Asklemmy

Stupidly, anything that requires too much of a time commitment, which has led me easily to death by a million cuts. I'm conscious of my zoomer mentality in this respect, but it's much easier to generally piss away all your time on like, 50 tiktoks, that all last 5 seconds, compared to a TV show or a movie or whatever. The secondary effect, understated, I think, of this, and I think this is the kind of, horrible advantage of those platforms, is that you will inevitably spend more time trying to find stuff to look at that interests you, rather than actually watching content, so I think they can skate by a little more with a little less content. More efficient for them, less efficient for you.

I find myself doing the same thing with 10 minute youtube videos, but I also will end up watching multiple hour long video essays on random garbage, so I don't really know what that's about. Maybe just easier to convince myself that it's a "productive" activity, to learn about some random nonsense, as compared to engaging in some sort of probably wholly escapist form of media, that might in reality lend itself towards an easier foothold for conversations with other people? I dunno, maybe the problem is just kind of trying to look at media in terms of its pure utility value, rather than looking at media through some other lens.

Certainly, I think the biggest contributing factor is just environment. I'm on my computer and phone a lot more than on my e-reader or my TV, so I naturally engage with the easier to access forms of media found on those platforms. Regression to the lowest condom domino gator, or whatever.

Also, I feel like I've seen enough people answer "anime" that the anime... subs? boards? communities? communities sounds a little too long. Anyways, it should be more popular, but I really haven't seen any engagement on any of them, the anime holes.

3-2-1 Contact

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but at some point I stopped receiving that magazine.

There was always a section called “BASIC Training” that had a bunch of source code in BASIC. They wouldn’t tell you what it did. You had to try and guess what it did, then type it into your computer to find out whether you were right. But I didn’t have a computer.

In 1994 I finally got a computer, and immediately opened up the QBASIC interpreter and started typing it all in, to see what it did.

Holy shit I just realized that’s 30 years ago this year.

YouTube. From around 2008 - 2016, it was pretty much my only source of media and entertainment. I was subscribed to so many different channels and never missed an upload. I could spend hours just binge watching all types of content. These days, I only watch / follow a handful of creators. Really only visit the site when I have nothing better to do.

Eli the Computer Guy and Philip DeFranco. For much the same reason. They told me to leave, and I did.

DeFranco was truly biased but balanced news. And then came the US election before last and balance lost out. Trump won and DeFranco decided political influence was more important than unbiased reporting. Shortly after Biden won the last election, he streamed a response to criticisms of bias, and he flat out said "if you disagree with my politics, leave. I don't need viewers like you." Favoring neither is disagreement too. It was that easy. Last I checked his subscriber count was cut roughly in half.

Eli said "If you don't want to see me study 'What is a duck?' Leave. No really, leave. Leave." His subscribers vanished and he blamed the algorithm, or so I heard.

Comedy news shows. They can be funny, but the more I learn about topics in depth the more I realize how much biased the shows are. A segment that might have previously left me feeling better informed might instead make me feel like someone is trying to fool me or tell a one sided story.

Everything that is ad-supported.

Media funded by ads has a different objective than other media. I simply reject advertising in total.

American TV and movies after the '00s. Not representative enough of normal American life to be relatable (which is why I like '90s and '00s American TV so much) and not original enough to be interesting (which is why I'm into anime.)

All of them, unfortunately

I don't really play video games any more. No disrespect to people who still play them, but they are baby entertainment. Cheap stimulation which requires very little intellectual input and fucks with your functioning as an adult through screwing up your reward system. Not all games are bad but 90% of gaming just exists to keep you placid and give you the illusion of control and agency. I'm an adult now, I can get the real thing.

I found my enjoyment of gaming was greater learning about various games from a disinterested third party prospective than doing so myself.

Online Multiplayer. I used to love to connect with people, friends and strangers and play games. Now I just want to play alone on my terms and find it super annoying when games introduce online stuff into the single player mode, like raids.

I still enjoy the occasional couch co-op though.

Only watch sports (footy/cricket/tennis) on TV and nothing else.

Inb4 anyone says Reddit.

I literally stopped watching movies, especially Bollywood and Hollywood movies. Somewhere along the line, I just decided to consume almost exclusively Japanese media, particularly anime. The simple reason is that anime tells some really amazing stories that most Hollywood movies don’t hold a candle against. Think Attack on Titan or FMA. I am not saying that all Japanese media is great, no it’s not. But, the variety there is pretty amazing.

Television. Can't remember the last time I turned my TV on to actually watch TV. It's mostly for streaming, but even that's getting harder to keep up with. It just feels like there are too many services and shows to keep track of. If I sit down and watch a show then I really need to want to watch it. More and more I've been listening to podcasts or treating Youtube videos like podcasts. It lets me multitask in a way that sitting down and trying to watch something just doesn't.

TV in general, I can't remember the last time I've sat down to watch anything airing that wasn't, say, footage of the new year's eve fireworks show or something.

I don't really care much for recent movies as well, most of what I watch is stuff from before 2000 and if I ever go to the theater I go with friends just as an excuse to hang out.

And I think I'm currently in the process of outgrowing gaming in general, I still play games but I've been gaming less and less nowadays, most of what I play are old games from my teenage years and childhood, and I don't really keep up much with newer releases... In truth I'm sort of disgusted by the industry in general nowadays, so that might have some influence as well.

Streaming.

It's the new cable, in that it sells to customers based on intentional market fragmentation. It's actually a worse, because anything you "buy" on a streaming platform is actually just leased.

Television in general. Video in general. A movie is nice now and then, but I almost never seek it out.