As time passed by and the older I got, I started to realize how lucky I was growing up before things slowly started to get worse; the government is being run by people who can barely run this country and people started becoming delusional to know what’s right and wrong from real life to social media. Granted, growing up to adulthood wasn’t perfect, but it was an enjoyable ride to experiences all the highs and lows life threw at us.
Disney went from a wholesome entertainment company that honored the values of its founder and entertained families to a greedy and disgraceful corporation that devoured intellectual properties such as Star Wars, Muppets, Indiana Jones, 20th Century Fox, and Marvel and the company itself getting into politics. Nerd and geek culture was a safe haven for misfits and outcasts, but it was slowly destroyed when The Big Bang Theory aired on TV. The show was basically Two and a Half Men with action figures, comic books, pop culture references, and spewing mathematical & scientific formulatics nonsense. The humor feels flat and the premise is so outdated that it could’ve been perfect if it was made either in the 80s or the 90s. As the show grew popular; non nerds, misfits, and outcasts started to think we act or behave like the characters on the show and slowly take over and change the lifestyle.
Social media used to be fun by just listening to music and watching videos for a good laugh; now it’s an all-consuming nightmare where people spend too much time complaining and debating or being blindly influenced by content creators like Logan Paul. Music went from The Rat Pack, The Beatles, Hall & Oates, and A Tribe Called Quest to Taylor Swift singing nonsense, Cardi B almost scissoring Megan Thee Stallion, Sam Smith’s disturbing performance at the Grammys, and rappers mumbling the lyrics & living up to the negative stereotypes.
People went from tolerating one’s belief and lifestyle to shoving it down everyone’s throats, changing social rules to their liking only, and reconstructing our way of life to their image. When someone has a different opinion, belief, and/or lifestyle, that person is labeled. Video games went from a beautifully graphic and well-designed escapism to corporate trash where you find political agendas being shown. To exemplify, The Tomb Raider Franchise; The Original, Legend, and Survivor Trilogies. In the Original and Legend trilogies, Lara Croft is a strong, resourceful, gun-wielding, intelligent, wisecracking, and fearless eye candy going on Indiana Jones-esque adventures & in the Survivor trilogy is nothing more than an Uncharted rip-off with Lara Croft reduced to a fragile non-appealing disappointment with no personality who can take down a private army single-handedly submitted by the ideas of a Social Justice Warrior who either never played video games or even Tomb Raider. The Survivor trilogy makes the other installments (The Last Revelation, Chronicles, and The Angel of Darkness), the unsung hidden gems. The developing companies got greedy due to the use of pre-ordering games before the release day, thus resulting in a good chance that the game itself might be terrible. Moreover, it's not just the companies itself: developers, programmers, writers, etc. often slack off. For example, some of the 2K games; WWE 2K19 and some of NBA games have shown a serious depression of efficiency that are making its fans turn away from buying them. it is also important to add that DLCs (Downloadable Contents) in certain games were used as a continuation for the game’s storyline and not add-ons and challenge maps stitched together.
Modern entertainment these days are terrible for variety of reasons; weak setups and payoffs, lazy writing, legacy characters getting neutered and destroyed, teaches the audiences terrible life lessons, CGI being overused, celebrities getting involved in politics and the lack of professionalism, pandering the audiences with political agendas, alienating the fanbase, not respecting the source material, targeting the wrong demographic that never existed, ruining the positive masculinity of male characters, writing flawless female characters, big budget films getting too expensive these days, overuse of multiverses, blaming people whenever a project fails, and no character dies.
Comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin were never afraid to tell it like it is and still be funny, but now we have Amy Schumer and Hannah Gadsby trying way too hard to get a laugh. Lenny and George were both legendary comics from the counterculture era and planted the seeds of using dark humor to tackle everyday life, politics, religions, & vulgarities. Amy Schumer’s material is 100% about men sucks, being a woman is either great or hard, and sex. Her hosting gig at the 94th Academy Awards was pure cringe. Hannah Gadsby’s material is so woke and unfunny, it was a torture to watch and listen to.
I’m not going to lie and be blinded by rose tinted glasses, the past decades were not perfect, but I often envy those who grew up during those times because life made sense. It was simple yet a challenge to go through life. For example, the 80s and 90s were different but people back then were living the moment every day, enjoying the things that were beautiful like music & entertainment, and things weren't that chaotic as they are now. People back then were minding their own business, didn’t lose their minds of what’s going in the world, and didn’t dump their insecurities onto others because they have more issues than People’s Magazine, being physically unhealthy is the new lifestyle, brainwashing children to things they don’t understand, using kids as dress up dolls, censoring the horrible parts of history and art, and “canceling” those who either made a simple mistake or did nothing wrong, contributing nothing to their lives by staring at their electronics and living rent free with their folks, trying solve racism like trying to get reparations for slavery or playing whatever privilege card in every social and political issue, lack of creativity and making unnecessary changes in media, having the victim’s mindset, educators are not teaching basic subjects, blaming a group of people for one group’s fault, hiring someone who lacks the qualifications, and trying to change one’s culture and standards so they can be comfortable instead of appreciating and accepting it.
To summarize, wokeness doesn’t make anything better, political correctness is the worst form of manners, and canceling culture doesn’t solve anything. No matter what side you’re on, the government will always be that deadbeat parent that wastes money on stupid nonsense like the lottery and credit card fees, taking no responsibilities, failing to protect and represent its citizens, and finding stupid ways to make things right for the people for a brief period. Stick to what you believe and respect other's choices.
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