Stupidly, anything that requires too much of a time commitment, which has led me easily to death by a million cuts. I’m conscious of my zoomer mentality in this respect, but it’s much easier to generally piss away all your time on like, 50 tiktoks, that all last 5 seconds, compared to a TV show or a movie or whatever. The secondary effect, understated, I think, of this, and I think this is the kind of, horrible advantage of those platforms, is that you will inevitably spend more time trying to find stuff to look at that interests you, rather than actually watching content, so I think they can skate by a little more with a little less content. More efficient for them, less efficient for you.
I find myself doing the same thing with 10 minute youtube videos, but I also will end up watching multiple hour long video essays on random garbage, so I don’t really know what that’s about. Maybe just easier to convince myself that it’s a “productive” activity, to learn about some random nonsense, as compared to engaging in some sort of probably wholly escapist form of media, that might in reality lend itself towards an easier foothold for conversations with other people? I dunno, maybe the problem is just kind of trying to look at media in terms of its pure utility value, rather than looking at media through some other lens.
Certainly, I think the biggest contributing factor is just environment. I’m on my computer and phone a lot more than on my e-reader or my TV, so I naturally engage with the easier to access forms of media found on those platforms. Regression to the lowest condom domino gator, or whatever.
Also, I feel like I’ve seen enough people answer “anime” that the anime… subs? boards? communities? communities sounds a little too long. Anyways, it should be more popular, but I really haven’t seen any engagement on any of them, the anime holes.
Yeah. I just kinda write how I talk a lot of the time. The commas end up being necessary because I kind of naturally talk backwards, yoda-style. If I had/wanted to commit more time to this, I also probably would’ve written a shorter letter.
I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point I stopped receiving that magazine.
There was always a section called “BASIC Training” that had a bunch of source code in BASIC. They wouldn’t tell you what it did. You had to try and guess what it did, then type it into your computer to find out whether you were right. But I didn’t have a computer.
In 1994 I finally got a computer, and immediately opened up the QBASIC interpreter and started typing it all in, to see what it did.
Holy shit I just realized that’s 30 years ago this year.
YouTube. From around 2008 - 2016, it was pretty much my only source of media and entertainment. I was subscribed to so many different channels and never missed an upload. I could spend hours just binge watching all types of content. These days, I only watch / follow a handful of creators. Really only visit the site when I have nothing better to do.
I’m the same way. And Google’s algorithmic bullshit they pull makes it really hard to find quality content that actually keeps me interested. They killed the “magic” of finding a new favorite creator.
Eli the Computer Guy and Philip DeFranco. For much the same reason. They told me to leave, and I did.
DeFranco was truly biased but balanced news. And then came the US election before last and balance lost out. Trump won and DeFranco decided political influence was more important than unbiased reporting. Shortly after Biden won the last election, he streamed a response to criticisms of bias, and he flat out said “if you disagree with my politics, leave. I don’t need viewers like you.” Favoring neither is disagreement too. It was that easy. Last I checked his subscriber count was cut roughly in half.
Eli said “If you don’t want to see me study ‘What is a duck?’ Leave. No really, leave. Leave.” His subscribers vanished and he blamed the algorithm, or so I heard.
I mean DeFranco is still good stuff, he’s just very on the nose about fascists being fascists. I think he still presents news in a factual way, while making it clear where the factual information stops and his feelings start.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the “subscribers count cut in half” because that just isn’t the case at al, he steadily trended upward then plateaued, but hasn’t experienced any significant drop in the past several years
Last I checked was several years ago, as the last US election was in 2019, I believe.
I was a daily viewer (on week days anyway) for a mighty grand stretch of time. I watched the occasional stream too. His view counts on every video, with few exceptions, were between 1 and 2.5 million and usually on the higher side around 1.6M views. Every day.
Then about 4 and a half to 5 years ago, his viewership dropped over a few months, and they started struggling to break the 1 million mark. 800k became the norm. My recollection is the same. He told anybody who wasn’t jazzed about his politics to leave, and I did.
If he’s doing well and managed to build himself back up, good for him. Maybe he had another growing up moment. I wish him the best, but I’ll continue to take my news from RSS now on.
Comedy news shows. They can be funny, but the more I learn about topics in depth the more I realize how much biased the shows are. A segment that might have previously left me feeling better informed might instead make me feel like someone is trying to fool me or tell a one sided story.
In one episode of last week tonight, John Oliver was roasting Boris Johnson for mumbling the poem ‘Road to Mandalay’ while visiting Myanmar. Calling the act, absolutely offensive or something. Now, not a whole lot of Myanmar people here don’t know the poem. And among those who know, the poem is either fairly well regarded or they hold no such feelings like taking offense. Atleast among the people I know. Boris Johnson’s an absolute clown, but you can definitely sense the bias there.
Bingo. John Oliver is one of the worst offenders here, I think. He has a slick, humorous presentation style and a lot of his material is genuinely informative. At the same time, as you note he’ll throw in something that is either horribly cherry picked or has a bad misinterpretation.
I’ve watched “some more news” a couple of times, I found them pretty alright. They’re pretty clearly biased, they’re just biased in a direction that I tend to like more than others. Still kind of, full of stupid skits though, and for the comedy, ymmv, certainly, it doesn’t really land for me at all. Quality of the information is kind of. Iffy, it would seem like, but I haven’t looked into it that hard.
Of course, biased in a direction that you like is the most hazardous to keeping a clear view of a situation. That’s the easiest way to slip by your guard.
Yeah, but I’m conscious of it. I’ve kind of thrown out conceptions of unbiased news as being something that even exists in the first place anyways, so I’d rather at least have something that sort of, is given from a perspective I understand, and which conforms to whatever my standards for information are, rather than just having like, unbiased reporting on events.
The decision of what events to cover isn’t necessarily going to be unbiased, the decision of what language to use when covering those events isn’t necessarily unbiased, the decision of which sources the “unbiased” news trusts for their reporting isn’t necessarily unbiased. I would kind of rather just have a news source that I can sort of, trust to do it’s job, and present me with information that I can understand, and know what to do with, rather than a news source where I have to do my own journalism to find out whether or not their story really means anything as a whole.
If you understand and can more thoroughly comprehend the bias of the news you’re given, it’s easier to kind of push it through the framework and turn it into easy to consume gelatinous news paste.
I stopped watching “last week tonight” after seeing some episodes about topics I was already informed about. I realized that the amount of truth-bending was borderline malicious.
I am aware of paid alternatives to ad-supported services like email, search, etc.
Even when considering media, music is something one can buy vinyls or use a streaming service that better(?) compensate the artist.
But movies and TV? Aren’t advertisements baked in to what most consume today, albeit at different levels? For instance, product placements in movies, ad-supported free streaming, paid streaming with ads, etc.
Unless we are talking about truly independent media which is either not easily accessible/discoverable to a layman like me, or isn’t as entertaining as the mainstream ones (highly debatable/subjective, as one hasn’t explored the offerings enough).
I would genuinely like to learn more about ad-independent media, and how you consume it.
American TV and movies after the '00s. Not representative enough of normal American life to be relatable (which is why I like '90s and '00s American TV so much) and not original enough to be interesting (which is why I’m into anime.)
I don’t really play video games any more. No disrespect to people who still play them, but they are baby entertainment. Cheap stimulation which requires very little intellectual input and fucks with your functioning as an adult through screwing up your reward system. Not all games are bad but 90% of gaming just exists to keep you placid and give you the illusion of control and agency. I’m an adult now, I can get the real thing.
I found my enjoyment of gaming was greater learning about various games from a disinterested third party prospective than doing so myself.
Online Multiplayer. I used to love to connect with people, friends and strangers and play games. Now I just want to play alone on my terms and find it super annoying when games introduce online stuff into the single player mode, like raids.
I literally stopped watching movies, especially Bollywood and Hollywood movies. Somewhere along the line, I just decided to consume almost exclusively Japanese media, particularly anime. The simple reason is that anime tells some really amazing stories that most Hollywood movies don’t hold a candle against. Think Attack on Titan or FMA. I am not saying that all Japanese media is great, no it’s not. But, the variety there is pretty amazing.
I enjoyed Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon quite a bit. It’s not exceptional or great, but good. It certainly tells a unique story.
I kinda went the other direction where I had to cut out all anime. Too many fascist undertones and sexualizing children for it to be comfortable to watch for me.
Obviously not all shows/movies from anime do those but it’s difficult to really know until you’ve already started watching and so it’s safer to just cut it out.
I do like some of it, but far too often the story is going along fine and then it’s like SURPRISE HAREM! SURPRISE SLAVERY (and the main character is fine with that). Too bad Crunchyroll doesn’t have a tag for “not creepy”.
I take extra care to avoid harem anime. I hate them too. Eventually, you learn to identify them from a distance. Harem anime tend to have a pretty identifiable look.
Television. Can't remember the last time I turned my TV on to actually watch TV. It's mostly for streaming, but even that's getting harder to keep up with. It just feels like there are too many services and shows to keep track of. If I sit down and watch a show then I really need to want to watch it. More and more I've been listening to podcasts or treating Youtube videos like podcasts. It lets me multitask in a way that sitting down and trying to watch something just doesn't.
More and more I’ve been listening to podcasts or treating Youtube videos like podcasts. It lets me multitask in a way that sitting down and trying to watch something just doesn’t.
How much of them do you catch as you’re multitasking? Any time I try this I’m astounded at my unwitting ability to almost entirely tune out whatever they’re talking about, defeating any point to playing the podcast outside of giving myself some background noise.
Its a trainable skill. Ive got it to the point where my boss doesnt give me shit about listening to audiobooks while I work because I’m faster when I do.
It miiiiight be an ADHD thing as the only people I’ve been known to actually retain info while doing this are all diagnosed, including me
Or at least more commonly possible in ND brains like that
I personally only find myself rewinding my audiobooks when either:
Something weirdly worded or confusing happens. Going through discworld right now and I had to repeat a lot of Pratchetts descriptions of people, for example
I need to read something in the language the book is in. IE, english Text that’s actual words that have meaning, but not numbers or acronyms or other non-sentence English, if that makes sense
TV in general, I can’t remember the last time I’ve sat down to watch anything airing that wasn’t, say, footage of the new year’s eve fireworks show or something.
I don’t really care much for recent movies as well, most of what I watch is stuff from before 2000 and if I ever go to the theater I go with friends just as an excuse to hang out.
And I think I’m currently in the process of outgrowing gaming in general, I still play games but I’ve been gaming less and less nowadays, most of what I play are old games from my teenage years and childhood, and I don’t really keep up much with newer releases… In truth I’m sort of disgusted by the industry in general nowadays, so that might have some influence as well.
It’s the new cable, in that it sells to customers based on intentional market fragmentation. It’s actually a worse, because anything you “buy” on a streaming platform is actually just leased.
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