Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

I don't see ads on my media aside from watching TV at a hotel every now and then. The secret ingridient is piracy but also privacy (tools) that block ads.

At this point I accepted we will not get stuff like lord the rings movies ever again from any studio.

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'm here to offer no answers, but a few fun activities that help me get out of that same mood. I feel you.

• Play some DOOM WADs. It's December, the Cacowards are here, and it's a beautiful time of the year to play through some of the most revered levels and mods. Pretty pure if you remember that the original devs open-sourced the engine, the community then built many source ports and now continues to churn out all levels of quality of mods and levels.
• Read some books. Feels bizarre and unusual these days to consciously choose something slower and ad-free and intentional, with nothing to interrupt you (per the power of the medium alone, alone). Not to mention the endless choice of genres and works to choose from. The bonus here is writing stuff yourself, which has a super low barrier of entry.
• Play THE FINALS. It's been going well for over 8 seasons now and offers the most unique FPS experience so far with its core gamemode and some twists on staple mechanics. As a long-term Counter-Strike player and a massive FPS enjoyer, this one is a breath of fresh air in so many ways.

That's on top of other wonderful suggestions in this thread.

But I think the most important would be to learn when to slow down and step away from the attention- and data-hungry apps and sites and whatever.

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

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.

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.

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.

It’s really bad. As brains get smaller, the entertainment industry literally has to dumb everything down.

Even the steam store just feels different now. Its full of gooner porn bait visual novels and mundane activity sims and 1 season relevant fps shooters.

For what it’s worth, I recently learned you can turn off the gooner porn bait visual novels in the store without turning off incidental sexual content games like BG3. They have gradations of sexual content.

(This doesn’t solve the other categories, but I suspect you can tailor your store experience to limit those as well.)

You just cant rely on algorithms to show you anything good, they might but dont expect them to. You have to search for content yourself and also try blocking the shitcontent so you might find anything decent more easy. In a way, internet is kind of like post apocalypse wasteland now. You might find something, or even communities that have a lot of stuff, but a lot of it is just crap.

Maybe try archiving some of the things you like best in case it disappears one day. Also try connecting with other people and communities you find that are nice, we have only eachother against the corporations that just want to show us brainrot content.

You know it sounds like you were younger in the early 2000s. People have been saying this every generation and every leap Forward in technology. So you get the boomers talking about how they wish they could go back to the old TV and the old school everything. It really depends on as I keep saying on here how you consume your media and what you pay attention to. You don't know how many times I've said that on here. People are like I wish the internet was young again I wish I could not be influenced by so much politics so much strife so much negativity. I wish that I could go back to old school YouTube and see these things again. Hell most of those things are still available and are still on there you don't have to be influenced so much by all the negativity and all the politics around. You can just watch things as they happen and as they come out and still avoid a lot of that.

For youtube you should use Revanced and the subscriptions feed. No ads, no garbage recommendations but just a small amount of effort.

I think movies are worse now, I may be getting old but I the time between "Wow, that was a great movie" seems to be getting longer.

On the other hand, TV shows are getting better, when I watched Firefly recently (don't kill me) it was good but not great while The Bear and Ted Lasso are just amazing.

Anime is also getting better, there are new animes that are great being released all the time. Chainsaw Man, Frieren, Solo Levelling, Delicious Dungeon and Dan Da Dan are all great picks that came out recently.

I feel like Steam is also really great these days, there's a bit of a downturn in AAA game quality but the indie scene is going strong. Slay the Spire, Hades and Balatro all came out semi recently. You're better served with getting some gaming recommendations since the catalog is so full of games that are worth playing you'll have to quit your job to actually get through them. I really would like to dump another 100 hours into Factorio to get through the Space Age DLC.

All in all, yeah, things are getting enshittified but there's still plenty of entertainment that's good being released every day.

Worse. YouTube peaked around 2010s 100%. There's a lot of great content to find now, but you have to go digging.

Gaming is at an all time low, peoples standards have fallen off a cliff, games are made like shit. I think this is also because of how big and mainstream it is now too. There's so much money and manipulation in it.

Everything has been enshitified by narcissistic oligarchs

All the stuff I enjoyed is gone, and everything they make now seems so empty and pessimistic now.

Eeeeeh. First of all, all the stuff you liked is still there.

But also good stuff is rare. You really need to know where to look and which tips to follow. For example, if you disregard anime as a whole, you've probably missed absolute 10/10 media experiences you can't find anywhere else. Sometimes it's about leaving your comfort zone and trying something new.

But then also, about the only really good star wars content we got in the last... 30 years is Ep. 3, the clone wars animated series (later seasons) and Andor. And they made SO MUCH.

Also, maybe you should make your own. If you like the old stuff so much, try to make it yourself and give it a spin. get close to it, recapture, reinterpret, re-imagine. Maybe you'll do that for 15 years, go back to your inspiration and find that your "imitation" has surpassed it.

Necessity is the mother of invention. If you're bored make your own.

You have all the blueprints for the stuff you like. What else are you going to do? You can watch reruns, of course... not sure if it will be equally satisfying though.

Even the memes suck now, say what you want about caption memes and dancing babies and troll face, Pepe, me gusta but that shit was at least comprehensible in humor. go on 67 Wikipedia and it literally says "It has no fixed meaning."

You lost me here. This is where you start to sound like a boomer. The annoying thing about 67 isn't that it doesn't have any sense behind it, it's the sheer ubiquity that kids say it. Which, unless you have kids or work with kids you probably really aren't seeing. Look at old MLG montage parody videos. Why was that guy saying "wow" and winking funny? There's no reason. It is just something we laughed at. 67 is the same.

A lot of everything else you say I resonate with. Ads are getting more intense and ubiquitous. My country is going mask off with fascism and disappearing citizens. There's a lot to be upset about. I don't think much of it is related though, you know? Ads just suck because they want more money and that just means showing more ads.

This is some serious advice. Find things to be thankful for, no matter how small, and focus on them. Your perception is your reality. What you fill your mind with is what you see. I know it sort of sounds obvious but, if you're thinking about miserable things all day you'll be miserable. If you think about things that make you happy, you'll be happy. I'm not saying to ignore the bad things or to give up, but you can't fight back if you're miserable. It is okay to take a break. It is okay to want to be happy.

If you're in the northern hemisphere we're in the time of year that gets dark super duper early. Seasonal affective disorder is real. The older I get the more I realize it. I'm not saying blame your thoughts on it being less sunny, but just be aware it can be a component.

I hope you can find some joy. 💜

News was always political, but I agree, it's exhausting, and it was exhausting back then.

As for the memes, do you really think "It's over 9000" was any more comprehensible. I spent way too much time overthinking why that meme was funny, like "Oh, it's because the power levels grow exponentially over the course of the show and 9000 is such a ridiculously low number when it's all said and done." But nah I think it was just random. Then I started laughing at it cuz hehe funny reference. And what even was YouTube Poop, I mean it was the funniest stuff ever wrought by man (HI BILLY MAYES HERE WITH LOTSA SPAGHETTI FOR DINNER!), but don't kid yourself, nonsense was the whole point. Let the young'uns have their 67's.

Some of it's legit though. YouTube is enshittifying, it's the natural course of things when you have investors to please. That's also why games are crap now. But there were lowest common denominator adult video games as far back as the Atari 2600, so that's nothing new. Not saying its OK, just that nothing has changed and is unlikely to change in the future. Look for the good stuff that is out there. I'm having fun with Megabonk.

I also agree short form content can be straight up harmful. I just found out the other day you can turn off YouTube history which stops the algorithm from feeding you anything. On mobile you just get a blank search bar. It'll still bring up shorts when searching but if you scroll five or six shorts deep it'll just give you a blank screen that says "recommendations have been turned off." I turned it off because I realized I'd get up from my desk at work to go to the bathroom but spend a whole minute looking for a recommended video to listen to before actually leaving the room.

It’s absolutely getting worse. Across every spectrum.

Oh, it's not either/or.

It's media being manipulated by megacorps to push whatever they want to cash in on. Also ads. Also also, you're getting old!

Great example would be music industry. If you listen to radio, you would notice that most of the modern music is just bunch of the same artists that are topping the charts. But there are also way more great artists that create music today that are unheard if your primary source of music is radio.

Enter Spotify (or at least how it used to be before 2022). Spotify would give you choice what to listen to. Would suggest artists that do similar music to what you like. It made discovering new artists very easy. For years 3 major labels were dictating what majority of people would listen to. But now people can finally chose what they like. And that is what makes Spotify so hard to drop, considering recent issues.

Same with movies. Not that there are no good movies or series out there. It is just what these mega conglomerates dictate on what is pushed to the masses. An insanely good indie movie has nothing near the budget to advertise itself as some meh-grade Disney flick can have.

I suggest to go off mainstream. Mainstream media is not where "it's at" anymore. Get into indie movies. Might be good to start checking some particular directors and their catalog.

Same goes to YT. I fucking love me some small content creators.

Games? - Single player, online/split screen co-op. Each year there are bunch of really good games are released. Indie genre now is the new hot way to play and enjoy games.

Do not go on mainstream meme subs. These suck. Find some small subs that offer meme experience. Eventually any sub that grows big entshittifies beyond repair.

News. This shit cant be avoided entirely. Maximum you can do is to minimize exposure to news. Do not scroll as much on your phone and use TV just for movies and series.

You're conflating several points here.

Things change. Focus and platform and format and emphasis change.

But also, late stage capitalism is ruining everything.

I still enjoy watching and discovering a lot of stuff that I missed growing up. I'm literally searching for Stargate DVDs right now because I never watched it all the way through. But also, brainrot can be fun, modern depth is just as depth as older depth, with similar rates of rarity. Meaning, it's there, but lots of other stuff mixed in.

So yeah, you are getting old. But only because of your inflexibility to adapt to newer methods and models and stuff. Take the best from the old, and try the new and find the good stuff. That's what I've always historically done anyway. Because if you do that, over time, let's say you get desperate in a drought. Then you just lower your standards a little bit and end up planning on watching things like buffy or sg1 in 2026.

And maybe, just maybe, those things, while problematic of their eras, may have otherwise been way ahead of their time or you'll grow to appreciate them long after their time. Take breaks, come back in a decade or two and try again and maybe it'll be better or worse. There's no wrong answer, even if you're getting old. Especially if you're getting old.

Also, complaining, while valid, is also not as productive as finding things to be passionate about. For example, I just played through the original turok on pc. That game is wayyyy better than I was told it was when I was a kid. And now that I've played it, I can say stuff like "games these days, while fun, are missing X or really could incorporate Y to be even better".

Tldr: getting old. But also kinda worse. A lot of it is perspective and how you get around whatever era's issues.

Oh right, there is one more factor to consider. As you get older, you DO get wiser and more experienced. Stuff stops being aimed at you, and in a lot of ways, I've found society not catering to me because I'm expensive compared to the dumb kids of today who don't know any better.<- now take this, and think about it from an older person's perspective, where YOU are dumb kid.

Now, go out and touch grass. It really is better and will make you feel better. It usually works for me.