Entertainment is getting worse and you're getting old. The media landscape has fractured, and there are no dominant cultural touchstones anymore. You're looking for media in all the ways you used to, but everything is different now. There is still plenty of amazing long form content on YouTube, and lots of great movies. You have to do more seeking now, though, where before you could just open up YouTube or turn on the TV

I think on the YT part we can blame the extremely crazy recommendation engine for it, because I can find great content easily, but even just 1 genre alteration throws me into a whole different recommendations.

Ex: You watch 1 political vid, and suddenly half of your new vids are politically related

Go to your local library. Many have a great selection on blu-ray and dvds. Having to select something from a shelf is way more enjoyable than the endless scroll of junk streaming services give you. I am now actually purposefully selecting movies and shows to watch and making time and effort to finish them instead of just streaming random stuff.

Plus you get commentaries and bonus features.

This sounds like a perfect opportunity to start reading books.

Society changes Book is book

Media changes Book is book

Trends change Book is book

Government changes Book is book

Games get outdated Book is book

Servers get shutdown Book is book

Book will always be there in its original format, no ads, no change, no tracking, no brainrot, no trends, no algorithmic content creation.

Book is book

People keep talking about divided media and a lack of shared shows - did nobody else see all the KPop Demon Hunter outfits last Halloween? I swear it was about 20% of the outfits at my kids' school. Nobody seeing the Stranger Things merch in stores for the new season?

There's still new shows most people see, and some are good ones - but the media landscape changed. Used to be, in the US, you had CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. The difference is now it's Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and so on. The quality mix is still pretty much what it was, but you've got to go to where they've moved to - YouTube doesn't have much professionally done content.

As for 67, that just seems like what memes have always been to me. The Beans meme here was random too, but no less meaningful for it.

It is sharply ironic to see someone complaining about short-form content immediately after lamenting the loss of their favorite youtubers.

Look, it's Sturgeon's law. You're comparing the best of yesteryear to the whole of today, and 90% of content today is crap. But 90% of yesteryear was crap, too, we just only remember the very best (and sometimes the very worse) and forget the dross.

But you can ignore the dross of today, too. If you don't like it, don't read / listen-to / watch it. It really is that simple.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

There's more good stuff to find than ever. It's just that it's hard to find. There's too much volume of content out there to sift through, and mainstream tastes have changed so it isn't as easy to find since the stuff that's popular really isn't your taste. You likely liked the stuff that's was popular back then. Look harder. Find the niche like-minded communities. Look for content related to what you already like. There are tons of new good movies, games, music, etc out now and you just need to find it. Even for news you can find the sources you like and filter out toxicity.

Entertainment notwithstanding, you are definitely getting old.

There's just way more content today but probably the percentage of good vs. bad hasn't changed much. Finding the good in the sea of bad might be harder though. Actively maintain and curate your feeds.

And keep around indie web and federation etc. Internet used to be a niche domain of the nerds. It is happening again where some find it's just the time to depart from the mainstream web. Just don't get too attached to visible engagement.

Not just you. It’s worse. It’s all ads, not just the ad breaks, but the 14 billion product placements. Clickbait, rage bait, lies, exaggerated stories for views/sales. Rehash of the same plot/story again. Maybe a remake or reboot of a series that has already been milked to death. There still some quality out there. But it’s buried under a mountain of trash.

I think there's a kernel of truth in what you say. I actually paid YouTube extortion to get premium but it doesn't matter. If the channel is large enough, they'll make the commercial as part of their "content". At my age I feel like I've already seen enough advertising for a lifetime. I'm so sick of being constantly solicited. If I really want to see something, I pay extra to avoid ads and if I can't I just walk away. Read a book.

I don't even try to listen to the radio due to all the ads.

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. Two things can be true.

Go to Goodwill and shop some DVDs. I've discovered so many films that are either not available on streaming or are available but have never been recommended to me. Just watched The Game with Michael Douglas recently which I had never heard of and was pretty good. For $3/pop, it's not a huge risk.

literally

Okay, so we know you're 35 or 40 from the millennial signal.

You could be just getting old. You've lived long enough to have firm opinions and - more importantly - expectations. These are not being met, and you are coping less as your pragmatism wanes a bit with neuroplasticity.

But entertainment has gone a little shitty. Social media is a cancer on global communication, even as it offers the same. We're communicating now, so there's benefit, but the algorithm has definitely ruined us.

I say both.

I do think its getting worse. Lots of media is just "hey remember that thing?". Sparingly its fine but for example the german movie "das Kanu des Manitu" a long awaited sequal, was all just "hey rememher this? That was in the first movie and it was great!".

Everything just is mainstreamed to get the most profit and no longer tell a story with emotions.

And this is defenetly me but older movies from the 60s-70s-80s, with their old microphones and cameras just feel like a story. How they catch the sound, it sounds like someone is retelling a tale.

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.

Well not all empty and pessimistic, but yeah there's certainly a lot more of that than good content.

Steam has a lot more great games now, but you have to put up a block list to get rid of the flood of gooner/asset flip/streamer bait garbage. Also, shovelware is nothing new.

The bside games comm (look for “bside@fedia.io” if the link is broken) here on lemmy is great for chill indie game releases, as well as the patientgamers comm.

Going through steam discovery queues and clicking “ignore” or blocking associated tags also helps massively.

YouTube has been black box algorithm hell for like 10-15 years now. That started with pewdiepie in like, what, 2011? Maybe use an incognito/signed out page and search for specifically what you want?

Radio has also always been largely shit, exhibit A being Rush Limbaugh from the ‘90s/‘00s on US AM band radio. Go even further back and you have the payola scams of the 1970s. Spotify, Bandcamp, Qobuz, niche music communities etc. will be where you find something you like.

Centralized media will never be something you have control over and I’d bet that’s your real problem with most of this.

Those types of youtubers havent been replaced; they still exist, just hard to find because of so many low quality videos

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.

I feel the same, but I just have a nas for my movies so I can enjoy them forever. Most of the current new movies are full of bullshit so I also mostly watch older movies where humanity still exists. You have to start gathering movies like this on physical media or they just will be gone whenever the streaming service wants them to.

I run Linux so I dont need to update my computer.

I dont have Facebook or Instagram.

I use Freetube app on my computer instead of YouTube so I dont have to see shorts, or ads for that matter.

I use Newpipe on my phone for the same reason.

So you can do some things to stay away from bullshit.

Artists are being treated worse, that is for sure, why do the details of if artists can still manage to create equally good art as we begin to treat them worse and worse matter? I don't know if I want artists to be capable of that past a certain point as it just ends up worse for artists anyways when they do this and normalize even worse treatment of their profession.

shows yes, they have gotten worst over the years. especially how heavy handed streaming has influenced which shows get released, how much budget, and limited the development is. plus the interference of the executive, showrunners, producers that force thier ulterior motive into the show, ruining it.

I cut the cord from cable TV over a decade ago and never went back. It was getting bad then; I can't imagine how bad it is now.

A lot of the YouTubers from the 2010's are gone, but I've found enough new ones to justify getting YouTube Premium to skip the ads. I don't engage in individual videos, but I follow a set where YouTube can figure out what I want and I make sure to not watch any alt-right videos. I also subscribe to Dropout and Nebula, which shows the kind of videos I watch.

I've limited my news consumption to the Economist. It is expensive, but the bias is pretty muted in American News.

But overall, what we're seeing is a race to the bottom on all media. It used to be that media took up valuable space, either in physical space or bandwidth. Now, the cost is media space is near zero, so there is a drive to the bottom where that never existed a generation ago.

I feel it in my heart that short form content is damaging everyones attention spans

The Silent Generation Boomers said this about us watching half hour TV shows.

go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says “It has no fixed meaning.”

Maybe go back and read some Jacques Derrida, because the idea that meaning of words and ideas isn't fixed isn't exactly new.

Its full of gooner porn bait visual novels

You take that back about Dispatch right now!

But more seriously, content changed. Young people just don't watch scripted television and movies in the same form or capacity that we do. Due to this, the budget for that kind of entertainment is slowly receding, because why would companies pour money into a type of content that isn't really making the returns on investment they want because all the old people who enjoy it are slowly dying? It would be like people who grew up in the early 1900s complaining about "talkies" in the 1930s because they preferred the old silent films of their youth. It really isn't for us to say which is better or worse, as much as it is for us to find what's good out of the new stuff that is being produced. There's more content than ever out there, which means you have to sift through more to find good stuff.

Like I mean, that's just part of getting older, the things we enjoy become less popular, and by extension, less money is invested in making good products that cater to that audience anymore.

Also, counterpoint: Baldur's Gate 3 was a return to 1990s western CRPG style and it fucking dominated financially. No other game of that style has come close to that kind of popularity for a long, long time. No, Bethesda games don't count because they don't actually lock you out of different outcomes from the choices you make. The Witcher games also don't count because there's not a real RPG, build-your-own-character aspect to them, you're just Geralt whether you liked it or not. When classic styles of media are done well, people still respond positively to them.

Finally, corporate enshittification dominates all of this, leading to a feedback loop of companies putting less and less money into anything quality at all ever because they don't think its valuable to invest in anything except stock buybacks and firing employees to pump their stock prices.

There's a lot of aspects to it, and a lot of it has to do with markets and how we're no longer the target market, the coveted 18-24 demographic that made our own brain rot television such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force so popular in the early 2000s when we were in that target demographic. Brain rot media has always been there, in the form of absurdist comedy. You go back farther and you had stuff like Mr. Show and The State. When I think of my own high school graduating class, I think most of them were dimwitted fucking idiots, and I don't think it was because they watched short form media: I think it's because most humans are genuinely dimwitted fucking idiots.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling, but yeah we're just getting old and we're not the audience that is being catered to anymore.

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.