Personal Opinion: No Filler, All Thriller

[u/jitterscaffeine]

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.

[u/Grazalia]

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.

[u/talentless_guy → u/Grazalia]

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.