUMBLES..... ARGH..... CIIIIIIINNNNNNNDEEEEEERRRRRR BLOOOOOOCCCCCCK.
I just can't anymore... I have grown to cherish brick... who made cinder block... why?... why did they do this to me? Why did they make me not only know of but also languish in a world mostly made of... wimper... cinder block...
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