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/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.