Blowhard
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2011
- Messages
- 160
One of the core problems with the ubiquity and ease of what the internet provides (for all practical purposes an unlimited quantity and variety of outright life affirming entertainment) is that you become stupidly picky and snobbish about being pleased. Even ignorant people these days are basically unwilling connoisseurs of entertainment. There's also the problem of the internet turning every past time into basically a weird mmo or social network, because now you can just share what you're doing with everyone instead of exerting even the most diminutive amount of effort to suspend disbelief. In a way, I think fiction as a means of escape could be outmoded. It is now no longer escapism, but the accumulation of completed media for the sake of empathy and likeability through similar/validation of good taste. It is a twisted virtual reality. Games are the biggest challenge in this regard because they take so much time to get to a point where you can share your thoughts on them or have another title under your belt, matching your fucking compatibility index or what have you with other such cultured individuals. And it's no longer about eacapism. No form of media is about escapism anymore. It's about socializing, and fame (even with an average amount of facebook friends, youtube subs, etc, even as a neckbears on RPGCodex, you are still very famous), and the unconcious, opiate-like addiction that is immortalizing your every trivial thought, then knowing the presence of a human-being any time you want, literally. You don't even need to escape from reality, anymore, as we've already created a damn near perfect drug of VR which in its immediacy is almost more real than actual reality but is mostly devoid of benefit and a bunch of lonely circle jerking on a frighteningly base and deep level such that it may as well be subatomic or ontological.