Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:14:

To be clear, this trend of newer shows being catered to shorter attention spans goes back a few decades, so it's not an entirely new thing. I really noticed this when I recently watched Star Trek DS9. The pacing really stood out to me because they really filled up every second of the episode with dialog or action. For example, it really stood out to me that when two characters ended a discussion, a new character would immediately walk in and start talking immediately after the first conversation ended. Someday, I'd like to grab some transcripts from DS9 and TOS to see if the amount of dialog differs as much as I think it does.

Is the new stuff simply catering the tik-tok generation, or is there intent to create generation with an attention span like a goldfish and this is the way to do it?
Who benefits from this? One can wonder...

Edit: the "increased volume for music" issue hit youtube a while ago, sound levels used to be more normalized there.

Anders- wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:20:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:14:

To be clear, this trend of newer shows being catered to shorter attention spans goes back a few decades, so it's not an entirely new thing. I really noticed this when I recently watched Star Trek DS9. The pacing really stood out to me because they really filled up every second of the episode with dialog or action. For example, it really stood out to me that when two characters ended a discussion, a new character would immediately walk in and start talking immediately after the first conversation ended. Someday, I'd like to grab some transcripts from DS9 and TOS to see if the amount of dialog differs as much as I think it does.

Is the new stuff simply catering the tik-tok generation, or is there intent to create generation with an attention span like a goldfish and this is the way to do it?
Who benefits from this? One can wonder...

I assume that the studios have the impression that audiences have shorter attention spans, but I don't think it's unfounded. People live on their phones today, even during important things like university classes. This isn't just the tik tok generation either. I go to a lot of scientific lectures and half the audience is on there phones or computers. The older generation is just as bad as those who grew up with tik tok. The main demographics that movies cater to includes people in their 30s through to their 50s as well.

I'm also not one to complain much, as I often catch myself on my tablet when watching sports. Sometimes I miss stuff as a result. I don't think this is healthy either, so I'm trying to work on this myself.

An interesting insight about films and TV shows these days.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-11-29, 21:05:

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

I know in the theatre the sound is usually way too loud and that's saying a lot since I'm hearing impaired.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-30, 04:08:

An interesting insight about films and TV shows these days.

"incel manbabies", now that's hilarious 😂😂😂😂. What will they up with next?

Anders- wrote on 2022-11-29, 22:14:

For the same reason there was the loudness war in the music industry, high volume = get attention. Same goes for extreme changes […]
Show full quote

creepingnet wrote on 2022-11-29, 21:05:

Why the hell does the soundtrack need to be 75% louder than the damn dialogue. Thats what I want to know. My volume is up and down like Super Mario's raccoon tail! Makes me wish modern TVs has sliders and knobs like the 70s.

For the same reason there was the loudness war in the music industry, high volume = get attention.
Same goes for extreme changes in brightness, also an attention grabber. Both of these are abused to the maximum.

Turn on subtitles, turn volume way down and put some dark nylon stocking over the tv...

Whats funny is for me this never worked....ever. It has the opposite effect on me usually. I dont want to buy the next Billie Eyelish single or Dr Squatch because they turn it up 80% during a montage or commercial break. No...it just causes me to hate EDM that i didnt make even more, and want to boycott your products.

I hate anyone who pulls this shit - musicians and ad/marketing people. Seriously, I'm on the side of Bill Hicks. They are the devil's little helpers.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-30, 04:08:

An interesting insight about films and TV shows these days.

interesting, what it suggests is that many people don't consider "movies to suck these days", when looking at those ones with higher audience ratings. Looks like lots of movies are still being enjoyed about as much as in the past perhaps

the difference between non-audience and audience ratings can be huge though, it was so in the past too (though now critics can pretend that movies are downvoted due to some small minority doing something sneaky with votes)

Why, yes they do. Thanks for asking.

"Quotas" / every color of the rainbow even if anachronistic or totally inappropriate or ungenuine or disingenious, or "revisionist history" for period films, ridiclous"emoting" replacing real acting,political sandboxes / messages / messiahs, terrible remakes, superhero rubbish, lousy scripts, microsecond attention span required, castrated PC-content fest (where have all the R-rated films gone?)

The Golden years? The '40s through the '70s and into the '80s. But, that considered, anything, even rat trap rubbish, made before 2000 is better than the "best" garbage / message films made today.

Good news: There's plenty left to watch from the Golden years, that I'm not missing anything at all in not watching modern films.

gerry wrote on 2022-12-01, 12:21:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-30, 04:08:

An interesting insight about films and TV shows these days.

interesting, what it suggests is that many people don't consider "movies to suck these days", when looking at those ones with higher audience ratings. Looks like lots of movies are still being enjoyed about as much as in the past perhaps

the difference between non-audience and audience ratings can be huge though, it was so in the past too (though now critics can pretend that movies are downvoted due to some small minority doing something sneaky with votes)

Indeed.

I, for one, enjoy (most, but not all) superhero movies these days. Well, alright, I enjoy superhero movies for different reasons than I enjoy, say, Reservoir Dogs or A Few Good Men, but I enjoy all of them nonetheless.

I think the problem is not that modern movies suck, because there are still many good movies today. I think the problem is that some movies (not all, of course) today are trying so hard to push certain political/social agenda, that entertainment value comes second. Charlie's Angels (2019) is an example: its official trailer shows a woman choking and torturing a man for no apparent reason, and the film's director blamed men for the film's commercial failure.

It seems She Hulk and Batwoman suffer from the similar problem, where pushing certain social agenda seems to be more important than entertainment value. Hence, low audience scores for both TV shows despite high tomatometer.

On the other hand, Wonder Woman enjoys high audience scores, because it is highly entertaining. Me and family enjoy the movie thoroughly. Wonder Woman also dispels the accusation that male audiences hate strong female protagonist, while also showing that a good movie can have strong female characters without putting men down. Chris Pine's Steve Trevor --despite only a supporting character-- is a interesting character on his own, while David Thewlis' Ares/Sir Patrick is a cunning and charismatic villain, unlike Ghostbusters' Rowan North, whose only purpose seems to be nothing but pushing the narration that intelligent, introverted men are creepy losers.

And unlike Brie Larson's Captain Marvel, which is wooden at best, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is a very interesting character, with an intriguing mix of determination and innocence that reminds me of John Byrne's Wonder Woman (the issues that started right after COIE, like John Byrne's Man of Steel). Brie Larson, on the other hand, is nothing like any version of Carol Danvers I've ever read.

And don't get me started on Star Wars sequel trilogy, whose female protagonist is an overpowered Mary Sue. Princess Leia from the original trilogy is a strong female character, and yet she is not invulnerable. Luke Skywalker, the OT's main protagonist, has shown interesting character growth from a dorky farmboy to a galactic hero. Meanwhile, character growth is something that Rey totally lacks. And I wonder why the makers of the sequel trilogy wrote Rey to be such invincible Mary Sue; were they trying too hard to cater to the "strong women" narrative, that they completely forgot that an interesting hero is the one who struggles against evil?

At the end, I'm not saying that all modern movies suck. In fact, there are still good movies. However, it seems that bad movies today are the result of "agenda first, entertainment second" mindset.

buckeye wrote on 2022-11-30, 15:17:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2022-11-30, 04:08:

An interesting insight about films and TV shows these days.

"incel manbabies", now that's hilarious 😂😂😂😂. What will they up with next?

The word "incel" seems to be thrown a lot these days, that it starts losing its meaning. CMIIW, but as far as I know, incel is short for "involuntarily celibate". That is, people who want to get laid but can't, due to their apparent inability to find a romantic partner. But I have seen the word "incel" being thrown at a male commenter whom posted that (Western) marriage is bad for (Western) men; citing divorce statistics and alimony and such. I was quite confused when reading the retaliatory posts that call him incel. Wouldn't such marriage-avoiding men fall into the category of voluntarily celibate, then, making them exact opposite of incel?

Those who claim to be incels are typically active in the 4chan & 8chan online communities that bear that name.

These are organized groups who permeate into nice sounding groups throwing nonsense and misinformation around and are tied to alt right extremism .
People in general are sick of a Pokémon thread needing to involve “extremism” because there is “that guy” on every corner of the internet.

Those calling people an incel as an insult are doing so due to the large numbers of people calling themselves that who are also tied into white pointy hat wearing organizations feeling the need to interject a what about everywhere.

Cognitive dissonance is occurring en masse making discussion of legitimate “male issues” nearly impossible because of the inevitability of someone taking it as a jumping board to focus on only the so called incel side of the coin using it as a reason to ignore men facing unwarranted extreme prejudice.
(Normal Men are blamed for their circumstances regardless of fault and get discredited and lumped in with incels if they complain because men aren’t allowed to complain, so the narrative goes)

Individuals calling themselves femcels or incels get bemusement from me for the simple reason anyone can get laid no matter how terrible, you just probably won’t like what is interested back if you are a turd.

If you can’t find someone reliable that you like welcome to the club , the large number of people that are just too toxic to be involved with for a long term relationship has been going up for decades.
God knows I’ve had some terrifying girlfriends that I gave too many chances .
However Most of the women I encounter are just bitter, controlling and judgmental with way too much baggage.
It’s just the crazies that almost killed me that are more memorable.

Life has got much harder for non-academically-minded guys. It used to be you could leave school at 16, walk into a factory, and in a couple of years be earning enough to get a car, a house, get married and have kids. That's just not possible anymore. You need stacks of education now, but not all kids are cut out for that. I don't know a solution to this problem.

Errius wrote on 2022-12-05, 11:45:

Life has got much harder for non-academically-minded guys. It used to be you could leave school at 16, walk into a factory, and in a couple of years be earning enough to get a car, a house, get married and have kids. That's just not possible anymore. You need stacks of education now, but not all kids are cut out for that. I don't know a solution to this problem.

Agreed, certainly not possible without the risk of abject poverty which mostly affects children these days. In the US At least, Child poverty also seems to be something no one wants to do much to solve. Heck getting hungry kids food and supplies to be given an education has been a battle in many areas. Why a large percentage don’t want starving kids to get food , an education and off the streets I will never understand.
Let alone making sure the parents have a good chance to take care of them, which is still a bridge too far for most who want to punish them for being poor.

Uneducated men is part of the issue but The amount of mental illness, disabilities and drug abuse amongst the female of the species is certainly part of the problem as well.

As much as men are told and required to be open minded to whatever blows our way, the same expectation does not appear to extend the other way which is why men have legitimate beefs with our societies inability to become less animalistic in how men are viewed
Hopefully toward a more modern enlightened view of the roles men are allowed to have.
Many Women seem to be holding the dime firmly between their buttocks in the case of being backward thinking of what a man’s place is in society and are in many cases willfully ignorant.

In other parts of the world some tribal societies demand matriarchal control, responsibility and decision making especially in terms of relationships. I doubt it’s any panacea but considering the direction we are moving women should not be allowed to have it both ways if they demand equal rights they should by god get all of the terrible responsibilities that come with being a man and not be given the leighway to skirt the responsibilities they don’t want.

All or nothing, society is broken when you can’t meet halfway and comprehend that there is value in all human beings, if you aren’t willing to do for yourself you don’t deserve the right to expect someone else to do it for you.

The discussion and tone in this thread is fucking awful.

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-05, 19:50:

The discussion and tone in this thread is fucking awful.

Why? even if my english is not good to understand everything, I found interesting to read

theelf wrote on 2022-12-05, 20:35:

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-05, 19:50:

The discussion and tone in this thread is fucking awful.

Why? even if my english is not good to understand everything, I found interesting to read

Your english is fine. He's probably talking about the culture war. In the west we've become so divided that we can't even tolerate people with opposing views. I try to avoid it as much as possible, as it can take a toll on your mental health.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-12-05, 21:11:

theelf wrote on 2022-12-05, 20:35:

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-05, 19:50:

The discussion and tone in this thread is fucking awful.

Why? even if my english is not good to understand everything, I found interesting to read

Your english is fine. He's probably talking about the culture war. In the west we've become so divided that we can't even tolerate people with opposing views. I try to avoid it as much as possible, as it can take a toll on your mental health.

Easy living does that to you, I think. "If there's no real problem that needs attention - invent one."

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-05, 19:50:

The discussion and tone in this thread is fucking awful.

It was awful since post #1. Geek Social Fallacies are in effect.

Closed.
Topic title sucks, content sucks, people suck. The first two are easy to fix, the last likely never will be.