Absolutely not.

We live in a time of so much entertainment, that there is simultaneously more bad and more good content being produced.

Yes, it was better.

Now its still good but you need to go underground to find it

Join small clubs. Ditch corpo net and go on the small web. Leave social media walled garden bot farms. Have blockers on all devices.

And shut off the internet/phone on weekends if you can. Makes life better. Go play that ps1!

Old man yelling.

As we age, we tend to lose our connection to what’s new and hip. So instead all we see is lame pop culture stuff. I think back to my teen years; my parents were only really aware of the non-pop stuff because I exposed them to it, from music to movies.

I still find plenty of new and interesting media it just takes more effort. It all came naturally back when we had plenty of young friends but now we’re old with old friends and legacy media connections.

I got around to watching The Amazing Digital Circus last night. Pretty good!

Last month I listened to Sophie, because I enjoyed some hyperpop and wanted to hear more. She’s not my style, but it certainly is different.

The entertainment is still pretty good but the entertainment business is sure fucked up. The most brazen, spit in your face moment for me was, “It - Chapter 1” on one streaming service and “It - Chapter 2” on another one. They’re not even trying to hide their fuckery anymore. Go Community Theatre!

Yes

If in doubt, raid the local used bookstore. Yeah, and do use uBlock Origin, Freetube as your YT front end, and maybe sail the high seas. Curate your entertainment.

I switch on the news and its 90% pure political propagandano matter the station.

I’m using Bluesky mainly as a newsfeed.

Ads are destroying everything. IDK how much of any industry’s budget goes to ads, but whatever it is, the consumer is paying for it in multiple ways even if you don’t want the thing being advertised. It’s baked in to the cost of the product or service. It’s shoved in your face driving down the highway or listening to music, or even on your refrigerator. And they do their best to handcuff you by withholding some facet of your product or service unless you watch the ad or at least permit it to be displayed even if you already paid for the thing you get the ad on. Youtube is utter garbage with everyone filling space in their videos with maddeningly useless fluff and shallow chatter (like and subscribe!) to increase the adspace available do so their videos get pushed to the top.

Entertainment? IDK, it feels like people haven’t had an original thought in decades. It’s rehashing or reviving old ideas in worse ways. Music is lyrically and musically shallow (yeah, pop music has always been mostly like this) but it seems like it’s overrun with low-effort junk. We have almost no artists who can actually weave a story into a listenable and desirable form. Maybe some indy stuff is good, but some people seem to think that different and obscure suckiness is good because it’s not mainstream suckiness.

Even books are shit a lot of the time. It’s like every author has to dumb down the book and write it as close to movie format as possible so they can hopefully get just that - get a movie deal. NYT bestsellers are emotionally manipulating triumphs, failures, Lifetime TV crap designed to be consumed on airplanes after your third vodka tonic makes it seem deep and meaningful while you’re stuck in that middle seat.

I rarely watch any TV at all. No broadcast or cable channels at all. Some streaming. I might try out a dozen books before I find anything that sticks.

Entertainment has been fully consumed in a desperate churn to be the next short-lived viral “thing.” There are too few who take the time and effort to actually create material instead of being the 150th person to make a reaction video to some clip. So yeah, I think you’re right. Things have become incredibly shallow and short-lived as desperate people fight for their viral hook and ad money.

Set up ad blockers. Both in your browser and on your network. Stop using commercial streaming services. Torrent your content and watch it locally.

Go to book stores and retro game stores. And the library. Some libraries have movies, music, and videogames in addition to books.

Ebbs and flows of how life dictates how it wants you to consume things has always been there, but you still have choice. For new stuff, you can dig for what’s quality to you. You don’t have to give it to the AI sloptubers.

And yes, getting older objectively makes it more difficult to get into new things, but it’s okay to embrace that. Have your backlog of stuff you KNOW you enjoy.

Until the pandemic the answer to this question was always you are getting older.

Not since though. Entertainment is fucking dogshit now. Good TV shows are few and far between. Most movies are utter dogshit.

Influences and micro content is just fucking terrible. I swear to god all of it is just PG Porn. Oh look a channel about a couple sailing around the world. Every shot is at her ass level in a bikini as they film the content.

Television and Radio are 75% advertisement.

This won’t help you, but this comment leads me to believe you’re in the US, where everything you talk about is almost certainly significantly worse than pretty much any other country. Because the US is essentially lawless when it comes to advertising.

Here in the UK, we have the BBC, which only runs promos for its own content, and only ever between programmes. The BBC isn’t perfect by any means. It feels to me like its management has become steadily worse over the past 10/15 years, as the board of directors was filled with Conservative appointees. And the news department really ought to be made to answer for consistently encouraging the worst voices on air.

But in the end, that £175 a year for the licence fee acts as a bulwark from the worst excesses of commercial broadcasting. ITV, for example, is lousy for advertising, but is kept reasonably in check by the BBC because comparison is easy. If they allowed themselves to become too much like the US model, people would be rightly irritated when they switch over from watching something on BBC1.

The same is true of BBC vs. commercial radio. The BBC keeps the other broadcasters reasonably honest, and they don’t necessarily have to turn a profit.

So in answer to your original point; the problem is - as ever - capitalism. The perpetual need for maximising shareholder profit means that the US entertainment industry aims 90% of its output at the lowest common denominator, and it’ll only get worse while that’s the predominant driver.

Even the memes suck now, say what you want about caption memes and dancing babies and troll face, Pepe, me gusta but that shit was at least comprehensible in humor. go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says “It has no fixed meaning.”

You lost me here. This is where you start to sound like a boomer. The annoying thing about 67 isn’t that it doesn’t have any sense behind it, it’s the sheer ubiquity that kids say it. Which, unless you have kids or work with kids you probably really aren’t seeing. Look at old MLG montage parody videos. Why was that guy saying “wow” and winking funny? There’s no reason. It is just something we laughed at. 67 is the same.

A lot of everything else you say I resonate with. Ads are getting more intense and ubiquitous. My country is going mask off with fascism and disappearing citizens. There’s a lot to be upset about. I don’t think much of it is related though, you know? Ads just suck because they want more money and that just means showing more ads.

This is some serious advice. Find things to be thankful for, no matter how small, and focus on them. Your perception is your reality. What you fill your mind with is what you see. I know it sort of sounds obvious but, if you’re thinking about miserable things all day you’ll be miserable. If you think about things that make you happy, you’ll be happy. I’m not saying to ignore the bad things or to give up, but you can’t fight back if you’re miserable. It is okay to take a break. It is okay to want to be happy.

If you’re in the northern hemisphere we’re in the time of year that gets dark super duper early. Seasonal affective disorder is real. The older I get the more I realize it. I’m not saying blame your thoughts on it being less sunny, but just be aware it can be a component.

I hope you can find some joy. 💜

Radio and TV always sucked. That’s not a new thing. The only time I see ads is during sports.

You have less free time as you age. Happens to us all.

This is where social media shines. Go to any forum that’s focused on one of your favorite entertainments and ask the users what their top 10 things of late are. Check out the most mentioned. Fuck it’s December. There’s likely year-end lists all over the place.

You already have a shared passion with those folks so it’s likely you’ll have similar tastes.

Try listening to one of the records they recommend on your commute instead of the podcast that agrees with you.

Sure that show seems stupid but it’s 22 minutes and I can put it on while I make dinner. …and since when do I hate stupid?

When you were younger you prided yourself in ignoring the spoon-fed bullshit you referenced. It takes a little bit more effort at our age. You obviously care about it.

Cheers.

Entertainment notwithstanding, you are definitely getting old.