RE: Is Cultural Overproduction Killing Story Structure?
Do you think appetites for stories (and non-stories) are changing?
Fuck, I hope not. Though I do see your point about all this seemingly mindless content out there that some people seem to enjoy. But I do think that also has a lot to do with this rising need to be a celebrity or an influencer or whatever. Only hitch is, most people don't have such interesting lives, so they just share whatever's normal to them in the hope that someone will validate them emotionally. That's my take on it at least.
As for trying out foods or whatever, I can only see the point if either the commentary's funny and/or unique or if the person that's doing it is traveling and thus trying new and exotic foods all the time. Other than that, beats me why people would watch that.
Not to be rude (but to be honest), I found this incredibly sad. In fact, that was going to be my original comment, are you sure you're alright? You sound...down, to me. Upset/dejected about something...
And the comparison of porn and other forms of entertainment also sounds depressing and, to me, somewhat untrue. I mean, look at the tremendous success the Joker movie had (only to name something recent) and understandably so, as it was a brilliant movie. And a long one and yet, people paid to sit in the cinema and watch and then went on to rave about it..They could've just waited to get the DVD and skip through it, no?
I don't know, I suppose I could get finding the same tried and tested story arcs a bit tedious, but to lose interest in story as a whole...never. There's just too many variables. And besides, nothing beats a really good story, both movie-wise and book-wise, personally I love that roller-coaster, I love the craft behind it, the effort and the mind-tricks that the author's devised for you to get there.
It doesn't help that we're taught to consume literature in schools where getting through a novel is an assignment, followed by a report and a grade.
Wholeheartedly agree with that. I was just talking to some guy and he was telling me how he used to read, but now doesn't cause he gets distracted and then he mentioned what sort of book really used to captivate him and I realized he'd read it in school/high-school. It wasn't the first person in that situation either...Sad. But honestly, I think that's to do with the society progressively getting dumber as we go along.
Oh @honeydue, the last thing I'd want in the world is to make you sad!
Maybe I'm over-generalizing from my own tastes and experience. I understand the Joker movie did very well, though I've never been able to stomach superhero movies.
And we have been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. It may be that there's more than enough drama going on in our lives right now, so we just don't have room to seek out any more in fiction. Just after I wrote that post yesterday, for example, we discovered that the wife's car needs $1600 of work to pass a state inspection, the basement in our antique house was flooded with 1.5 meters of water and the water heater was blown out (with guests arriving in 24 hours!) and then I got off the train to discover that the headlights on my car weren't working. When I got home I had to attend to draining the outside faucets in the dark as a freeze was settling in, and wrestle with a shut-off valve that needs to be replaced because it won't shut off anymore.
This has been typical of a month with extended power outages, clogged bathroom drains, and backed up cesspools that required locating and pumping with expensive equipment. At least yesterday's flood was fresh water--the previous one filled our basement with sewage. This is during the busiest and most stressful weeks of the year at work, with the regular 40+ hours and 25 more commuting with frequent train break-downs and delays.
If other people are working as hard (and are as stressed out) as we are--and I suspect that, among the younger generation especially, this is the case--lots of the young folks at my last gig were working three jobs just to support themselves, their parents, and sometimes their children--I can totally get why someone would turn on an ASMR video of a woman brushing her hair or folding paper or getting a massage, instead of seeking out more drama.
Maybe the other factor in play here is simple lack of leisure time. Drama and excitement are a lot more appealing when you have the opportunity to get a little bored. Boredom used to be quite fashionable among Gen-Xers in the 90s, but I don't know anyone who has the chance to get bored today.
Man, that is a pretty shitty streak, I'm sorry :( But I'm sure it will get better! I do understand why you might not want more madness with such a hectic schedule...From that point of view, I suppose it makes sense.
You think? While there's a lot more entertainment, there's also a lot more demand, you're always pushed to be doing something, as you said, productive, to "live it up" and I think that with all this constant pressure, adrenaline or hectic life can really get rather dull after a bit. Also, people's constant need of being entertained (listening to a podcast, checking your feed, reading a post, watching a video etc) is making them much more easily bored in the rare instances where there's nothing to do...that's just my opinion..
Aah but that's the beauty of it! :D It's not a superhero movie, it s a psychological portrait of a man breaking down in a society that's turned its back on him. It's fascinating and very well built, story-wise, really recommend it ;) I hate superhero movies too, Avengers, Spiderman, all that, never really got the point.
I was thinking more about the fact that people have to work so hard to make ends meet these days, but yeah, the few moments of idleness we do have left are gobbled up by snack sized entertainments as well, which become the only meal.
All right, maybe I'll give it a try when it comes out on Netflix. It sounds like they're just using the comic book marketing angle to sell a story that didn't even have to have to be in a super-hero universe? I guess that could be a way to transition people into more complex stories. But I kind of hate how everything has to be part of a franchise to be successful.
Speaking from my own experience, I think there is a certain percentage of creative people that simply do not want to consume fiction and the related. We are driven to write it, and I think that drive makes reading it so much less fulfilling. Like, why read a story, when I can make it up my own way, and make things happen the way I want them to? Especially when we have busy lives and limited time to do what we want. That said, we must be a small group, because everyone I know spends their time happily watching some sort of video entertainment or reading fiction. So I guess us writers are safe. There will always be plenty of consumers so long as they can find us :)
The comparison to porn was really interesting to me. I had never thought of the comparison between a plot and sex. All this instant gratification out there might be training us to want to fastforward to the good parts, meanwhile, all women know the ending never goes so well without a great deal of content leading up to it ;)