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So maybe this has been discussed before, and maybe it is just my own perception, but I find geek culture these days to be mired in a kind of miserable hypercriticism of the various pop culture offerings despite us literally having never had it so good.

When I go on youtube or look at discussions here, I see a lot of "X is absolute rotting trashfire garbage with no merit whatsoever" or "Y is not as good as Z, and therefore not worth even considering."

I remember when geek culture was pretty niche and off to one side. Now we have multiple really well made films coming out per month which are targeted at our demographic and to my mind, pandering to us directly, and people are hypercritical of what comes out to an absurd degree. 15 years ago I would never have believed as a comic book fan that I would have gotten so many excellent comic book movies one after another. I thought Spiderman was essentially a one off amazing occurrence but we have now had a decade of really solid super hero movies that respect the material and have broadened the appeal of characters I grew up with to the entirety of society. I am going to talk about movies and video games separately below and just bring up some of the common things I see in geek culture that I find pretty baffling. I am not intending to straw man anything here but I probably will present more extreme opinions, I know there are chilled out people who do not say much and maybe I just need to give up Youtube, but I thought this might spur some interesting discussion.

Film

We are in the absolute best time for film if you are a geek in my opinion. Just last month I had the choice to go and see Solo or Deadpool, and either one would have blown me away 15 years ago, but I was not too pushed about going to see either because I had already gorged myself on Avengers Infinity war.

We have some brilliant horror films coming out at the moment after a decade long drought. We have The Shape of Water, a Sci Fi film, kicking ass at the Oscars. We have the MCU pumping out consistent qualitty super hero movies beyond what any of us could have expected growing up in the 80s or 90s. And we have a reboot of Star Wars which is superior to the prequels and has brought the franchise back into cinema for a new generation of children. We also have more thoughtful sci fi like the Martian or Interstellar. It is bloody brilliant! Hell, even Jurassic Park has come back with some pretty solid new installments.

And yet, if I go online and look at what the geek community thinks of this, I mostly find a tidal wave of angst and criticism. "X has RUINED! Y" etc. I see people hating on the Marvel movies because the colour balance in the movies is too flat. I mean we are talking about films which can capture the experience of reading multi character crossovers in live action almost perfectly, and you are annoyed because of colour balance? Or the musical score? It is not enough that we have amazing screen adaptations of our favourite media to a scale we have never had before, it must also be perfect in every way, or else it is worthless garbage apparently. No one ever seems excited, joyful or happy about these things to me.

Plot holes are picked over like these movies never had them before. People get extremely upset over minor changes for adaptations. People get upset when their fan theories are not confirmed. People get upset for all kinds of reasons. And it is amplified with a cottage industry of amateur critics sat in front of cameras droning on about how terrible everything is for views and revenue. It find it pretty horrible to be honest. I know these films are not perfect, but comparing them to the likes of Batman Forever, the later Superman movies, or the made for TV marvel garbage like the Generation X movies or even the early X Men movies, we are so far ahead in both embracing what I love about the source material, and in production value and storytelling. With Star Wars I think I maybe just have a different perspective having mostly experienced the movies as a cinematic thing and not being into the fanfiction stuff in the EU, but I think the amount of vitriol poured on the new movies is pretty disproportionate to how bad they are. They are perfectly acceptable space adventure movies to me, a bit tired for having had six movies made in the same universe already, but still enjoyable cinematic experiences on the whole and nowhere near the garbage fires of things like Electra or the Max Payne movie, or even the legion of Star Wars copycat movies.

I just do not understand why there is not a stronger movement for joy and happiness in the online discussion culture of geeky film, because we are at the absolute high point in my lifetime of this sort of film and I am always extremely thankful that I get to experience these things and talk about them to people who are only peripherally interested like my co-workers and wife, while really nerding out with my older brother. I know there are some actual stinkers, like BvS and Justice League, but why waste your time on the crap when there is so much good stuff out there?

Video Games

Dakka is much more positive about video games than most sites I go to actually, with people here generally talking about what they enjoy. But youtube critics, dear lord. I love Dark Souls, despite its flaws. It is a wonderful game. I think most people agree. I was almost put off trying Dark Souls 2 because of the hate it received. I played it. It is awesome. I cannot for the life of me understand how hung up people get on small changes in the game play. It is like complaining that Mario can kick the shells straight up in Mario World because he wasn't able to do that in Mario 3. I got many hours of enjoyable gameplay out of it and am very glad I played it. I see videos saying stuff like "Fallout 3 is garbage" because it did not have as deep a plot or as much choice as Fallout 1 or 2. Well, yeah, okay, those were isometric games where the main focus was dialogue choice. The Fallout 3 and onward games are post apocalyptic wasteland survival simulators with some plot. One is not the other, but that does not make either of them bad games. Again, I was almost put off playing Fallout 4 by the extreme reaction to it from Youtube and so on. It is piles of fun, and improves on the originals in many ways. There are things I do not like, like having such a strong plot from the start or having a voiced protagonist, but I c an either mod them out or just ignore them. Again, I am having an absolute blast with this game. Skyrim is another popular punching bag because it is not absolutely perfect, but I am still playing it in 2018 and enjoying the hell out of myself.

Games are awesome at the moment, and I have more choice than I have had in years. I can play open world games in almost any genre. I can play tight linear experiences. I can play free online games of pretty excellent quality. I can play RTS or turn based strategy games. I can play VR in my home. I can play horror games, indie games, stuff like Darkest Dungeon or Divinity 2. The depth of choice and general quality standards only increase. The options for how and when I get to play online increase. And yet, there seems to be an inexhaustible resource of people who want to bitterly criticise and denounce as "garbage" every single one of these games over pretty minor flaws.

Does this feed into the wider discourse? I dunno, I feel that it does to an extent. People seem really prone to hypercriticism, and geeks particularly. I wonder if it is something to do with how our attention is often drawn to negativity, and since attention is the currency of the internet, negativity is just more profitable for people and the algorithms that control what I see.

I wonder what other people think about this?

none of that is new, we all had that one friend who hated star wars. queen even sang about it. It's just with youtube and twitter they now have a audience to broadcast their complaints to, and many people willing to do so. Let's all take a moment to remember our friends who'd roll their eyes and quickly change the subject when we'd let our geekdom flow.

people point out the flaws in movies when they discuss movies, I'll tell everyone what utter garbage the highlander franchise is, there can be only 1 movie, and I'll tell everyone there's a reason firefly only lasted 1 season. horrible movies and shows are nothing new.

What you never saw back then was the media and film makers attacking their audiences for not liking a product. Where today a black woman can anonymously post she doesn't like TLJ, or ghostbusters, then she'll be attacked and called a racist white male who doesn't like strong female roles. She'll state she's a black woman and then get called a liar.

could you imagine ford trying to defend the edsel? It's the greatest car ever made, if you don't like it you're just wrong & evil.

It's odd to see this new marketing strategy, insult the customers til they stop buying your product, then attack them more because the product lost money.

I have never seen any film makers insulting their customers really, maybe I am not looking in the right places.

I think he’s referring too Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson for SW and the people that made the Ghostbusters remake.

Oh right. Well I mean they got some pretty over the top vitriol for the new SW movies, I have some sympathy for them getting frustrated, though they might be better off from a PR POV ignoring it. But that sort of OTT vitriol I think is aided and abetted by this culture of hypercriticism.

 Crazyterran wrote:
I think he’s referring too Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson for SW and the people that made the Ghostbusters remake.

ya and gamergate as well.

"we find these games to be sexist, it's the gamers fault"

eh what? why not blame the developers here?

I think this is pretty far from the point I was making, but do you really feel this is why people are so nit picky about modern games and movies? I mean I don't see the link between GG and people hating on Fallout 4 for example.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think this is pretty far from the point I was making, but do you really feel this is why people are so nit picky about modern games and movies? I mean I don't see the link between GG and people hating on Fallout 4 for example.

it does go the point. No matter how good something is, others will say how horrible it is. art is subjective. games & movies are art and they're liked or disliked by the tastes of the consumer. It used to just be accepted, not all art is for everyone, if you don't like it fine, I hear why you don't like it, agrree or not, it's fine. The only thing that's changed recently is people now defend art, by insulting consumers, which GG took that concept and took it to rediculous levels.

people aren't more critical now, I'm sure quite a few cavemen thought that wheel idea was dumb and would never go anywhere

I do wish this fad of putting hyper in front of worlds would end though.

"the Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."

I think it's largely the knock-on effect of the largely consequence free nature of the Intertubes, which has next to no middle ground, personally I'm not sure its a problem as its a very tiny minority of depressingly easily led squeaky wheels usually at the far end of the political spectrums, or clickbaiters assuming those positions for cash

If you are looking for positive film commentary check out Filmjoy on YT, I know Mikey is a bit Marmite but there's some interesting points

Part of it is that there ARE so many new movies. Back in the day, there were very few sci fi movies, or at least mainstream ones, so you went to the theater and you were grateful for what you got. Maybe Bladerunner was boring to you, but what other sci fi noir film are you going to watch? How can you argue with people who call it a classic just because it was first to use certain ideas and visuals (because everything was a first in some ways when there were so few sci fi movies)?

This seems appropriate for this.

I agree, back in the 90's, this would have seemed like a time of miracles. I remember the state of superhero movies pre-Blade and X-Men. It was....pretty damn awful. And apart from what you mentioned before, board games are in a golden age, and even D&D has become cool--something that would have been utterly unthinkable even ten years ago.

I think apart from the influence of attention addicts on Youtube spouting hyperbole to get clicks, some of it might be precisely because fantasy and SF (the genres most likely to be seen as "geeky") have become more mainstream. As much as geeks back then liked to have a good grumble about not being taken seriously, being into fandoms that most people don't understand does create a sense of belonging and community. Then those things become widespread, and it's not "ours" any more.

https://twitter.com/tylersnotes/status/1007950512816295937

Nerd culture is toxic because it leads us to equate your identity to the things we consume, rather than have the things we consume contribute to a whole, varied identity. Criticism or hard truth about something you love becomes a criticism of you

This isn’t unique to nerd culture but the mix of identity-as-consumption and fanatical devotion to consumption (which is what nerd culture really is) creates a toxic mix where consumption is the only way people see themselves as having a place in the world

You can and should love and learn from and enjoy the things you consume. You should find people you relate to and share experiences with. But you are bigger, deeper, and separate from the things you love. You are good or bad independent of them.

In short, if you really liked a podcast and the person responsible for it is an abuser, you can still have liked the podcast without needing the abuser to be good actually.

I recall some years ago reading a thread/whatever the term on FB is with some guy ranting about one of the X titles getting a female writer, who-- according to him -- couldn't possibly do the job as she wasn't a real fan -- like him -- his example being that she hadn't -- presumably, I don't recall any evidence being produced to support the claim -- bought all 30 odd variant covers of ... i dunno... X-men 1 or whatever like he had.

It's always stuck with me as it seemed/seems to me that proudly boasting that one is a gullible rube who falls for a pretty basic marketing trick and forks over $100+ for multiple copies of the same issue is an odd metric to try and measure ..well.... anything except perhaps gullibility and/or disposable income ?

I think as well that geeky or nerd culture has always had a high amount or lore or trivia or similar that one had to be pretty dedicated to know or be aware of all or most of. And when someone new comes along and for pretty much no other real reason than the companies wanting more £s or $s or what have you gets rid of much of this -- be it through a reboot or a retcon or a simplification or whatever it upsets people as suddenly the stuff that they knew before -- say why the X-men were reincarnated and couldn't be seen on electronic monitors -- is ultimately shown to actually be as worthless as it actually is.

And this upsets people -- understandably.

that strange gate-keeping baffles me too, silly writer lady majoring in writing, working consistently, developing a body of work to further her career, should have just McJob'd and bought comics as thats what commission execs are hungry for...

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
that strange gate-keeping baffles me too, silly writer lady majoring in writing, working consistently, developing a body of work to further her career, should have just McJob'd and bought comics as thats what commission execs are hungry for...

Not sure how relevant it is, but one book I've read recently was Neurotribes, a book on the history of people with autism--how we've been regarded and treated, and the evolution of identity. One chapter concerned early sci-fi fandom, and the actual development of "fandom" as a concept. Sci-fi and fantasy spoke to a lot of people who lacked a sense of belonging or inclusion in mainstream society (whether or not that was due to being autistic), and were an early expression of a viewpoint that's much more common these days, that "it's okay to not fit in with the mainstream, we can have our own community where it's okay to be a bit different".

So that's my theory about where some of the over-identification is rooted.

I'm not sure what to think about this article, but its on topic.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/heat-vision/solo-box-office-results-kelly-marie-tran-harassment-show-star-wars-has-a-fan-problem-1118898

This is a Star Wars thread now. I think it always was.

But to hit all the Bingos, which Star Wars character is the most British?

 Ctaylor wrote:
I'm not sure what to think about this article, but its on topic.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/heat-vision/solo-box-office-results-kelly-marie-tran-harassment-show-star-wars-has-a-fan-problem-1118898

I'm still waiting to hear from Tran on why she left. One internet troll spoke for her and gave his warped opinion on why she left and the media ran with it.

the only toxicity in the fandom is the one the media & creators spew into it to defend a horrible movie. could it be solo failed to draw in the masses because of the movies it was up against, all the production issues, and lack of advertising? nah must be those toxic fans again, with a huge world wide conspiracy because they didn't go to one movie.

thinking on this more it really seems this notion of blaming the viewers has been around a long time as it's the basis for the emperors new clothes. Only worthy people can see how great his clothes are, not those uneducated masses. and this toxicity nonsense is just the media trying to shame people into keeping quiet about not liking stuff in the hopes conning more people out of their money.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But to hit all the Bingos, which Star Wars character is the most British?

peter cushing of course.

I agree that conflating who you are with whatever media you consume is a mistake and a problem.

But this is how it is marketed to consumers. This is how corporations teach us to see ourselves. I think of marketing in analogy to radiation. If it is constantly beamed at someone, at such an incredible intensity, can we be surprised if cancer results?

The short of it, I believe personally, is that we're spoiled donkey-caves in a world where we have out our fingertips a way to be a complete monster to people we will never meet and never face any repercussions for our actions.

We can be toxic monsters incredibly easy and honestly? I think it's very ignorant to be dismissive of it.

People were big enough donkey-caves to chase Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things fame off Twitter. And any time I see Kelly Marie Tran aka Rose from Star Wars mentioned, someone in the comments acts like she personally wrote, directed and was responsible for why they don't like the character. Or worse act like it was real for feths sake.

The point of the fact is the internet is dangerously empowering. It provides backbone to the spineless and often the spineless are some of the most craven of creatures inside. They would never actually say the hurtful things they type, not in public, not to people they would be scared would lash out at them. I imagine if these creatures encountered the source of their vitriol they would cower inside and find themselves unable to spit the hate they do so freely from the safety of their homes.

I am reminded when people say that it's only a few bad actors of the line 'A few bad apples, spoils the cart'. It's something that also, I don't think we ourselves can truly police because of the nature of the beast that is the internet. There are plenty of havens for bullies to hide, dark places they can crawl and find comfort. You get banned for being a raging bag of dicks on one forum? Whatever, their opinion doesn't matter because there are plenty of places that will agree with you out there. Which leads to circles where this toxic nature is fed.

We forget that there are people on the other side of the screen. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm no hippie. There are people I cannot stand for the life of me and wish ill will upon. Because I'm human. But GENERALLY I don't go out of my way to make this point known. I roll my eyes, hit the ignore button if it's egregious enough and move the feth on.

But for some reason, a large number of geeks can't seem to do that. All that toxicity boils to the surface. Other people have to be blamed. Writers, actresses, directors, and so on. But never themselves. They can't just say "Huh, yeah that's not for me, oh well, that sucks." and instead it's just, hate, nothing but pure hate. And god damn does it make me sad. But in a way, it's made me a better human, seeing other's be worse. I still hate things. But what right do I have to rain on someone else's parade?

I don't like the idea's presented in the new Predator trailer, maybe it'll be good though so who knows. But I'm not going to throw the equivalent of fece's at the youtube comment section. Because really, I don't wanna be that kind of ugly. And I wish more people could see that.

We weren't ready for the internet. I don't believe for a minute with the amount of ignorance and hate that it's helped to foster that we were ready for this genie to be released from the lamp.

lonestar, I think there is a lot of truth in what you are saying, and I think reds8n had a similarly good point.

But I want to also say that I did not intend this to be a Star Wars thread at all. I mentioned it because it is a big part of geek culture and it is the target of a lot of over the top vitriol, but that does not mean I expect everyone to like it.

Actually I was more inspired by the over the top hatred of Bethesda games and Marvel movies, both of which I think are great forms of entertainment without being high art.

I think the harassment of actors and producers and so on is...I dunno it is almost a separate issue. Anyone who would do that is such total garbage in my view that I would not even really dedicate mental energy to thinking about why they do that. I was more interested in why people I see as being pretty reasonable geeks like myself get so intensely critical of things that they seem to end up in a constant state of aggrieved negativity.

I do think it is interesting that the harassment issue is on everyone's minds so much that the thread segued into discussing it almost immediately, but I guess I just don't see any discussion there - people who anonymously harass others over the internet are pathetic garbage, end of story.

I think at least some of the issue is that one is much more vulnerable when standing up and saying "I like this thing" than laying into something and tearing it down.

Given that geeks are traditionally considered to have a higher percentage of the socially awkward, shy and other similar character types, the likelihood of them being happy and comfortable to go in and bat for their thing and weather the potential storm of push back (especially if the thing in question isn't necessarily universally popular) is probably much lower than in society in general. Hence you get a subset of culture where many more people are willing to criticize something than they are to stand up for it.

Hypercritcism is one part of a matching set. The other part is hypersensitivity. Put it another way, there is a lack of perspective where any problem can be blown up if enough people are paying attention. Imagine if in meatspace an object became physically larger as more people talked about it.

We're also in a hot take culture. I could write a nice piece about how Solo was fun, well crafted, but non-essential, and nobody would read it, because that's a boring opinion. Even though most people agree broadly with it!

The writing that gets shared usually either pisses people off or confirms their own beliefs. So, attacking stuff (or, for the inevitable inverse, attacking the attackers) is going to engage a much broader audience.

IMO a lot criticism (and I mean criticism, not harassing and abusing people considered "responsible" for a bad character or whatever) is because so-called geek culture is a mainstream and profitable thing now. When video games are an obscenely profitable industry the expectations are going to be a lot higher than when the average video game company is a couple of people working part-time as a hobby. All of those flaws that could be excused in an era of limited resources and technological limitations are much less tolerable when the technology to implement any given game mechanic is easily available and development budgets are orders of magnitude greater. And it's especially hard to excuse those flaws when you're talking about the next game in a franchise (like Fallout), where all of the lessons should have been learned in previous games, and things are worse than those previous games. The natural reaction is going to be less "this isn't perfect, but you did your best" and more anger at publishers with the resources to do better shoveling out half-finished garbage and then selling the rest of the game to you as loot crates. Same thing with movies. It's really hard to excuse a bad Star Wars movie when the studio has a blank check for a budget, any cast or director or whatever they can name will probably take the role, and previous Star Wars movies have already built a foundation and shown how to make it all work. But instead we get low-effort milking of the cash cow because the studio knows we're all shameless fanboys who will buy anything with the Star Wars name on it.

IMO it's the same thing with the miniatures games that are the main point of the site. GW gets lots of hate because they should be able to do better. A first-time publisher making the first edition of a new game gets some tolerance because they're trying to do something new, and we're more willing to give them a chance and hope that the second edition will improve on a promising start. The industry leader, with vast amounts of funding and experience, doesn't get that tolerance because there's no excuse for failure at that point.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
But to hit all the Bingos, which Star Wars character is the most British?

C-3PO, because obviously.
Really, if he were human, he'd be wandering around in a bathrobe, whinging about the tea.



But for anyone who thinks this is all an artifact of geek culture (and to hear some of you talk, something 'wrong' with geeks)... I'll just point you to sports fans (who have resulted in actual riots and deaths as well as over exaggerated criticism), music, with its tendencies towards criticism and suicide (and in the right genres, homicides) and obviously politics as well. The big difference is the media doesn't know how to talk to/about geeks about problems in the genres, whereas in other realms it has a longer history, so it's brushed off more often.

Just because others act the fool doesn't give us license to do the same. And if anything makes us worse. We don't idolize Athletes, or Musicians, or Politicians. We idolize actual Heroes even if they are fictional. We know the difference between good and evil. It's a major plot point in most Geek Media.

I think this is mostly an on-line thing, but it's certainly true there's been some kind of shift in how this stuff is talked about on-line.

There's always been issues in geek culture, particularly around superiority. That's never changed really, the same stupid arguments I used to see at gaming clubs when I first started are the same ones I see today. Often about the same movies and games. And it always boils down to the same base cause - who gets to claim the place of the dominant opinion maker.

But as I see it in the real world it isn't good but it is a small problem in what is mostly a really positive, supportive group of nerds. In contrast, what I see on-line is absolutely flying rodent gak. It isn't that people talk about movies and games as the most important things ever, that's just a part of geek culture, the difference on-line is the hyper-criticism and the anger.

I don't post much in the Geek Media thread because the movies that have interested me have frequently produced the worst tone, and I post all the time in the US politics thread so I'm comfortable with a fair amount of angry crazy stuff. I did post in The Last Jedi thread, to note I was surprised at the hostility against that movie, I'd enjoyed it and all my friends I'd spoken to about it enjoyed it, it never even occurred to me it would be a movie that'd produce a hostile reaction. I mentioned I wasn't even sure what that hostility was about. In response, I got a lot of angry, crazy stuff thrown directly at me. At the time I spent a lot of pages trying to figure out what it was about that movie that produced that such a confused hostility, and eventually got to some half answers by trying to tease some stuff out of the responses.

And it isn't just that everything on the internet is angrier and crazier. I mean that's true, but I sat through years of debates about the Star Wars prequels, and while people were strong in how much they sucked, and weren't always pleasant with the people who were defending the films, it was nothing like this. There's been a shift in tone on-line to something different, something nastier.

Is it the result of people who are mostly happy with movies and who just want to talk about setting details and technical aspects of the movies being bothered by the tone, leaving the conversation to the angry people, which makes the tone worse over time? Is it people taking their cues from on-line reviewers, who are stuck in arms race to post the most vitriolic reviews to get the most attention? Is it a flow through from the gamergate and sad puppies idiocy, which attracted a new kind of poster? Some cominbation of the above, alongside some stuff I haven't even thought of?

I don't know, but it's very strange. It was one thing to see lots of people post that Michael Bay's Transformers completely ruined their childhood, it's something else entirely to see people claim the all woman Ghostbusters was some kind of last cultural stand against feminazi takeover. It was one thing to see people say the Star Wars prequels were bad, it is another thing entirely to see people say TLJ and Solo have killed Star Wars forever.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
We don't idolize Athletes, or Musicians, or Politicians. We idolize actual Heroes even if they are fictional. We know the difference between good and evil. It's a major plot point in most Geek Media.

This is a funny thing to say, posting on a forum that is dominated by a game where the protagonists are genetically-engineered slaughter machines in faithful service to a genocidal totalitarian theocracy, the primary moral question is whether the unimaginable horrors done in the name of survival are worse for the tortured remains of humanity than simply allowing humanity to die, and any "heroes" are only very slightly superior in that they commit genocide as a way to win wars while the villains commit genocide because it's fun. That isn't black and white, good vs. evil, it's black and slightly less black morality.