site banner

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 1, 2023

Happy New Year!

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have a question that could turn into a culture war topic but I need some kind of sanity check before I flesh it out further:

Does anyone else feel as though, even as the general populace becomes less and less optimistic, the mainstream narrative has nonetheless converged on a message of unrelenting positivity?

It is hard to describe, but the best examples of what I'm talking about that spring to mind are The Rise of the "Corporate Memphis" art style and the seeming ubiquity of beauty filters as a default feature in smartphones.

Or in the way Youtube video comments have turned from a cesspit of trolls trolling trolls trolling trolls to basically a competition for who can heap the most bombastically hyperbolic praise on the subject video.

The common thread is that these techniques/styles end up minimizing the appearance of 'flaws' and 'ugliness' whilst also idealizing the subjects it examines so as to avoid... I don't know. Offense? Critique? Any possible negative emotional valence? Where before there might be depiction of ugliness as ugliness or actual examination of social and personal flaws in a way that risks causing offense, where before there were art styles that embraced ugliness (while still being aesthetic) and Cartoons like Ren and Stimpy could use unpleasant visuals for comedic effect now it seems like most products are produced with the intent of avoiding any unpleasant sensations on the viewer's part.

And this now seems to apply to every single product of modern culture, aside from some decrepit/degenerate corners of the internet. "Good vibes only" seems to be the accepted norm... with the exception of certain acceptable targets who may be used as punching bags.

I'm not even getting into possible causes, I'm literally just trying to see if this is an actual, noticeable phenomenon.

Have you felt as though mainstream/corporate-produced culture has reached increasing heights of 'toxic positivity' even as your own outlook on the state of the world has degraded?

Interestingly enough I ran across discussion about this phenomenon just the other day. I sometimes watch a youtuber called Todd in the Shadows who talks about pop music (usually through a negative lens because most of anything is bad, but he appreciates good pop music). Every year he releases his "top 10 worst songs of the year" and he began this year's video with a diversion about how critic culture has morphed into fan culture. The discussion on reddit (on a similarly very "poptimist" subreddit) agreed how the culture of positivity is utterly cloying and suffocating. Specifically the genre of "self-empowerment/positivity" is called out as fake and saccharine.

I'm not really hooked into social media so I don't really have much else to add. I do know that RottenTomatoes and other kind of review sites have become utterly worthless as metrics of quality because big companies have realized how important internet cachet has become as an advertising mechanism, and the inevitable tyranny of Goodhart's Law follows. You do have to wonder how much of this endless positivity you talk about is organic. I don't think it's necessarily that all the comments are AI-generated or bots or whatever, but there's obviously corporate fingers tipping the scale. A simple example is youtube removing the dislike button so that the hoi polloi can't show their disdain.

A tangent:

I do know that RottenTomatoes and other kind of review sites have become utterly worthless as metrics of quality because big companies have realized how important internet cachet has become as an advertising mechanism, and the inevitable tyranny of Goodhart's Law follows.

Find a cinephile or three to follow on Letterboxd who’s taste you respect. You don’t even have to sign up for an account or visit the website as Letterboxd provides an RSS feed for each user account.

Is it possible to rate stuff and then get matched with someone like-minded?

That I don’t know. I’ve got three acquaintances I follow on there via their RSS feeds who are all cinephiles. I’ve not signed up for an account, myself, per my personal no social media policy.