“Most of the younger people I knew didn’t seem to have a handle on things; they hadn’t found their place, they didn’t understand how the world works, they didn’t understand how to treat other people, and they didn’t know how to stop thinking about themselves.”
~Kristin Hersh
It sucks.
What, you ask? Supposedly, every entertainment product that is released nowadays. Mind you, this is far from my own opinion- rather, this attitude seems to seep throughout our entire culture in today’s world. And this attitude is growing stronger by the day.
I can’t truly recall the last entertainment product- movie, TV show, computer game, video game or any other imaginable creative production- where I’ve heard a vast majority of consumers shower the new release with overwhelming praise. Even “The Dark Knight” started an online war of words. Obviously, you’re always going to have to ignore the 0.01 % that deliberately take the opposite side of every issue as some form of attention whoring. But setting that aside, ultimately there should be something out there that everyone agrees is great, right?
Does this just come down to personal preference? Is it that what is great to one person is terrible to another, and therefore a consensus within society is not feasible? Will there always be a large group of people standing outside the theatre after a movie saying, “That was boring. That director doesn’t know what he’s doing. They should have taken out the car chase scene and put in more of the monkey. I easily could have done it better.”
To some degree that is the case. People will always differ on entertainment, as it is art, and art is subjective. However, I submit that there is a growing trend, particularly in the younger generations- mostly the 30-and-under crowd, with exceptions (there are always exceptions)- who are adopting an attitude only best described as” jaded”.
As I roam the internet, I find source upon source of people making jaw-droppingly vicious attacks on creators of our entertainment. And yet, at the core of these arguments is nothing whatsoever but personal opinions! There are no valid facts provided to back up the reasoning of the attacks or why the entertainment products being attacked “suck” so much.
And guess what? There’s a simple reason there are no facts.
Pretend you’ve landed in an airport and are disembarking from a plane. Have you ever heard anyone on the way out verbally berating the pilot for how he flew the plane? Not complaining about a bumpy ride, or bad flight attendant service, but that he should have gone up to 30,000 feet for the first hour, then changed direction to catch the jet stream? Or, consider this: you’re in the hospital, and you pass by a group of patients standing around yelling at a brain surgeon. How could he have made that incision the way he did? Why didn’t he use a different approach to his tumor removal method? Or perhaps complaining about his choice of stitching when closing up the incision at the end of surgery?
It sounds ridiculous, no? Of course it does! Yet- have you ever heard someone tell you exactly how your local professional basketball team’s coach should have handled the substitutions for the last game? What trades absolutely must be made for the team to make the playoffs? How the team’s all-star player isn’t trying anymore, and should just drive to the hoop each time down the court, which will guarantee victory every game? Of course you’ve seen this- repeatedly, and in regards to countless topics.
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