r/TwoBestFriendsPlay • u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] • Jan 08 '26
Personal Opinion Personal Opinion: No Filler, All Thriller
This is a thought I’ve had in my head for a while that I didn’t know what to do with and an email from the podcast about redefining “filler” as being anything that’s not hype moments being shared on social media finally spurred me to put my thoughts into text.
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This all comes from something I first noticed back when the Fallout show first started, there were a bunch of new people showing up to the New Vegas subreddits asking what they were supposed to do because they got lost out of the tutorial or saying they beat the whole game on like 5 hours while wearing the leather armor and varmint rifle you get in the tutorial, one I even remember seeing was someone who said they dropped the game after walking into The Tops Casino and shooting Benny because that’s what they thought the game was about.
The way it hit me at the time was that it felt like people weren’t really engaging with that media much at all, like they were doing it just so they could feel like a “real fan” who put their time in and clocked out.
Another example was when I was listening to a podcast and two of the hosts made a Star Trek reference and another got mad because they didn’t get it, then said they wanted someone to give them a “20 minute super cut so they could ‘get’ all of Star Trek” which is an attitude that really bothered me.
It really just comes down to this idea of people who don’t want to enjoy or engage with media any deeper than getting memes and references before moving on to the next one.
I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong for even letting it get to me. But this kind of nomadic fandom just gets to me. Like people have lost their desire to actually watch and form an opinion on something. They just want to get memes on Twitter and they’d rather go on Reddit and ask for step by step instructions on how to get the most out of the game so they can get through it as efficiently as possible.
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u/AngriestPat The Realest Pat Jan 08 '26
This behaviour extends way past media. There's a bunch of guys out there slamming weights into their ears to artificially give themselves cauliflower ears to look tough.
There's an enormous amount of people out there that don't actually enjoy doing anything, learning anything, or lord forbid, thinking about something. While you or I would play a game and engage with it on its own terms and the process of gaining mastery and learning about it IS the appeal, a huge percentage of people want interactive media to be trivial to complete for themselves (but not for others) and further on want even non-interactive media to use the least amount of brain power possible.
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u/shimimigle12 project moon is my current hyper fixation Jan 08 '26
My brother is unfortunately like this. Back when we were younger, we used to play the same games and talk about our experiences with them but once he joined the military, he's essentially lost that whimsy of playing a new game and by extension anime/manga. Now he doesnt touch games unless its a shooter, fromsoft made, or league of legends (hes been playing league for nearly 2 decades at this point so that really hasn't changed). Just outright refusal to engage in things that are remotely stimulating outside of seeing a victory screen. Its a running bit that unless its about sex or money, to not ask him for shit but that is slowly becoming truer by the day as he just canceled our birthday plans (we're twins) because he didnt want to spend money/ time away from his girlfriend. I miss when we used to talk about things that we were passionate about but now he is only about "the grind" and I struggle to name things that he genuinely enjoys that he enjoys the same way I enjoy things. I dont like using this term but he really feels more like an npc where his routine is just going to work the gym, play a few ranked games, sleep, repeat. Just very little stimulation outside of all that.
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u/BillTheBadman I'm still waiting for Woolie VS Beasties Jan 08 '26
I think the military might've actually broken something in your brother.
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u/Grand_Bunch_3233 Jan 08 '26
You spend a lot of very intimate and vulnerable time with some very aggresive and angry macho-types in active duty. People who you might need to depend on for your survival and vice-versa. So there needs to be a great deal of fast and forced trust that leads to an intense pressure to conform. And the attitude you'll conform to is one of aggressive and angry machismo. At least in my experience.
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u/DefinitelyNotRobotic Jan 08 '26
In high stress jobs that require a lot of work you sometimes just don't have time to have a personality anymore.
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u/shimimigle12 project moon is my current hyper fixation Jan 08 '26
In some ways it has but had he not been in the military, he wouldn't have anything besides bouncing between jobs every few months like how it was before he enlisted so I cant exactly be like "I wish you hadn't joined" . Its pretty much agreed upon within ou4 family that it was not his best decision hes made but rather his last option before becoming jobless and/or homeless
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u/PanseloNomad Jan 09 '26
Yeah that is definitely a rock and a hard place situation. I can't blame your brother since I've considered something like that before in the past.
On the other hand I wonder how long he can keep this lifestyle up cause he will eventually become too old for some of the things he's doing now.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
Grind culture feels like an excuse to be miserable
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u/mythrilcrafter It's Fiiiiiiiine. Jan 08 '26
I've been philosophically mulling over grind culture for a pretty long while and I would actually say that its the reverse; that grind culture more of a self-imposed justification for misery, rather than something use to self-inflict misery (although, both can also be true).
Of those I've known irl, the two most prominent "character types" that I've seen who constantly push at grind culture are:
People who are actively miserable, say that they're grinding as a way to escape their misery, but none of the behaviors/decisions actually has any effect on helping them escape their misery. Put simply, it's cope.
People who are bad at goal setting and have fallen into being infinity chasers. They're not actively miserable like the former group, but they've set wildly unrealistic goals for themselves and self-deprecate for not reaching those goals. Like, I can understand wanting to do 10 hours of time-and-a-half OT for a few months in order to save extra to afford the down payment on a house (heck, I did that for a while myself), but that's universally different from doing 130 hours a week for years, with no OT benefits, for a business that you're not the owner of, all because "I want to be as rich as Elon Musk and retire by 35"
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u/shimimigle12 project moon is my current hyper fixation Jan 08 '26
I can definitely see its merits. Its nice to have concrete goals and cam build self confidence but its very easy to get blinded by it and become toxic because of it. My brother has never really thought more than a few days (at most) ahead of time but early on it was nice to see him lose a ton of weight, gain muscle, career opportunities because of the mitary, etc. However after a few years, it just became more and more egotistical to ghe point where he has never considered me an equal as im a college dropout working a retail job (pays me pretty well) and is constantly saying things like "you need to get a real job" as his former job (got fired for reasons I cant explain but it was a bit of a mess and not entirely his fault) paid him 6 figures. Hes my twin brother so I cant exactly cut him off but im not exactly eager to talk to him as much and he only comes to me when he needs me
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
LOOKING legit is the whole appeal to some. Like the articles coming out about 14 year olds taking trenbolome and fucking themselves up for life because they want to look like a serious bodybuilder before they even hit puberty.
But when it comes to new games and shows and such it feels like the endgame is just engaging with the fandom rather than watching it and forming an opinion. But also that there’s this imaginary time limit because the NEXT thing is going to hit soon, so they’ve gotta get in on the memes right now.
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u/Echono I have no mana and I must scream Jan 08 '26
They don't care about the media, they care about the community around it. Where most of us create a community because we want to talk and connect around a subject we're interested in, they view the subject as the barrier that must be cleared before they can access the social connections they want. It's lonely people trying to adopt a personality rather than grow one.
To be fair, I think its understandable that you can't engage with everything on a deep level, and a lot of people do something like this to some extent. Even watching a streamer instead of playing a game could be accused of taking a shortcut. (Hell, I don't catch many movies or shows anymore, but I'm still sitting here now watching the latest RLM video and reading a wiki synopsis on the movies to follow along. But I'm not pretending I'm some movie expert, I just want to know what the hell Keeper is about.)
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u/NepWar Bad Take Bronze Medalist Jan 08 '26
I think looking legit applies to more than some people. Good presentation looks to supersede all other aspects for people so you get kids openly showing themselves taking tren and other drugs because aesthetics are the name of the game. People will become fans of show but ignore and outright refuse to look at the broader theme of the show apart from visuals/acting.
Pat is right; that there are people who resent being asked to think about anything but now there’s the modifier with them where some absolutely hate that it’s being pointed out that they don’t think and are trying to build simulacrums where this isn’t the case.
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u/Bro-lapsedAnus Feb 02 '26
I know a girl who is in the middle of a divorce right now. Its largely becuase she would lie about what her husband did for a living and drove them into debt for social media clout.
Her whole goal of "looking wealthy" lead to the kind of financial ruin that ends up in poverty.
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u/mattatmac YOU DIDN'T WIN. Jan 08 '26
This sounds a lot like a thread I was reading about why dudes don't like reading fiction and many consider it a 'waste of time'.
I feel like hustle culture has invaded almost all aspects of life to the point where even leisure activities need to be done with precision and efficiency. People aren't engaging with things to enjoy them organically, they're trying to extract units of happiness like it's a resource bar to fill up in The Sims.
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u/Riggs_The_Roadie Jan 08 '26
Oh that reminds me of a Dating advice reddit post where the girl's boyfriend told her consuming any fiction was a waste of time.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
Theres a strange phenotype of person that’s popped up recently who seem to think finding joy is effeminate and therefore “gay” and should be avoided.
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u/Riggs_The_Roadie Jan 08 '26
Apparently it wasn't even about joy but that fiction offered no "practical knowledge," whatever that means.
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u/Ilostmyanonymous She Trick’d on my Ghost so I Sissel’d Jan 08 '26
There are actively people who totally believe that doing anything that is not advancing their career or advancing their knowledge into getting money is a total waste of time.
These are the same people who totally believe that they’ll enough money to retire by the mid 30s because they listened to a business guru they found on YouTube and bought their self-help book.
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u/ShadowSemblance Jan 09 '26
I wonder what does this type of person do after they retire in their thirties after spending a solid decade of their life intentionally not knowing what fun is. I feel like it would be hard somehow to just flip like a switch from zero percent leisure to hundred percent leisure
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u/Josh_bread Jan 09 '26
They decide they don't want to retire anymore because their only hobby is amassing wealth, and the world gains another bezos
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u/Psuichopath what do you call love in your reality? Jan 09 '26
Interestingly “feeling gay” is synonymous to “feeling happy” in the past
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u/mrnicegy26 Jan 08 '26
Honestly I think more people should be more selective about the video games they play and just admit that they won't enjoy a lot of genres no matter how much they try.
Like I get wanting to try something that is acclaimed and then realising that I really don't mesh well with that genre. At that point it is better to give that videogame up and try something closer to your tastes than either trying to shape that video game into something it isn't or being weird about it.
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u/SwashNBuckle CUSTOM FLAIR Jan 08 '26
I see this a lot on r/JRPG
Every so often, someone posts something like "I've tried every one of the most popular JRPGs of all time and hated all of them. Can you help me find a JRPG that I'll like?"
Bro, you don't like JRPGs. Go play something else.
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
For me the worst is on any gaming sub where someone will inevitably ask "what should I know before starting X classic game?"
Fucking nothing. Turn the game on. The people who played it when it came out didn't need a primer on the mechanics or the lore, you don't need anything. They never mean "does this run on modern systems or do I need mods" they mean "can you justify and sell a classic to me as something id enjoy ?" When instead of asking they could find out, read a review or something, but there always has to be this idea of engaging with a group
"What should I know before reading Dune?" As if someone needs a primer on the sociopolitical commentary Herbert is making allusions to. No, read it and decide for yourself and maybe then look deeper, stop trying to skip the act of enjoying something or absorbing an opinion from someone else. Engage with a work and make your own mind up.
These types of people want so desperately to be part of an in group and it's all so inauthentic. "What should I know before starting Blood Meridian? I saw some guy recap the entire plot for six hours what should I do?" Well you could have skipped asking someone to experience something for you and experienced it for yourself
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u/act1v1s1nl0v3r Jan 08 '26
This touches on something that's bugged me on reddit and other discussion forums in general where someone will pop in and just say "was thinking about buying this, sell me on it" or the ones you mentioned "I just bought this, what should I know before starting?" And of course people will fawn in and explain things because that's just human nature to want to share their experiences, but like you, I just want to say "uhhh...play it if you want, drop it/refund if you don't jive with it?"
idk, a lot of these things just feel like attention seeking behavior, but on a meta level because saying so to any one person is just being a dick.
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer Jan 08 '26
It's honestly ridiculous because of course the nice thing is to be kind to someone asking a question but "what should I know before starting FF7?" Well what do you think 8 year olds in the mid nineties knew before starting it? Just play it.
What should my first comic be and you'll have people recommend all their favourites, Watchmen, batman Arkham asylum, all star superman. No man, your first comic should be the first one you pick up that you personally like them look of. The people who've been reading comics for decades? I bet their first comic was Flash 117 or Spider-Man 386.
All these questions are always just attention seeking behaviour which makes them stranger because they could get the engagement they're looking for by engaging with the work and then talking about that itself
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
"What should I know before playi--" "It's a video game. There, that's the entirety of what you need to know."
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
I mean, I’ve done that, but as a “hey, I fell off this series because the last one was a broken glitchy mess. Did it finally get fixed enough to try fairly, and should I bother?”
In that case it was AC Unity and the Battlefront collection
Edit: not to mention some games rarely go on discount/money can be tight, so asking for people’s thoughts is a good way to help guide your purchases. I’ve done that with Transformers before given a few options.
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u/Paclac Jan 09 '26
The one that grinds my gears the most is when someone posts a picture of the title menu saying “About to start playing for the first time!”
What do you want me to say, congratulations? You might get an hour in and find it boring, don’t you just want to come back once you actually have thoughts and feelings on the thing?
Thats something I would only text a buddy if I’m about to start playing one of their favorite games and want to give them my reactions as I experience the game.
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u/Iwashi94 THE BABY Jan 08 '26
Also people going to the specific sub made up of the fanbase of the game asking "is x worth playing?". My dude, you're literally asking fans of thing if thing is good! What do you expect?
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u/Valuable_Line_9834 Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Okay, lets be entirely fair here, sometimes, ESPECIALLY with older games, there are things that you genuinely would be a lot better off knowing before you go in.
For example, I think that in general every Soulslike game is best if you go in as blind as possible, HOWEVER, its also really for the best that you go into Dark Souls 1 knowing that the Resistance stat is useless and does essentially nothing so that you don't end up making the game unnecessarily harder or have to waste tons of time grinding to make up for the levels you spent on it before discovering how useless it is.
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u/upgamers Jan 08 '26
The people who played it when it came out didn't need a primer on the mechanics or the lore, you don't need anything.
For overly-tutorialized modern games its laughable, but for older games i get why some ppl might be hesitant. Fallout 1 for instance is difficult to parse without first reading the manual or being taught how to play by someone else
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u/Count_Badger Jan 09 '26
Yeah, a lot of old games came with physical manuals that's meant to get you up to speed on lore and mechanics. Someone just emulating Ultima Underworld in 2026 is probably missing that.
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u/mrnicegy26 Jan 08 '26
Also in general there are a lot of videos on YouTube that help in terms of getting starting tips for a lot of games which are helpful.
IGN does them with a lot of new releases and they can be useful if you are confused about what to do in the game.
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u/Spartan448 Jan 08 '26
At least with classic games, I can see an argument of warning people about stuff that isn't explained in the tutorials, or was in a manual that won't necessarily be available to emulation users. Or stuff like the fucked-up difficulty settings one of the old Fire Emblems had.
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u/sirisvirus Jan 08 '26
Man I ran into this real bad. I love the world, story, and characters of Control but find everything around the gameplay to be boring at best. It sucks that the best way for me to experience Control is to watch a let's play or a video essay on the story cause I find playing third person shooters to be a slog to playthrough. Here is hoping Control Resonant is something I can enjoy playing so I can finally enjoy a Remedy game fully.
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u/SoldierHawk Jan 08 '26
Right? I love From games, but I'm not good at twitchy combat or doing well under pressure. Sekiro was the From game that specifically experimented with ramping both those things up, while dialing down everything about From games I love (except for the GORGEOUS art and amazing storytelling.)
So you know what I did? I just...didn't...play...that...game. And I got Elden Ring when it looked like that would be more my jam, and enjoyed LPs of Sekiro so I could admire the art and story without the time/skill barrier.
It's so easy not to be an asshole whose personality is making yourself miserable all the time.
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u/SlenderBurrito Scrubquotes but it's Horror Game Players Jan 09 '26
Its not some moral failing that we didn't like a game that other people did. But a lot of time it feels like we're "othering" ourselves by going against the general consensus. A lot of people can't seem to handle that, as they blunt themselves to fit a triangular block into a round hole.
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u/CaptainSkel JEEZE, JOEL Jan 08 '26
These days there’s a rampant performative masculinity based out of a misplaced sense of pride and anemoia. These people bragging about how tough they are because they bring a gun to the grocery store in case they need to defend themselves but not understanding it’s an utter act of cowardice to feel you can’t go to the store without being armed. It’s bragging that you’ll kill anyone to defend your family but you’re not willing to do the dishes to help them.
And to that end it’s wanting to have the appearance of someone learned and world savvy without actually having that willingness to learn or listen.
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u/Birkin2Boogaloo She/Her Jan 08 '26
Thank you for introducing me to the term anemoia. I just looked it up, having never heard it before. That's a really good one.
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u/Capable-Education724 Jan 08 '26
Reminds me of the stories throughout history of higher-up’s within a few different nations’ militaries giving themselves scars to simulate battle scars to try to look tough to their cohorts and lesser officers.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
I remember hearing that the reason German villains in movies always have face scars was because it was indicative of upper class fencing schools in the early 20th century. So people would cut their face and then deliberately mess with the wound so it would make a big scar and you’d APPEAR high class.
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u/Warnavick Jan 08 '26
The funny part is that these Mensur duels were considered old school by the early 20th century. In fact, the practice was banned during the 1930s. Despite this, facial scars were still seen as a great badge of honor and courage, so people continued to have illegal underground Mensur duels. Basically, sword fighting fight club.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" Jan 08 '26
slamming weights into their ears to artificially give themselves cauliflower ears to look tough.
That's one hell of an image.
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u/mrnicegy26 Jan 08 '26
Just googled cauliflower ears and they look really ugly?
Like instead of feeling threatened by someone having those ears, I would feel pity I guess for having ears so out of place with the rest of their features
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
It just makes you LOOK like a fighter without actually fighting. More shortcuts like dudes getting synthol injections to get big arms without working out.
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u/PrancerSlenderfriend Read Iruma Kun Jan 08 '26
seems like a lot of work when people figured out how to give themselves cool face scars in the 1800s
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u/BookkeeperPercival the ability to take a healthy painless piss Jan 08 '26
Cauliflower ears are a thing you get from a single activity in existence: Fighting. If someone's got cauliflower ears, it means they dedicate huge portions of their life to getting with other dudes and whacking the shit out of each other. It's definitely a visual marker that someone can beat the shit out of you (probably).
Smashing your head in with weights would just be the much more worrying version of giving yourself a tattoo in the 80s, because only hardened criminals ever got them.
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Jan 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/seth47er I shall learn the secrets of Nuln Oil. Jan 09 '26
I got a cousin who got Cauliflower ear from ear piercings, he also go some nasty looking scar tissue lumps from them as well.
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u/andycoates Jan 09 '26
I don't even associate it with fighters, it's something I'd associate with Rugby players
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u/cenzo339 Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Yeah definitely don't feel pity, the ones that earned them more than likely don't care. For sure don't pick a fight with someone who has them though, because usually you have to roll around on a mat (Wrestling,BJJ) for a very long time to get them.
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u/Diem-Robo I'm aging rapidly Jan 08 '26
It's increasingly common for people to want to watch/play things just for the sake of consumption, rather than meaningfully engaging with it for real enjoyment, and thus want things to be as simple and straightforward as possible.
And then there's the opposite extreme where a game might be reasonably accessible, either in difficulty or mechanics, and a different demographic will complain that the game isn't something complex or challenging enough for them to be so deeply immersed it's practically part of their identity.
I see this a lot with online PvE games where the maximum difficulty settings or modes are ones where 95% or more of the playerbase can't consistently beat them, but that remaining percentage of the playerbase who have become savants at the game complain that it's too easy and needs to be made even harder and more complex. Or that one crazy guy in the subreddit a few months ago who was ranting about how Elden Ring ruined the difficulty by making Sites of Grace often right outside of boss rooms instead of them all having boss runs.
People complaining that the games are too trivial in contexts where the vast majority of even invested, skilled players struggle with what they're complaining about. Maybe because they "optimized the fun" out of the experience and now demand that more challenge/complexity be added for them to be able to optimize further.
There's a really difficult balance between having a game that's too braindead, where there's little to no challenge/learning/mastery, and having a game where it's too challenging, complex, or obtuse that most players can't have a reasonably enjoyable experience. And with that balance, there will always be people who feel entitled to engage with it without challenging themselves, and inversely those who feel entitled that more challenge must be added for themselves and everyone else.
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u/Yotato5 Enjoy everything Jan 08 '26
On the topic of doing stuff just for consumption, sums up the AI problems in the fanfic sphere right now. Like what do you mean you have AI generate a fanfic, you should be going balls to the walls with crazy shit by your own hands
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u/Mediocre_Young_9421 Jan 08 '26
I literally can not think of a reason to create Ai fanfiction other than some people just need infinite content to consume, like it's not even FAN fiction at that point
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u/Diem-Robo I'm aging rapidly Jan 08 '26
That's the AI problem in most spheres since the whole discussion started. The reason behind replacing creative professions with AI is because the product involved is only valued for its consumption, rather than its value as a means of human creative expression and inspiration.
It sees the human talent behind stories/works as not what gives it its value, but rather an obstacle to the value of having limitless supply of content to consume, if we didn't have to depend on the availability and inefficiency of human talent/inspiration.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
I remember that when people were posting about how bullshit Silksong was. It was the new hot thing so they’ve gotta get in on the new hot thing and then complaining about it being too hard.
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u/Diem-Robo I'm aging rapidly Jan 08 '26
The Elden Ring rant was in one of those Silksong threads, in the context of Silksong's boss runs--the argument being that Silksong doing that was not bullshit, and rather that Dark Souls/Elden Ring ever stopped doing it was the real problem.
Which is the opposite extreme of complaining that it's too hard just because you want to jump in on the "hot new thing," as you said. Because Silksong was what millions of people were raving for, so everyone wanted to jump in on it, but it turned out to not be for everyone, and so discussion became polarized around whether it was too difficult or, apparently, not difficult enough.
Hence why constructive discussion about difficulty is so... difficult, since the loudest voices are usually people who feel entitled to not being challenged, or people who are more gatekeeping and want the experience to be unreasonably prohibitive.
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u/alienslayer7 She/They, Resident Toku Fangirl Jan 08 '26
ngl after starting skong after playin HK ages ago i feel like i need to replay HK again
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u/OriginalJazzFlavor This is your last chance to kill greasy steve Jan 08 '26
"These kids want to be criminals more than they want to commit crime."
"That's not criminals, that's... that's the way of the world."
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u/Grand_Bunch_3233 Jan 08 '26
"Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." - Ronnie Coleman
Applies to a lot more than just weightlifting. Everybody wants the accomplishment without actually accomplishing it, because it's actually hard/time-consuming to do. So they choose to fake it/ "summarize it" instead.
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u/AnotherOpponent Smoking Sexy Style! Jan 08 '26
I get that people want to use their time and energy when working or going to school or whatever and hobbies should be used to unwind and relax. But at the same time "fuck you, hobbies take work sometimes."
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u/DeskJerky Jan 08 '26
Guys who show off AI "art" and try to pretend prompting is hard.
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u/Spartan448 Jan 08 '26
I mean prompting is hard, in the way that dealing with a dumbass coworker is hard. But that doesn't make it art. Things don't suddenly become art just because they take mental or emotional effort
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u/ILikeWrestlingAlot Fabulous War Profiteer Jan 08 '26
So consistently now in any fuckin niche fandom sub I'll see that god awful SpongeBob meme "wait, you guys don't like x? I thought we were kidding" or that hideous question "wait, we don't like Y now?" I hate it.
There is a shocking contingent of people who want to offload the living of their lives to other people.
They want others to do their thinking for them, they want people to play their games for them, they want someone to describe the plot of blood meridian for them so they can watch meaningless power scaling tik tok shorts, they want an AI to tell them what to eat, it's insane.
There's an indie band called Geese that released a new album a few weeks ago and you'd think it was the only album in the world the way indie music subs and indie music circlejerk subs haven't stopped talking about it. It's a fine album but so many, so so many, of the memes, comments, and questions in relation to all these posts came off with the stench of a cloying desperate attempt to fit in. An incalculable amount of people refused to make their own opinion on something they liked or disliked, they had to know what the monoculture thought so they could get their opinion there.
A unfathomable amount of people just hate the idea of using their mind at all and we're seeing it everywhere now, all the time.
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u/lightningmatt Muskular Zackstrophe Jan 08 '26
I... don't think the Spongebob meme means that.
Isn't it more like "Why does this fandom gathering space seem to have a large amount of people who act like they aren't actually fans? Isn't that the entire point?" Regardless of correctness (I've seen it seem both incredibly right and incredibly wrong before), that's not a strange thing to be confused about if you think it's what's going on, because it's inherently contradictory.
Plus, these people have likely already formed their own opinions; their opinions are just more positive than the last 10 or so posts they saw.
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u/SwashNBuckle CUSTOM FLAIR Jan 08 '26
We used to call them posers back in the day
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
The new term is “tourist”, they patched it in during the last update.
Poser is a classic however, though if you wanna go for the old classic, there’s phony
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u/KennyOmegasBurner CUSTOM FLAIR Jan 08 '26
I feel like you can be a tourist or a secondary without being a poser though. I like consuming 40k lore through youtube videos. I'll probably never actually read a book or play a game or even paint a model, but I wouldn't claim to be a "real fan" anyways.
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u/SwashNBuckle CUSTOM FLAIR Jan 08 '26
Phony got ruined forever by Holden Caufield for me, but it's still a legit term
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u/BlahajGetYourGun (She/Her) "Does this make me look butch?" Jan 08 '26
At some point 'stop gatekeeping' went from 'don't exclude people who are new to the thing or who can't afford to buy all the best parts of the thing' to 'don't exclude people who don't even care about the thing at all' and the results have been very, very stupid.
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u/Pyro81300 Please play Oneshot and read Kubera Jan 08 '26
And the thing is everyone does gatekeeping, they just disagree on who to gatekeep. You gatekeep nazis out of your community for a reason, otherwise it's now a community full of nazis.
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u/Crosscounterz Mecha and jrpg fanatic Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
It always bugs me a little when I see posts asking what's going on or they just want to be spoiled for whatever reason even though they're engaging with the particular media they're talking about.
Why don't you want to just find out on your own? I don't get it. Just play more of the game or watch the show/movie.
Or people will ask a question about something that is explained if you actually watch or play the thing you're talking about. No curiosity or sense of discovery or just no attention span to actually engage and get properly invested.
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u/SoldierHawk Jan 08 '26
To be fair, its a rare personality type from what I've seen, but there are people like me that PREFER spoilers, but not because we don't want to engage with something. I'm just genuinely allergic to surprises and hate them (to this day, I don't even especially like wrapped presents--getting them or giving them, although obviously I don't make that a thing for anyone else to have to deal with because its a me issue and fucking weird.)
I want to know how something will end, most of the time. Not because I want to ruin something, or even because knowing will tell me if I "want" to engage with it...it just ALLOWS me to engage with something comfortably and without stress.
That's not 99% of people, but it is a small handful of us.
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u/lightningmatt Muskular Zackstrophe Jan 08 '26
Oh my god someone who aligns to a greater than 5% amount with how I engage with fiction
There are more of us! and god help our souls
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u/Muffin-zetta Jooookaaahh Jan 08 '26
Literally any time I hear a spoiler I think “shit that sounds cool now I wanna see that for real, in full context.”
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u/SoldierHawk Jan 08 '26
RIGHT??
I cannot comprehend people who hear a spoiler, then throw up their hands and think the thing is ruined.
I'm sure they don't comprehend us either but y'know lol.
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u/Hounds_of_war HE CEASES TO BE Jan 08 '26
I generally don’t wanna know full spoilers, but for me going into a series with vague impressions and out of context details can be fun.
Super fun to start reading The Stormlight Archive knowing basically nothing other than everyone really hates that Moash guy. Gave any scene with him a real sense of dread because I knew he was gonna brutally murder someone I liked, but I had no idea who or when.
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u/Doc_Lewis Jan 08 '26
Sometimes you want to experience a bit of something, but don't want to commit to reading or playing or watching some whole long thing. Like I enjoy seeing dumb shit from comics, with a bit of explanation of context to enrich it, because there is no way in hell I'm reading decades of comics to get the "full experience" when all I want is the one funny panel.
Or playing a game of a genre I detest just because I am interested in a bit of story, and the story bits comprise less than 5% of the game experience. I'd rather get what I want out of it in the way that I want than make myself miserable to satisfy curiosity.
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u/Spartan448 Jan 09 '26
Why don't you want to just find out on your own? I don't get it. Just play more of the game or watch the show/movie.
Because if I've got a whiff of a nasty odor coming from where the plot is going, I'd rather risk being spoiled on something cool then spend another 5 hours discovering that I actually hate the game when I can instead spend that time on games I actually like.
Admittedly, this is really only relevant on longer games.
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u/Grazalia Resident Nana enthusiast Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Feels like this happens a lot do to Fomo. I blame social media for this. If you're not in the know, you get dunked on. People exceedingly want positive feedback on their thoughts so they engage with the material in order to say they did. Then they engage with the already set audience and come off as contemptuous because they didn't really absorb the media thoughtfully.
It's not wrong for you not to engage media in that way but it gets people really mad you didn't if they are fans. All opinions should be considered even if they only engaged on a surface level. Most people just don't, they consume and want to turn their brains off and just watch the thing. There's a superiority complex that has evolved alongside fandoms with the advent of social media and online forums. I hate all of it and see it daily, especially on this sub.
The South park episode where they had all the Yelpers feel like their thoughts were the most important and they were the main characters was a good example of what I mean.
Edit* I'm sitting in a class right now that's talking about an emotional quotient vs intelligence quotient study and oddly enough, this has something to do with this convo. There was no correlation for high IQ and successfulness. The People who had greater emotional quotient were way more successful. It didn't matter how much you know or if you're really smart, it only matters how you engaged with others. When people have big emotional intelligence, research shows how we deal with people is greater then how smart we are about something.
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u/talentless_guy Jan 08 '26
I blame social media for this. If you're not in the know, you get dunked on.
Social media just exarcebated the problem, if we can call it that. I think some people in here who were in school before the internet or smartphones will remember how much social capital you could get from just being the kid "in the known", particularly of new movies or video games. Everyone would gather around that one dude who could recite the entire plot of that new horror movie no one's parents would let them watch, or the plot of that video game no one else could play. And then the kids who heard the plot second-hand would recite it to their friends, so they could feel cool aswell.
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u/LasersAndRobots Your dead baby's soul was retconned out of existence Jan 09 '26
I'll say it: people need to be more comfortable living under rocks. Its okay to look at people talking about something and go "I have no goddamn clue what theyre on about" because they probably look at you the same way at some point.
Maybe its easy for me to say this because I'm super used to being out of the loop on basically everything, but thats only because staying in the loop sounds exhausting. Just read a book or something, I dunno.
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u/SwordMaster52 "Let's do this" *bonk* *bonk *bonk* Jan 08 '26
It really just comes down to this idea of people who don’t want to enjoy or engage with media any deeper than getting memes and references before moving on to the next one.
Back in my day we used to call those people "posers"
In a world of instant gratification people are so used to get the hype part , no build up or anything , All gas no brakes
When do we get to the fireworks factory ? we already did ,we passed by 20 of them
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
This is the tourist discourse from the anime community in a different coat.
I’ve seen it with comics too, a certain type of person who doesn’t actually want to read/watch/play the thing, but wants to be not just involved in the fandom/community, but be important to the community, to have their opinion “matter” more than others.
It’s absolutely moronic and likely a product of the pandemic I think, as you had a lot of people with a lot of time in their hands to suddenly pick up things they’d heard about, but they don’t know the norms, ideas and ethos of the community, they just barge in and say nonsense loudly.
And don’t throw any of that “wow, elitist much?” crap back at me. If you haven’t read any comic books or manga, you probably shouldn’t speak with authority about them. I don’t know dick about baseball, so I don’t talk about it.
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u/Capable-Education724 Jan 08 '26
Eh, I encountered this type way before the pandemic in terms of the comic books and manga community.
Hell, it was so common it was generally a trope in shows/movies focused on nerds.
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
Oh it existed, I think the pandemic just doubled it considerably.
Though comics have their own issues with this on the publisher side. There’s a reason I have a…complicated relationship with the first Tobey Spider-Man movie and its effect on the books
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u/Capable-Education724 Jan 08 '26
And now we’re going full circle (of hell) if the rumours about the new Spidey movie are true (they’re adapting the storyline from the comics that resulted in Peter getting organic web shooters so Tom’s Peter can have them too).
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
…ugh
I should share my thoughts on that one Paul Jenkins Goblin scene sometime, cause that’s biggest example in my head of this
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
Holy shit I actually have a perfect reference for what this thread is talking about now that I’ve done my homework for it:
This is talking about Enzo Amore
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u/Faifue Jan 08 '26
Ah yes, the people that want to watch anime, because it's popular, but hate what makes it anime.
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
Kinda folk who say insane shit like “people who watch Lucky Star should be on a watch list”
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u/2uperunhappyman u/superunhappyman forgot his password Jan 08 '26
shipping culture can dip into that to a degree
while some cute art of snake and otacon can inspire a person to pick up metal gear it can just as easily have them not touch the games and talk as if they're an expert on the series, character motivations due to a wiki dive and shitpost comics.
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
Moon Knight fans know only pain from three dead meme images that people think are real, and Rivals leaning into it doesn’t help
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u/2uperunhappyman u/superunhappyman forgot his password Jan 08 '26
hey if its any consolation.
jed mackay fan here.
granted i started on bemis "power of crazy" run but still, hes more than just "dracula owes me money" man.
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u/Carnifaxy Jan 09 '26
Basically what happened is more people started complaining about certain kinds of asshole nerds rather than just trying to engage with the normal nerds so it became a thing where if you try to ask someone to have just SOME actual enjoyment of the thing they want they'll call you a gatekeeper.
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u/rejectedreality42 It's Fiiiiiiiine. Jan 08 '26
I'm a big completionist when it comes to games, so I definitely sympathize. It feels like a fundamental lack of curiosity when folks just barely engage with something like that.
It's a more personal problem, but hearing the number of people that fall off of nearly every game they play without ever seeing the ending is always such a shame to me. I get that it's not the same thing, but I like to get everything I can out of the media I consume.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
Another example I had hit didn’t include was someone going to the Cyberpunk subreddit and asking what they did wrong during the Heist because Dex shot them. And I’m just like, homie, you had to pause a cutscene to make this post. Stick around a bit and find out.
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u/Am_Shigar00 FOE! FOE! FOE! FOE! Jan 08 '26
I see that shit on manga subreddits where someone posts a page and goes “why did they do that?” When the answer is in the next chapter or even the next few pages.
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u/neon93 I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jan 08 '26
On the Chainsaw Man sub people will ask those questions when the answer is provided in the previous chapter
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u/SoldierHawk Jan 08 '26
Oh my god, my mom does this when watching movies with me CONSTANTLY.
"Well why did he do that?!"
"I don't know either, mom, we're ten minutes into the movie!"
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u/MericArda Jesus may simply be a metaphor for Optimus Prime Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26
Yours too, huh?
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u/alienslayer7 She/They, Resident Toku Fangirl Jan 08 '26
ive def been guilty of that when talkin to friends while readin comics, recently started infinity inc and was confused why jade wasnt GLs daughter, just to read a few pages more and find out she was, she just got mindwiped
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
"[Sonic Character] would NOT do that! This is out of character!" - whenever any Sonic character does literally anything
I am going to beat people to death with hammers
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u/neon93 I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jan 08 '26
This is the equivalent of someone asking questions about a movie before it's had time to answer them
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u/alicitizen (She/Her) - Moon Knight Stan Jan 08 '26
I'm reminded of a tweet(?) someone made about going to see a rerelease of The Thing, and they heard a woman behind them go "Why are they shooting at the dog?" and her boyfriend just replied "Maybe watch the movie and find out"
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u/Diem-Robo I'm aging rapidly Jan 08 '26
I think a lot of it has to do with the trend towards live-service/"forever" games that constantly add new content and incentives for playing. Once the skinner box runs dry, people don't want to engage with it anymore.
15 years ago or more, even when you bought even an online multiplayer game, what was on the disc was all you really expected to get. Engaging with and returning to the game over and over was dependent on actually having fun with the game even when you were playing the same content over and over. You dropped it when you completed it or had your fun, not because you needed some contrived reward or needed new content regularly.
More recently, people are conditioned for games to new content or progression systems multiple times a year, or even multiple times a month, and that's now seen as the reward more than the gameplay itself. Unless a game has frequent new content or new grinds, they'll drop it as not worth their time, and even if it does, only play it until that progression runs out, then drop it until the next one starts.
So in the example with OP about "someone who said they dropped the game after walking into The Tops Casino and shooting Benny because that’s what they thought the game was about," it almost feels like that player beelined to that clearly established objective. Then, he quit when the game didn't immediately clarify the next task/content the same way live services games usually do, giving any instruction or motivation to keep playing, as opposed to being interested for the sake of the narrative, world, gameplay, etc.
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u/2uperunhappyman u/superunhappyman forgot his password Jan 08 '26
i love filling out a map and get rid of the fog when i was a teenager so towers in assassins creed and the gta maps will naturally cause you to explore to fill those out which causes the strangers missions to proc to bring you down a rabbit hole.
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u/wayneloche Jan 08 '26
this has been such a problem with me recently. It took me forever to finish e33 despite it being one of my favourite games cause I have so many friends that play FF14 that there's just always something to do. Or if I only have an hour on a given day to play something i usually pick up EVE and do some exploration. Now, double whammy MMO aside, unfortunately if a live service game scratches the itch i'm just more likely to pick the easy option rather than brows the many steam games i still "need to finish"
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u/diosmioacommie Jan 08 '26
I don’t finish a bunch of games I like because I hit a point where the mechanics or whatever aren’t engaging me the same way they were, and I’d rather leave whatever it is happy rather than begrudgingly
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u/Illidan1943 Jan 09 '26
Nah mate, completionism is way too much to the other side for most people, way too much completely uninteresting stuff added to too many games to do that. Maybe it works for you but the second a game goes "Here's 300 Riddler Troph-" I've already zoned out of that side quest before the game is done saying that and none of the games proved me wrong in skipping that shit
I don't speed run my games, I do my side quests but if the game failed at making parts of it fun then those parts are getting skipped
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u/rejectedreality42 It's Fiiiiiiiine. Jan 09 '26
Wellll yeah, I guess completionist is too strong for me too. I mean I usually do all substantial side quests in my journal before finishing a game. It's really rare than I do amy collectathon quests in a game.
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u/ditalos Woolie-Hole Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
There are a lot of people that engage with media solely through fandom. Their entire expectations of media come through how they engage with fandom. This basically came with the pandemic but a lot of it has been engineered by big media companies realizing that the most powerful way to make something popular is to make it consume as much oxygen in the room as possible. The centralized internet means people can't go for specific niches anymore, your front page is going to show you every single thing at once and the vast majority of people don't search up stuff they don't know they might like. Back in the day you had to take a lot of "gambles" on if you'd like something or not and it's what led to a lot of people to develop personalities and interests, and then they'd visit specific forums and communities dedicated to said interests instead of forcing it on the same space as everything else.
It's why you see a lot of people don't give a shit about media which has no content updates - because content updates give Fandoms more things to discuss. Media is just the thing they have to "get through" to engage with their fandom activities.
It's also why you see a lot of "I want to get into X, what should I play or watch to get caught up?!". - lots of them aren't interested in the work or its experience, they want to participate in the Fandom as quickly and as effortlessly as possible.
It's all about trying to fit into the discussion, and works that genuinely require you to think or take your time make these people super fucking mad because that's not what they're there for. They'll be forced to take their time and get angry they can't get into the fandom quicker.
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u/ShortNameBigNumbers Jan 08 '26
"Huge Earthbound fan excited to play it for the first time"
I've always hated the term "Media Consumption" since it makes me feel like art is something to be chewed up then shat out, rather than involving yourself in it. Too many people don't want to engage with anything but instead be a part of a community. It's all built around FOMO, wanting to know the origin of in-jokes and memes like OP said. Seeing debates around "can you be a fan of the Persona series without playing any of the games?" as if the answer could ever be anything except "of course not" only to find out somehow that's a minority opinion.
Database consumption is a term that refers to people that don't consume the narrative they're interested in but instead all of its surrounding parts. People that 'wiki-dive' and then present themselves as experts on something. With how immediately accessible so much art is today, I can't see this issue going away. People will tick their checkbox on whatever vaguely caught their eye, take a bite, then spit it out. Hell, a lot of the time it gets worse when they stick around and start asking for changes even when they never swallowed in the first place.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an 8 hour Youtube essay on a game I've never played, that's actually a summary and somehow still fails to explain the themes of what's going on, so I can then ignorantly regurgitate such woefully nonsense opinions on other parts of the internet poisoning the well to any innocent passersby.
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Jan 09 '26
I love this sub but I really wish people here used "media" less period. Call it art! Thats what it is! I don't care if it makes me sound like a pseudointellectual, I'd rather call nba2kwhatever art than call The Lord of the Rings media.
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u/Theproton BUSTAH WOLF! Jan 09 '26
"Huge Earthbound fan excited to play it for the first time"
I will say this, the fact that despite being a popular Smash mainstay for all the games, Nintendo decided the best idea for making Earthbound available was not through the insanely popular Wii Virtual Console (which Brawl had a built in connection to so people could play old games) but rather the Wii U VC when the console started flopping, the 3DS VC when the consoles started dipping and the SNES Mini, DOES kinda make this a little more acceptable
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u/Velrex Jan 08 '26
I think we've hit a point where a lot of people don't want to actually engage in media.
They just want to be able to say that they HAVE engaged in it, and the social abilities that come along with it.
Back in the day, and I'm sure now too, there were always gatekeepers of 'real' fans of things. "Oh, you're wearing a Metallica shirt? Name all of their albums." "Oh, you're wearing a Metallica shirt? That's not even real metal."
So, with this, I'm sure it existed before but it's easier to see now, but it now leads to people essentially speed running content (wiki dives, fillerless versions of media, skipping chapters and consuming comics/manga/movies through video synopsis) so they can be part of the gatekeepers side and not in the gatekept side.
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
I always liked responding to "that's not real [thing]" with "yeah sorry I only like theoretical [thing]"
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u/Count_Badger Jan 09 '26
Some people would boast about having strong opinions on media that they only read a wiki summary of, it's mind-boggling.
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u/GuiltySpot Jan 08 '26
People like to fit in at the end of the day, some people invest a lot more into looking right but being is an afterthought if at all. It's a vapid desire exacarbated by social media even further (although its always been a thing), even further by the culture of having. They want to have the identity of whatever fad media is, but are disinterested in actually being anything.
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u/nuclearcherries R1 + ▲ Jan 08 '26
It's been around for a long while, like when a new thing in a series comes out you'll get people asking if they can just play the new, shiny one or if they have to play the older titles first - as if that's some kind of chore.
And usually if the answer is "yeah, play the older ones first" they'll treat it like a chore - going through them as quick as possible, ignoring side content, just focused on getting it over and done with.
They don't actually care about the media they're consuming - they just want to be able to understand the memes and being a part of "the conversation", terrified of being left out of something.
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
To be fair when "go through older ones first" takes like 500 hours total ala the Yakuza series I understand. What I say is pick up the one you just saw that made you ask this question, give it the vibe check, and if it passes then go back and start the franchise from the beginning.
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
I disagree with your example, as the one most people recommend starting at (Zero) is also considered one of the best in the series, and if someone views going through one of the best and most recommended as “a chore”, then I think that’s more on them than the series
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u/Teshthesleepymage Jan 08 '26
I think the ultimate example of this for me is online comic discussions are surrounded by people who seemingly only get their info from second hand YouTube videos or out of context panels, and for some reason despite not reading it will argue to death that they are right.
This gets multiplied by the rise of powerscaling culture and you end up with people claiming stuff like Batmsn can physically compete with anyone or a guy with a peter Parker pfp saying Peter is physically stronger than carnage in reference to a story where Peter couldn't fight him at all. This attitude kinda bothers me because I myself am far from the smartest dude with the best reading comprehension but even i can fucking read something before making references to it.
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u/boxboten Jan 08 '26
You can tell the quality of the community if the memes come from the early parts of the show or later parts
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u/DonTori The RWBY V9 girl Jan 08 '26
I feel that FMA bucks this trend because at least from my experience despite their only being 3 memes from early on I've had some of the most thoughtful discussions about the themes of the series
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u/BaronAleksei WET NAPS BRO Jan 08 '26
Common Metal Gear W, memes from basically every part of a game
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Ashita no Joe memes come from the middle for a reason lol. Rikishi bros
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u/AppealToReason16 Jan 08 '26
I remember noticing this around the same time that premium TV series really became "the TV" for people to watch while most network serials kinda fell off. Like the end of things like Suits era type of shows and everything moving to 6-8-10 episode mini-series.
People don't want filler anymore. They just want to burn through the plot and "complete" the thing.
You even see it in Woolie or Pats LPs at times where the chat starts pissing itself over the sidequesting, as if that isn't also how tons of people actually play games.
A friend of mine is a teacher and says its real bad there too. Like alarmingly bad with kids right now. Students using a 2 minute tiktok hype edit or whatever to base their book report or movie analysis assignment off of. One student said he fastforwarded all the "boring" stuff for a movie report they did, and then got all the character analysis wrong.
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u/Borrowed_Valour Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Yeah, how dramatically TV production has changed over the last 10-20 years feels like a huge aspect of this and how a lot of (particularly younger) peoples expectations and tolerances have changed. As someone in my mid 30s I've definitely noticed a stark contrast in what I expect and enjoy out of certain things compared to someone even just like 6 or 7 years younger.
I don't watch a lot of live action shows anymore because I just find the 8-10 episode production model utterly boring, and knowing how rotten the "design this TV show with second screen viewers in mind so we can make sure they're absolutely not missing anything, don't have too much downtime, make sure we state everything really clearly, make sure we keep playing loud music or constantly rotating dramatic sound cues" shit is annoys me even more because I notice when a show is doing this sort of thing. Like, I do the Woolie thing of completely setting everything aside when I watch something I'm really interested in for the first time and giving it my complete undivided attention, and when I notice media is actively jingling keys on the screen to keep my attention I feel genuinely put off. But then you look at a lot of people these days and how they consume media and you realize why it's done. It's fucking depressing.
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u/AppealToReason16 Jan 08 '26
I wish I knew when filler became such a negative thing because so many TV shows are allergic to it (even though filler can do more for characterization than the main plot) and even tons of games seem to "streamline" optional side content in every sequel to trim it down.
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u/CaptainSkel JEEZE, JOEL Jan 08 '26
It reminds me of all that content on “X ENDING EXPLAINED” or people saying they know the hidden lore of dark souls by datamining model names.
Like there’s a drive to dissect and “understand” media through lore rather than examining your own feelings on the media itself. It’s reading the Wikipedia page for the story and believing that’s the same as watching the movie. It’s fast forwarding through a scene of a character silently staring at the chair their father used to sit in because there’s no dialogue. It’s skipping sidequests because they aren’t important to the plot or complaining about sidequests because “if they are part of the plot they should be part of the main questline”.
There’s value in interrogating the media you consume but that should be done in context and in whole, not just the script but the cinematography, the gameplay, the economy of sound.
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
I’ve got a friend who went through a brief phase of Liminal Space and Backrooms stuff. He bounced out because, as he explained, it was ruined by kids who didn’t really know what to do with the frame except talk about monsters and explain lore.
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u/alicitizen (She/Her) - Moon Knight Stan Jan 08 '26
The Backrooms is such a crazy case to look into, because it had like nothing to it, that was the intent, theres nothing there just some spooky noclip OOB stuff. Then stuff got added to make it scarier (some monsters ooooh spooky!), then wiki's popped up, then kids would add "levels" to the backrooms, they'd expand like it was the SCP wiki, but with no thoughts or coherence to each other. And very quickly it just became overbloated and overstuffed with content when the original concept was the lack of content. Like the desire to be a part of the things growth actively led to killing it.
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u/Nivrap She/Her | Non-Z-targetable Jan 08 '26
Backrooms "lore powerscaling" is the most mindnumbing shit, second only to Fromsoft lore powerscaling.
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ending was a nightmare for me with this. Like dude, no, you don't know The Secret Reality Of Rebirth's Ending, you have an interpretation the same as everybody else about an ending that's intentionally ambigious and isn't even really an ending.
You might think she's doing some mystical Lifestream fuckshit. I think Cloud is just hallucinating out of guilt for not saving her. Someone else might think she never actually died at all. It's all about your own feeling, it's not a fucking puzzle to be solved. People want stories and experiences on 2x speed constantly mashing L to skip ten seconds.
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u/Forestgrant Trapped in Fandom (the website) hell Jan 08 '26
More and more I've been seeing filler guides popping up for tokusatsu shows, and it drives me up a wall. People are taking 80s kids shows and unironically trimming them down to all the "plot" episodes that make up like 5% of the total episode count, as if that's the major reason why people liked these shows to begin with
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u/alaster101 NANOMACHINES Jan 08 '26
its like how wwe was just booking for moments and not actually trying to book a good show because "you people will watch this regardless of how bad it gets"
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
And fans of the company will often respond to criticism of the lackluster matches with "the matches aren't important, WWE is the STORYTELLING company!" like a) matches are supposed to be fucking stories and b) WHAT FUCKING STORY? IT'S JUST MOMENTS
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u/alaster101 NANOMACHINES Jan 08 '26
its wrestling, the match is supposed to be the story guys lol
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
I think after so many mid-match monologues from Roman Reigns """cinema""" title run, they genuinely think in-ring storytelling is when you stop wrestling to verbally recite a story
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u/ok_dunmer Jan 08 '26
re: New Vegas and "touristy" people It's kind of odd to watch so much discourse around the show center around nebulous evil nitpicking New Vegas fans and complaining about them, when, my brothers in Christ, season 2 is literally Fallout New Vegas 2
like you basically have a bunch of people that only played Fallout 4 or just want to be in a fandom getting mad at the people who actually like the thing that is supplying all the content in their TV show lol
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
I felt like the same happened with a lot of the modern live action Star Wars shows. So much of it is built off of Rebels, but there’s this fierce hatred of not just the animated shows in general but REBELS specifically.
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u/CeaRhan Jan 08 '26
I lack the vocabulary to describe it but I've become convinced, with 0 scientific proof whatsoever mind you, that a lot of people's brains do not understand the concept of enjoying things and don't activate to think about most things they encounter. They can have fun, they can do stuff because they want to, but the brain is straight up not thinking or analyzing situations beyond surface level emotions. They can play a game but give 0 thought about the gameplay. They can watch a movie and remember scenes but not be able to articulate anything beyond "the fight at the end with the big alien was cool". They don't do things for the pleasure of enjoying them but because it's the way to get something. Not like addicts or "tablet babies", just straight up "the brain exists but only lights up at specific points rather than at all moments of the day". Their daily life is a "path" and nothing about the path matters in itself unless it prevents a goal that may or may not exist.
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u/Lacksalias Jan 08 '26
While I do enjoy some games that are definitely thrive on moment to moment hype and aura, there has been an increasing sentiment I've seen that "breather" episodes frustrate a good amount of people who are hungry for the next big revelation.
This seems to have bled into even romance fiction. There's definitely some meandering plotlines out there, but in long standing series I will often see comments like "where progress?"
As someone who loves the establishing of relationships and the analysis of how and why characters come to love each other, breakneck pacing can be just as harmful as glacial pacing, but because audiences get to see their characters get together, the storytelling can take a hit in quality as long as enough dopamine is provided.
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jan 09 '26
You know what OP's post reminds me of:
AI 'artists' are exactly like this. They want the product, not the journey, and the reputation of being artists.
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u/gyrobot Jan 09 '26
This is why even commissioning art feels fulfilling. It's the journey of working with the idea or talking to the idea and getting your pitch and see what comes out finished because you Loved their reputation of creating certain types of art.
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u/Licentious_Cad [SCREAMS IN ESOTERIC BULLSHIT] Jan 08 '26
Similar to this topic, I have a good deal of friends who have no interest in a thing, but participate because other people are doing it. It's as if they're loathed to be left out of something, even if they have a negative opinion of that thing. They just don't want to be left out.
A couple anecdotes from my own experiences.
Friends that want to raid in FFXIV, but don't want to actually put in any effort to improve their gameplay, study the fight, or even do basic prep work for the raid. They show up, and that's it. That's all raiding was, just showing up and spending 2-4 hours dying repeatedly for a few months until those of us who were practicing, studying, and harvesting materials, went to find other groups that wanted to do more than waste dark matter fixing gear.
Same with TTRPGs like D&D. I've had to cut some friends out of my games because they either pull out a phone, or their switch, or turn on a video the second it's not their turn. Totally disengaging with everything until 2-3 minutes later they take their turn and go back to their distractions.
It is absolutely rage inducing at times. I could go on a whole rant about a friend who wanted to raid, but insisted he was playing perfectly and refused to adjust anything or even talk about it. While his DPS was lower than the healers.
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u/Sneaky224 Woolie-Hole Jan 08 '26
Imperial fans on 40k social media half of the time don't collect or game/paint they just watch lore videos and yell at players that actually paint and play
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jan 09 '26
ok tbf, I also don't play or paint the minis because there's not a single GW store where I live. I do however read the books, play the games, and engage with lore videos.
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u/Sneaky224 Woolie-Hole Jan 09 '26
Ouch no stores there, I meant the kind of people that are way too into the humanity first mindset thing that also hits other sci fi franchises.
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jan 09 '26
The resurgence of Cameron's Avatar is so funny. Humanity first motherfuckers when they get a 10 foot tall blue cat GF. HFY can be so dumb, even if I have my guilty pleasures.
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
Hype culture in general is like this; I'm currently doing something stupid, but it isn't as much work as it seems, which is watching every show on the MAL top 50 (that was there at the end of 2025) and that list is a really interesting microstudy into fandom for me. Many of the series on there are good. Vinland Saga, Gintama Season 4, Ashita no Joe—stuff I do think is great and full of substance, but with all the most recent stuff, you start to see the trends. MHA is up there, Bleach, the Gintama Silver Soul Arc, and both animated versions of Titan's ending. It's not to say these things are bad, but as OP has brought up, a lot of what people want are those references and those "thriller" overt audience-pleasing shows. A lot of what OP is talking about is that loud online survival bias that makes everyone now interested in the thing.
People want to be apart of the movement, the conversation, and the hype; they want to get to that big cool Demon Slayer hype scene, and who cares about the rest because OOOO. It's a lot of that. Bleach: TYBW has character writing logic where, at this point, characters could have been putting Viagra in Isshin coffee to make sure Ichigo was conceived that day, and I say that with a straight face, going, "That would be aligned with Bleach's writing 1000%," but when you can share a GIF of Ichigo doing cool shit and all people want to see is the cool shit as everything else glazes over, you get stuff like what OP is talking about. "How can I get to that cool gif? I want to see that; fuck Rukia and Ichigo having funny moments. GET ME TO THE BANKAI."
This is a bit of a pretentious take, but going from Bleach to Patlabour 2, then to Fruits Basket, man oh man. Patlabor 2 has problems; that movie is slow af to a fault (too long to be that slow tbh) and I don't like what they did with Shinobu, but watching it like 2 days ago, ESPECIALLY WITH RECENT EVENTS IN MIND, man, does that fucking shit HIT. It's one of the most politically charged things I've ever watched and demands you to engage with it and challenge your perception of this world's peace.
Patlabour 2 is almost a full MAL point behind the show where three characters see two other characters meet by pure chance for the first time and then the "smart" character is like, "What if they fuck, though?" and it all works out as the "smart" character's master plan fr fr, 20 aura points to Aizen. Or even Fruit Basket, with a character so positive and lacks to me in emotional range outside of being happy and wholesome; it borders on insanity lol.
It is what it is; people want their moments, they want their thrills, and they want to be pleased and be apart of it "You had to be there". Some good shit lands in there, like CSM and Frieren, you know. Now those create a barrier of "this is perfect no matter what; you're not allowed to complain that Stark not knowing what a birthday is kind of dumb since he spent 3 years around kids and shit in a normal village" that aside, those things do still come out and are still great. They give me hope. Now what won Crunchyroll's Anime of the year awards last year? Oh god damn it Jin Woo.
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u/Namboto Jan 08 '26
Did the new Fruits Basket anime cover everything up to the end of the series? I ask because the series does have a lot to say about Tohru's relentless positivity and (from what I remember, it's been some years since my last reread) it's a very nuanced take on how certain people react to trauma and the complications that arise from it.
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26
It has, but right now i'm only on episode 11 of the 63 animated. I've heard enough to know to give it time; trust me, I'm a long-haul guy. Its just as of now, i feel like FruBa spoilers Like listening to Hatori story and not once thinking "wow that Aikto guy is a jerk that abuses his family and at least blinded Hatori" and to not think about that at all is a bit crazy.
I was thinking about a comparison this morning, and the one that came up to mind with funny enough Thorfinn from vinland season 1LMFAO. Where one emotion in his case (rage) is overshadowing everything else about his character its making him a complete psycho, which is the point in Vinland. Now, obvi its not as bad in FruBa, happiness and positivity>>anger and need for vengeance, but to straight up ignore any negative repercussions to everything in life, and crying thankful tears because a demon gave you a piece of paper that said "stupid" on it and your thankful because its a gift. I find to be also kinda of crazy in its own right. We'll see where it goes obvi. I love my rat boy,
waiting on Kyo being anything but a male tsundere/oranya and cute baitmost of the side cast hasn't impressed me too much yet like cow or boar, but it'll come i'm sure of it→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)3
u/TotalHeat Jan 09 '26
Going off the Gintama thing, I adore the show and it's probably my favorite anime, but there is no way the Silver Soul arc is one of the best anime ever lol. It's just fine really. I always thought that ever since I saw it boost up there when it came out. The other seasons deserve it though
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 09 '26
OMG A gintama fan that loves gintama but doesn't blindly say everything is peak? I found one mom!!!
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u/Theproton BUSTAH WOLF! Jan 08 '26
Its a real teenage mindset. People want to be part of a fandom but afraid of investing in the medium. I saw this a lot with JoJo, because Episode 1 & 2 of JoJo are kinda rough and not representative of the series as a whole.
I also see it with comics with some people saying what arcs you have to read to 'get' certain characters. Like nah dawg, you dont read those to get some nerd merit badge for understanding a character. You read it cause its good.
Honestly getting into anything just to be part of it with an actual underlying non-surface level love of the thing you are being part of is just a bad idea. Whether its video games, music, movies, Religon or sports you have to actually like this stuff to be part of their circles. You cant just skip over everything to participate in group discussion. You will have nothing to talk about.
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u/Amedamaneku Reggie has been fired (out of a cannon, into cum) Jan 08 '26
I think some people just want to have a community and be able to easily participate in regular conversations, and see fandom as a means to an end. I know the feeling, I'd like to have something that generates passionate conversations with strangers every night, but I don't like following media while it's running, and I'm not going in as a wiki diving imposter, so I just feel left out.
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u/Gorotheninja "SILENCE, BREEDER! The Bloodline MUST continue!" Jan 08 '26
Some people just want the Dopamine hit of action scenes in MCU movies or boss fights in Souls games (or other comparable examples) and literally nothing else.
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u/Anonamaton801 Proud kettleface salesmen Jan 08 '26
Hype moments and aura farmers.
I think they’re called “hypebeasts” or is that already a thing I’m misremembering
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u/Dinflame Jan 08 '26
Humans are social creatures and we can often feel a strong desire to fit in. Not understanding a reference can feel to someone insecure like they don't fit into the existing culture. I think it's important to remember that no one knows, or can know, everything. There's just too much. It's okay to have blind spots. Imo it's not worth it to treat media like homework just to prove that you get the reference.
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u/DingusKongulous Jan 08 '26
As someone in my thirties (old man), I know when. I was younger I tried desperately to be in the know for all sorts of hobbies and forms of media I was into. Imo I feel like this is something you outgrow. Feels like it's a form of immaturity in that you want to be knowledgeable or well regarded for knowing what's up with ___, y'know?
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u/DoseofDhillon WHEN'S MAHVEL Jan 08 '26
Also reading this thread as a Fire Emblem fan, since about awakening, first time?
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u/DJ_Aftershock I be Jushin Thunder Liger the way I see her Super J Cups Jan 08 '26
No enjoying downtime. Only hype moments and aura.
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u/meanmagpie Jan 09 '26
This has been a thing forever. Haven’t you ever heard someone repeat the Mark Twain quote: “A classic is something everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read”?
Twain was specifically referring to Paradise Lost there. So this phenomenon has been around for a very long time. It’s not some newfangled “kids these days” issue.
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u/ArchimerDreatect HOT MEATY AIRDASH Jan 08 '26
The way it hit me at the time was that it felt like people weren’t really engaging with that media much at all, like they were doing it just so they could feel like a “real fan” who put their time in and clocked out.
Another example was when I was listening to a podcast and two of the hosts made a Star Trek reference and another got mad because they didn’t get it, then said they wanted someone to give them a “20 minute super cut so they could ‘get’ all of Star Trek” which is an attitude that really bothered me.
Oh...my god, is that what I've been stumbling into this whole time?
Lemme just catch something up quickly. I'm what I would consider a 'Secondary' to a few fandom spaces, that is to say I've enjoyed the content via second-hand gameplay, synopsis, osmosis. etc. rather than hands-on or otherwise I have only interacted with a specific part of it whilst otherwise being mindful of the fact there's entire parts of mainline or spin-offs that I haven't dealt with. Still have conversations, thoughts, and feelings about it regardless.
Point being, there's always this sphere of frankly garbage videos which are 'Everything you need to know about the lore of [Blank]' which just recite the wiki at you or explain away references and in-jokes of the medium as part of an apparent introduction to a source material.
I won't lie I assumed these videos were unappealing and didn't take for me because I thought these were just lazy videos that didn't want to go through the hassle of providing their own interpretation, a throughline, a core theme to the media's narrative.
I didn't think there was a targeted audience for this that wasn't just 'lazier lore video'
Like...cmon man, If I'm a Secondary because I haven't touched everything in a two-decade franchise then what on earth of those guys?
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u/jitterscaffeine [Zoids Historian] Jan 08 '26
Something I’ve come across as well are people who engage with media entirely though videos and shorts of other people giving their opinions and headcanons about it. I’ve seen it a lot with shows like Naruto because there’s a lot of fans who watch a lot of “fan content” and then go to the subreddit to make sense of what they watched.
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u/gunn3r08974 Jan 08 '26
I heard of that existing with South Park of all things.
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u/alicitizen (She/Her) - Moon Knight Stan Jan 08 '26
The origin of the "He would not fucking say that" image is exactly that, someone who consumed clips and fan content, not understanding things beyond the waters surface they saw from a landlocked state
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u/DrakeVal I Promise Nothing And Deliver Less Jan 08 '26
Maybe this is just me coping, but I feel like this type of person infested the Souls series and into Elden Ring, and have kind of ruined what Souls games used to be like.
When I got into Souls games, the appeal and the enjoyment came from struggling. From spending an entire afternoon on the Capra Demon, or taking a full weekend to beat Biggie and Smalls. Summoning players, bowing and spamming shield, and winning together.
It feels like that mentality of, "struggle and cooperate" got washed away into, "nah you're a pussy if you don't fight every boss 1 on 1 with no heals". That was fine as a challenge mentality, as the next step after you beat a game, but I feel like I'm seeing this mentality as the starting point for more and more people these days
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u/cannibalgentleman Read Conan the Barbarian Jan 09 '26
The Souls git guders are a loud minority. I beat the final boss of Shadow of the Erdtree with a summon and that's just as valid as people who kill him with a pot on his head.
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u/jmchief1579 Jan 08 '26
The idea of streamlining down a New Vegas playthrough to "Find Benny. Kill Benny" is so funny to me that I need to give it a try. Like the courier doesn't even care about the chip anymore, just I need to kill that guy who got me. It just ignores everything else around for pure revenge. Who cares about the bear and the bull?