Being able to binge-watch a streaming show means we’ve even eliminated the common experience of television. Who doesn’t remember waiting for the new episode of a favorite series and talking about it with their friends? Or that fun of theorizing about the next book in a beloved series with fellow fans? We’ve lost something precious and we need to figure out a way to get back common spaces that aren’t divided by ideology or politics.
Just nowadays ideology or politics are about everywhere... But maybe we could learn first to discuss in a civilised manner and secondly, not to let those issues dominate every single debate... But make no mistake, ideology is omnipresent - censors now shearing books by Dahl or films by Tolkien are fully aware of that and on the offensive.
@@CoryTheRaven I watched the first episode back in the day and was so appalled that I moved on. I eventually binge watched it because of covid. Ok, but I hated the ending.
@@fearlessfosdick160 I absolutely love how when it comes to Game of Thrones, wether you loved the series, thought it was mid, or didn’t especially care for it but watched it because it was on and popular, everyone agrees that the last season, and the last episode in particular was absolutely abysmal. Guess there are still some shared experiences here and there lol.
Funnily enough, it’s probably the one line of text out of the sequel trilogy that will stay in collective memory for a while … that and Kylo Ren shouting more memes.
Last week I visited family living in a small town. It was such a different experience. Mostly blue collar and little diversity. But I noted how friendly and unafraid everyone was. They'd greet you passing by and weren't afraid to start up a conversation. Living in a city can make it hard to make friends and socialize. Everyone is constantly suspicious, staring at their phones to avoid eye contact.
It shouldn't be that way! But as long as people are staring at their phones, I guess it's gonna. I lived in the "real" city (rowhouses) for 15+ years and very few of the neighbors who ever talked to me casually were fewer than 40 years older than me. The first time many of them were outside interacting was when things were shut down for the pandemic. Cities didn't used to be that way, but I see very little evidence that they are now better than suburbs at getting people out of bubbles, and they might be worse. In my part of the world (Maryland) small towns tend to be diverse, but segregated. However, until they reach a certain size, that doesn't make them less friendly.
True. We have become a lame society. It won’t last, so enjoy what was once enjoyed while it’s still available. Just watched Demolition Man and Idiocracy, and I felt like I walked outside the house these days.
I love reading David Lynch's autobiography, he talks about the homogenization of American culture and growing up in the 50s, the magic of it and how all the small cultures died as soon as TV became widespread.
No, there was common experience in the 50s and early 60s. What happened was the rise of the Lefty culture (I use the term loosely) and its demand that everything conform.
The homogenization in that time period was due - in part - of both the KGB infiltrating schools and the US government forcing anti-commie propaganda into said schools. Notice how the hippies came about in the 60's? Yeah, they knew then kids' minds were the battlefield no different than now. The idea of the KGB's bullshit was to dull the boundaries of everything, shame people into conformity, eliminate non-conformants, double-down and move another inch and begin again. There were three pillars of society that needed to be infiltrated to do so: Academia, media, and authority. If American culture didn't have commie assholes fucking with us, television in itself wouldn't have been enough within itself to dumb down the people. Someone realizing the potential reach of TV in itself was always going to happen, but with more nefarious intent that was how the change happened. Why? Because lowest common denominator catering makes everyone stupid and programmable. The culture was being destroyed on purpose. Lynch saw that which is how his story of Dune came to be: the rejection of technology once the Spice was discovered. Still, technology or natural discovery, humans are petty ignorant children with a larger asshole controlling them. The idea of media at this point is to make sure everyone has the same experience while rewarding those that reinforce the idea of individuality at the same time. Everyone HAS the same experience, but they have to hold onto victimhood to look like they're different thus distracting ourselves as the rich people run away WITH ALL OF THE FUCKING MONEY.
@@formwiz7096 I think you mean the rise of the right wing culture that everything should conform. Reagan's Its Morning in America. Everyone else, no it isn't its fkn midnight.
@@formwiz7096 Before mass media, you think someone 1,000 miles away had the same culture? Fashion? Slang? Humor? Back then German was the main language in much of America. What do you think spread leftwing ideology, centralized ideologies, "civil rights" which basically just cancelling out the constitution, and brainwashed the nation against itself? The black mirror is the only reason why someone in Oregon has anything in common with someone in Louisiana.
@@silentrob668 I think your wrong on that one. The right wing didn't have much of a culture. Nearly all of the culture at that time was making fun of the right. I was there and was hoping for some kind of response. But Reagan was laughing at the lefties making fun of him. I didn't see the left's lack of sense of humor, until Andrew Dice Clay came along. He wasn't right wing at all, he was making fun of a stereotype. When he dropped an f-bomb on Mtv that was it. They went after him tooth and nail, he folded like a deck of cards. There was only one comedian that one could say was right wing in those days. That was Sam Kinison, but he too made fun of everybody.
Such a great point. There's no more watching TV as a family, no recalling your favourite comedy moments at the office, to a knowing audience of smiling colleagues... That parrot is bereft of life, it waits for the choir eternal.
@@gregsmith7949 I bet there were some great movies to talk about, too. I remember doing exactly that with Jaws and Star Wars. (One of which, I was far too young to watch, but dad was either cool or negligent, depending on your point-of-view) 😁
I'm 51 and back in college. The older prof said something and went don't call me Shirley and only I laughed. He didn't get that the kids had never watched Airplane either at the movies or on rerun for the 400th time.
I agree, audiences are too fractured and binge watching doesn't help either. One guzzles down a bucket of content so fast, it doesn't stay in our heads long enough to register.
"Fractured", "binge watching" you say... Sure, but isn't it also horribly homogenous? You have a million shows, but they are all pretty much alike, based on "scientific rules for making best selling shows" as one pillar, and political correctness brainwashing as another pillar... It's like listening to a speech of an uninspired politician; there is just nothing to remember or refer to afterwards, no matter how long he babbles...
You absolutely nailed it - common shared experience(s). Problem is - in an era where books are being censored or re-written (the readers being tooooo sensitive to be exposed to such venom), where every focus group claims to have found the holy grail of wisdom, where entitlement is always the predominant feature, any ability to laugh at yourself is considered heresy - the cause is holier than that. I fear for comedians, and their freedom of speech - most of what they might want to offload is sacrilege somewhere for someone.
It isn't about sensitive readers, it is socialists that want to normalize censorship, because normalized censorship is esential to propaganda and their system eats and breaths propaganda at all levels for basic survival. Now whether the drivers are more of the useful idiot socialist or the ulterior motives "socialist" leader, is an open question, but doesn't really change the net effect.
I think the death of shared experiences is very closely linked with the death of shared language. The two either share a cause, or one may be precipitated by the other. As we can no longer agree on the meaning of words, the ability for us to even communicate with each other breaks down, to the detriment of collaboration. Personally, I tend to think that language is more core, since even people with little in common used to be able to use imagination and empathy to understand a person with a different background. However, that method of connecting to others no longer seems to be possible in the modern era of "identity-based" group membership.
Very true. I crossed 40 few years ago and I find it REALLY difficult to even communicate to younger people. I found myself in Discord servers, watching the conversation for like an hour and having absolutely no idea what these people were saying. It might as well have been Hindi, not English. In-group slang, strict rules, lots of forbidden words, memes that had no obvious point, it felt incredibly exclusive. And they were all about inclusion, they said, unless you were over 30, I guess.
Can't think of another UA-camr who is so consistently entertaining and thought-provoking while doing little more than speak to the camera. More power to you, Chato (and a big 'thumbs up' to The Critical Drinker for pointing me in your direction).
I got a bone to pick with you about (00:54) Dame Edna, Chato. Dame Edna does, indeed, have purple hair, but in the finest Australian tradition of the _Are You Being Served_ variety, the Dame is (and, has always been) hilarious.
Part of the issue is that modern entertainment and news can be so completely tailored to your preferences that you may never be exposed to the same thing that someone else is. Back in the day, you could have a shared experience like “Who Shot JR?” because most people were viewing the same few TV channels, reading the same magazines/newspapers, or watching the same comedy routines. Even people talking about it the next day at work/school, helped make sure you were eventually exposed to it whether you watched the show or not. Now if I don’t have something as part of my viewing history, I may never even know it happened and may never hear someone talking about it because it wasn’t part of their preferences either or they decided to look at it days/months later.
@@earlsmith7428 Um, spoiler alert, buddy! 😄 To add a bit of seriousness, I agree 100% with @Gwagnarr. I hated Dallas back in the day, felt it was just a "prime-time soap opera" and never watched it. Still don't know who shot him and don't care. But it was a massive talking point in our school for months that I couldn't escape. It was a shared experience that I never initially shared but was thrust upon me. Even Simpsons could so wonderfully satire it because it was such a massive shared experience. I don't see that anymore these days; especially not on that scale.
The movie theater was the closest thing to a church I had growing up. It was the communal setting where I had the most profound emotional and spiritual experiences. If Hollywood doesn't 'see the light' soon, the whole theatrical business is going to disappear in our lifetimes. It will be an even greater loss than when the video stores all went belly up.
I think there is something much deeper to this. Look at the amount of people who believe in aliens. Not just believe in them, they believe in the Hollywood depiction, the idea that visitation necessitates a one world government, the idea that aliens will "save us". I was watching X-Files and there are plenty of episodes showing this attitude, people have come to see these fantasy creatures from the sky as saviors of the world. What evidence do we have? Zero. Nothing. Except for generations worth of movies propagating the fantasy. The problem is, religion provided more than entertainment, there is morality, there is a worldview, there are traditions all connected with real life. Movies are entirely a lie. Furthermore they are used to destroy morality and destroy worldviews. Aliens saving everyone serves the same function as a nuclear apocalypse, rendering human civilization and all it's struggles in vain.
Shocking was while backpacking the world in the 80s..the entire globe United by a common sound track of Madonna. Michel Jackson and Bob Marley.. the entire globe watching the same movies. from ET to Back to the Future..all the theatres..all the speakers bellowing out a common shared experience....and it was largely American...
I’ve really been into Turkish, Egyptian and Icelandic movies and series, lately. They don’t force “the message” and their stories are actually interesting.
@@GeoffryGifari Dark Hot Skull Katla Blue Elephant/Blue Elephant II To the Lake The Protector Shamaran Better than Us I like to listen in their language and use subtitle captioning. I like the actor’s genuine voices Anything Guillermo del Torro is always entertaining in my opinion.😜🙏 😋
Loved the Kaufman and Hart reference! We did "You Can't Take It With You" several years ago in our local community theater. Had the opportunity to play the "villain" of the piece, Mr. Kirby, the businessman (played by Edward Arnold in the Frank Kapra film). We did not update the play as many people felt should have been done. "The audience won't get it!". Well, the audiences loved it, much to the chagrin of the nascent woksters in the company!
Redd Foxx is a comedy icon. He played the Comedy Store before it was the Comedy Store. He made more than 50 comedy records at a time none of them could be played on the radio. Imagine not far ago the different forms of entertainment had no or very little cross over, would that be more diverse than now? Comedians routinely opened musical acts and strip shows. Foxx had his own strip club and spent many years being featured in Los Vegas with no TV or radio coverage. He was a dirty comic in a time that you could go to jail for that. Most of his early movie appearances are uncredited, likely because the film makers were fans but the studios would have blocked it. Childhood friend of Malcom X. Quite the character.
100% nailed it. Our 70s 80s generation are the last from the "wild". My old friends know. Now these new writers are like over boiled vegetables. Good new coming in February 2026.
If only these "creatives" - are they really creatives if all they can do is destroy - had one tenth of the talent of Barry Humphries. Dame Edna and Sir Les were fine representatives for the old upside down prison colony.
Back in the 70s I would say to my friends on Monday morning, "Did you see the movie last night?", and they would know right away which movie, and yes, they did.
Alienation seems to be a big problem, especially in our narcissistic -- or, I daresay, psychopathic -- culture. Audience becomes atomized individuals, who have no connection with one another, and are therefore unable to have shared experiences.
Our biggest problem is a deliberate turn away from finding what we have in common. And it makes sense. The systemic ‘-ism/-phobia’ fallacy simply can’t coexist with people from varying backgrounds … getting along. 🤷🏻♂️
Really I'm at a bit of a lose for words. I want to shout scream and cry all at once. This kind of bland homogeneity has found its way in to many of the thinks I love. As a long time reader of F&SF I can remember when it was not necessary to have characters that used they as a pronoun or were trans. Where it was fine to have a story where you didn't need to know a characters orientation because it had nothing to do with the story. Now, it seems that you must have at least one trans character if you want to get your story published. And when did we all become so cynical that we never have a happy ending. O.K. Rant over. Thanks for the content Chato!
It seems like there's a lot less things that qualify as shared experiences these days. I remember everyone wanting to know who shot Mr Burns or who Cartman's Dad was, but I can't see that happening ever again. There's just too many places to see different things happening at different times.
The Bass heavy fart I unleashed after breakfast was a shared experience that ended with my wife taking the kids and moving in with her mother. 🌄🥞😋... 😜😖💨🎶💩... 👰🧑🤝🧑... 😳🤧 *"NUFF SAID"™️*
I’ve had friends ask me to join them in the Toronto arts community..and I went with an open mind ..not really my screen ..but I gave it a try ..and it was good…I put the offer out to join me in one of my pastimes ( I’m a competitive shooter ,IPSC in particular) ..and offer them an opportunity to explore what I enjoy…sadly they have yet to take me up on the offer and see the other side of the track..not so much shared experience..but opening yourself to a wider universe.
4:27 - some of us have watched all episodes of "Republic Of Doyle" and appreciate all of the Canadian actors (and mostly actresses) from Newfoundland and, of course, Russell Crowe
You won me back with this video essay. You really put some thought into it. Great episode and I loved the premise. What finished my conversion to a fan again was the One Punch Man, Saitama, t-shirt. I love that show. This definitively proves your point to me. Someone give this man a PhD in sociology.
We're even getting more isolated in our work lives. Just the other day I realized how telling an ahole co-worker over Zoom that he's an idiot just doesn't have the same effect as telling him to f**k off in person.
@5:45 "We're sharing a lot of hate for each other these days. That's good for politicians, but it's not good for human beings." You focused on the effects to comedy and general entertainment, but the deficits today's society faces is are much broader than that. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam describes how the continued loss of "social capital" effects everyday connections. And in 2000, when he published it, the algorithms that seek to weld us to our smart phones were not yet widely deployed.
66 year old here. When I noticed that the three big TV networks (NBC, ABC, CBS for you youngsters) were losing marketshare to specific interest cable channels (the THIS channel, the THAT channel), that's when I knew their would be no shared experiences in the world to come. I knew everyone would be in their own specific interest bubble and you could not count on people having seen the same shows you'd seen and be able to have conversations with people. And behold! I was right! Somehow , even though there are thousands of people around me, I feel like I'm the last person left in the world. That is what shared experiences do. They help you not feel that way.
American society is in steep, steep decline. The degredation of our entertainment offerings is just another symptom of the coming end. Yes, that's pessimistic but ultimately true.
Been saying this for 50 years. Mass culture, I think, goes back to the days when people were literate on a large scale and newspapers (and wire services) and paperback novels (penny dreadfuls, etc.) were plentiful. When I was a kid, people wanted to know who won the World Series, the Army-Navy game, Miss America, the Kentucky Derby, regardless of socio-economic stratum. The Left killed that, starting in the late 60s. Even more so with music. It also destroyed a lot of the genres we saw in pop entertainment going back to Homer - war stories, romances, Westerns, mysteries, even variety shows. All that's gone. And, yes, the rise of teacher unions standardized what's taught in schools, so kids know only what whoever sets the agenda wants them to, and that ain't much. Math is racist because you have to think and, because of that, you have to learn how to think. Makes you almost think there's a conspiracy.
Your mention of people not knowing the Bible jokes reminds me of a young coworker who I was talking to about Moses in Ten Commandments. He asked if that was the guy who fought all those animated skeletons with swords on that island. I said no but it would have been cool if DeMille had thrown that in. Demille Who? he asked back. Though I think you missed one part where IPs are being made for a global audience not a domestic one and has to be simplified for non English speakers so less to translate(comedy being the hardest for foreigners to get). Star Trek which historically didn't do well overseas is a prime example of being morphed into Bourne Trek with just straight to the bone dumb action while being stripped of science or moral or intellectual allegories.
Chato, I was a part of the last true "shared experience" a little over a decade after the last episode of MASH. I lived in LA in '97-99 studying fillm pre-production story-boarding and screenwriting. I was friends with Phil Morris (The lawyer Jackie Chiles on SEINFELD), and after the world-shaking last episode, the next morning I saw Phil ad we screamed our head off. He asked me what I thought, I told him those four were assholes and deserved what they got. He laughed because I was one of the few that got it, and what I said was what Larry David told them before script table read. That was the last epic shared TV experience in the USA.
My daughter and I were listening to the radio last night during a car ride, a rare event in our modern world of music services, and I was explaining this very concept to her. How apropos you are oh wise Chatto. I wish I had your eloquence.
A tip for expanding your horizons: the superhero / sci-fi / fantasy-loving crowd can progress to the literature that inspired these genres. For instance, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is a true-ish story that is not that far removed from heroic fantasy novels. Swap Imperial Russia in 1805 for the Shire, Napoleon for Sauron and the French army for orcs. If you can’t bring yourself to read the book, watch the BBC’s six-part 2016 adaptation of War and Peace with Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton.
I agree. I think when it comes to sci-fi, it's worse. When there was a common cultural understanding of some situation, the actors and story writers of a show could portray that situation with little effort. This was the backdrop upon which the story itself was presented. As it was an unremarkable backdrop, things that varied the situation were highlighted and could be very subtle in comparison to the story. The effect, at least in my mind, was that some very philosophically complex ideas could be pointed to by a story without it being clumsily "explained" by the authors of the story themselves. It left it to the imagination of viewers to explore the consequences of those ideas, rather than ending the entertainment experience with the end of the story itself. All of this depended upon a rather neutral backdrop of cultural normality to provide a context in which the more abstract ideas can become observable. I think it's one reason why modern sci-fi is so simplistic and mind numbingly stupid.
During the seige of Dunkirk, a British naval officer cabled three words to London: “But if not.” That message was clear to all who received it because most Britons were readers of scripture. We have since lost that common understanding. Greater diversity of thought is not necessarily a bad thing, but we do lose so much as we have fewer shared experiences.
By Jove, I can’t believe I heard so much sense being spoken in these times. Yes it was shared feelings and experiences. In 1990 my parents rented Parenthood and everyone in our home loved it. It touched everyone, so did True Lies, Remains of the Day, Forest Gump, The Road to Wellville and of course the last Star Trek using the original cast which debuted in 1991. All of today’s weird and strange woke creations have gained zero attention from anyone in my own home. Can’t Hollywood regain the magic of the past and drop these woke nightmare abominations?
Such great points, i am also sure others will have noticed and probally conmented that steeaming has been a big killer of the shared experince. We now do not have regually scheduled programming and so people do not gather in the same way in front of the screen like we used to. We defiantly get very few of those shared expeinces that are broad and even when we get families togther most are spent with the heads in the phone and not engaging as a group. This is why i am a big advocate of the family night where you do stuff as a group. I remeber once an article where the person always got the best comments about how memeorable the barbeques were...the secret they turned off wi-fi forcing people yo interact and create memories.
Was listening to this in the kitchen and my Mum was agreeing to what you were saying. Also love the one Punch man shirt. And I just want to say my one piece on Bollywood. Is that the only real problem with Bollywood is if you want to make a movie there. There is a checklist for Bollywood films you have to meet and you don't meet those things on the checklist they will not make your movie. That's why a movie like RRR has some random dance stuff in it. Because that is something on the checklist for Bollywood. And they did not put those in that movie. Probably would not have happened. And I only know about this because of a documentary I saw a few years ago were an Indian university student said that if you do not write stuff the way Bollywood wants you to your stuff will never see the light of day. Just throwing my two cents in.
Gone are the days when a simple joke or roasting can make everyone laugh uncontrollably. People today had campaigned their activism and agendas too much that they forgot or had just lost their sense of humour. Moreover, it is very rare to see comedies without hearing any profanities. I really miss watching Don Rickles, Bob Hope, Foster Brooks and other comedians back when grandpa and I were watching them from his cabinet-type television.
No longer is there the "water cooler" conversations about shows or events we saw, they are played out in an individual's time. Gone are the shows that had wisdom, or morals, or even a point of view. We are in an era of feckless, bland and useless media where clicks are more important than insight. We have lost the wisdom that older generations would share, like you, Chato.
This screed pretty much covered all the issues with today's entertainment. Ironically, since I quit watching network television I've seen a lot of movies and tv shows that I never watched as a kid or were not available on tv in my youth. They never showed any Randolph Scott movies when I was a kid and now they're on all of the time. His last movie was Ride the High Country in 1962 when I was two. I later learned that he died while I was in college. And while they've made horror and sci-fi movies more gruesome I still prefer to watch the older movies with their cheesy special effects.
Alright Mr. Chatotama, you are the living proof that you do not need to be an angry "genderless" troll with dyed hair in order to understand modern society. Your insights and ruminations have been extremely useful, thank you so very much. As a second class geek/nerd, i salute you.
Oh my gosh, you're so right about this. How do we fix it? Do we ever get shared experiences back? It's a serious problem! I miss shared experiences... well, positive ones, anyway.
A wise man once said: "Culture is the sum of all stories that a society tells itself." If we lose that common ground, the shared stories that everybody knows, culture ends. It's a process that started in the 70's actually,when we began to give up un educational canons. It will be evident soon, that a just a constitution will not be enough to make a society cohere.
Winning the internet every time! Great work and depth of thought. I seriously appreciate the intellectual element, which is SOOOOO different from the multitudes of so-called entertainers on UA-cam who provide "similar" content.
at a buffet, i personally sneak corndogs into the buffet so others can enjoy them. I hide 6 corndogs in my jacket pockets. it then, is a joy for me to see other patrons of the establishment eat my corndogs thinking they were part of the buffet.
Yeah, but you always get lint and tobacco all over them. Just cuz many people think it’s relish and dried kraut don’t mean the rest of us don’t notice. I, for one, only eat the hot pockets. Who brings those? Don’t know.
My wife & I talk about this a lot. I'm pretty open minded to new things but everyone is in their own NICHE & no one wants to explore outside of it anymore.
Great stuff as always Chato! About your closing regarding telling you wife a joke and making the mistake of assuming she wanted to hear more; just take a cue from George Costanza and make your exit once something lands. Ah sitcoms, they teach us so much.
You could make entertainment as, "ethnocentric" as you want but that wouldn't fix the problem of these companies hiring bad writers and directors because they're cheap. It won't fix oversaturation. It won't fix the current business model to give studios the freedom to take a chance on new franchises.
Your video immediately brought to mind the StarTrek:TNG episode "Darmok" where the new culture speaks in metaphor. One is absolutely clueless unless you know the stories, events, players, etc. We confuse each other, and become frustrated, or simply walk away. Showing my 20-somethings the last episode of M.A.S.H. was "meh" because it is hard to convey how half of the U.S. said good-bye. I love showing them the Chevy Chase / Richard Pryor skit on SNL. Words they are not used to hearing! But Pryor knew exactly what he was doing. And Carlin? LOL When they complain I simply say "You will laugh at my jokes, and I will show why it's funny. Then you can laugh when I inevitably say the same joke again next week." :p Has media taken a shot gun approach to shows? lots of them, but the pellets are all the same. LOL Quick running, simple, easy to follow and you can watch each season all at once.
I think you hit on something pretty interesting Chato about the lack of shared experiences. You still sort of see em with sports (think Super Bowl or even when the World Cup finals is played) but in the realm of entertainment not so much. One of the most interesting examples in my life was 1994, the finale of ST:TNG (All Good Things). I live in Toronto, so at the time CityTv (which aired tonnes of trek back then) hosted in the Rogers Centre a screening of the finale on the jumbotron when it aired that week. There was easily 40,000 people in there to watch that finale, and the only reason it didn't sell out was because of the seats that you couldn't see the screen in. They people there were, Black, White, Asian, South Asian, male, female, young and old; and all were there because they really loved a T.V. Show (albeit an iconic one at that). I cannot foresee something like that ever happening again due to how fragmented we have become and I find that kind of sad in my old age.
Its fitting that Chato is wearing a Saitama shirt for this video. One Punch Man is the embodiment of making fun of super heroe tropes from the past while at the same time elevating them reminding us that we really like that shared experience on what a true heroism looks like.
Your comments help explain this disappointment I have for current entertainment. It’s sad that these companies have lost the ability to tell good stories. I miss uncomfortable/wonderful films like those of Terry Gilliam. Uncomfortable dreary atmospheres, wondrous journeys. Happy versions of Michael Mann films? Bring back good stories!
Nice Saitama T-Shirt! Glad the community here in Japan still like to talk about the entertainment in the japanese market on a daily base (people love to comment and talk about commercials, old and current anime/manga/games), long live to otaku families here hehe. I still pray that Japan don't follow down the same path that the "woke" west took. On western productions, I loved the time where the Simpsons and South Park had more soul, Simpsons had a real soul until season 8, and the old south park always crossed the line that would make everyone talk on the next day (they still do sometimes, but they really got more "light" and kind of afraid of crossing the line lately, compared with old school southpark)
"Death of shared experiences" is a very valid point, and I'd like to explore a different angle than straight up bastardizing old content. Society is all looking at the same 5"-6" screens, but now every screen is displaying different content. When that happens we lose the shared experience of going to the water cooler & saying "What did you think of Miami Vice this week!? I thought it was great!". I can watch as much football or firearm content as I can digest, but the cultural touchstones seem to be missing. Probably why award shows are dropping in viewership so much. The individual based society has moved on from millionaires congratulating each other & are focused on content that caters to their personal interest. Or maybe I'm just talking out my posterior.
Unfortunately missed this piece post-release. I am highly pleased that it popped up for this is one of your most insightful efforts. A “You Can’t Take It With You” reference and Plato’s “Republic” jokes… Huzzah cubed! Hope this season’s batch of artisanal fireworks you generated in the basement turned out tip-top. PS - Your “My Dinner With Andre” jokes might fall even flatter with Gen Z.
After re-watching this I'm struck by the memories I have of watching Rescue 911 with my mom as a child. It was mandatory tuesday night tv for us, and it was like that with a lot of my cousins too. There was (and still is) something so compelling about the way that show presented the audience with real human drama and tragedy in a way that wasn't grotesquely sensationalized while also subliminally teaching its viewers basic skills to know in an emergency or motivating them to actually go out and learn basic life saving skills like first aid and cpr, which is why its credited with saving the lives of over 300 people during its 7 season run.
What do you expect in a country that according to the PM has no identity or culture. The CBC is actively telling newcomers not to integrate. It's not how Canadian you are but who you are is a terrible message to send. The CBC's mandate is promote Canadian culture, not eliminate it.
I have memories of people in college struggling with a common core curriculum centered around Enlightenment writers and philosophers because they had absolutely no frame of reference with the Bible or even a lot of Greek and Roman mythology, and in turn the struggles a student had creating a peer-taught Western religion class even in my relatively liberal high school. Right now I'm hearing from professors dealing with students who never learned to proofread basic English, or failed to learn upper-level Algebra before trying to do Computer Science courses. We seem to have decided it's oppressive to believe there are things we should all commonly know. Not even "believe" or "agree with", just... know.
Years back a friend of mine that moved here from China said that a one child policy is really bad. First you grow up with no siblings, then your child grows up with no siblings, cousins, aunts, or uncles. Family is necessary to survival.
You nailed this, I was just thinking about how this aspect is now missing. Ive been watching shows and movies from the 90's which makes me nostalgic for my shared experiences as a kid/teen
Chato: "We're sharing a lot of hate for each other these days." Sad, but true. It's not just politicians and the some crazies on social media who are spreading hate, it's certain "news" organizations, academicians, and others of influence. Instead of trying to understand the concerns of the other side, each side vilifies the other side, asserting that the other side's values and opinions are bad or even evil. And, we all know what we need to do to evil.
"When your family tree becomes a family bush, it becomes harder to hide things under it." - Londo Mollari
That reminds me of a joke about what's the difference between a Genealogist and a Gynecologist ....
"if your family tree is a wreath …"
Miss those B5 references my friend.
Oh my, you deserve a truck-load of upvotes... Here's one thumbs up at least!
I read that in his voice.
Being able to binge-watch a streaming show means we’ve even eliminated the common experience of television. Who doesn’t remember waiting for the new episode of a favorite series and talking about it with their friends? Or that fun of theorizing about the next book in a beloved series with fellow fans? We’ve lost something precious and we need to figure out a way to get back common spaces that aren’t divided by ideology or politics.
That said, when I was only one in the office NOT binge-watching Game of Thrones, I had no idea what everyone else was talking about.
Just nowadays ideology or politics are about everywhere... But maybe we could learn first to discuss in a civilised manner and secondly, not to let those issues dominate every single debate...
But make no mistake, ideology is omnipresent - censors now shearing books by Dahl or films by Tolkien are fully aware of that and on the offensive.
@@CoryTheRaven I watched the first episode back in the day and was so appalled that I moved on. I eventually binge watched it because of covid. Ok, but I hated the ending.
@@fearlessfosdick160 I wouldn't know 😆
@@fearlessfosdick160 I absolutely love how when it comes to Game of Thrones, wether you loved the series, thought it was mid, or didn’t especially care for it but watched it because it was on and popular, everyone agrees that the last season, and the last episode in particular was absolutely abysmal.
Guess there are still some shared experiences here and there lol.
Yes. When I heard "Let the past die, kill it if you have to" in part 8 of a franchise, I nearly died of irony.
Funnily enough, it’s probably the one line of text out of the sequel trilogy that will stay in collective memory for a while … that and Kylo Ren shouting more memes.
Last week I visited family living in a small town. It was such a different experience. Mostly blue collar and little diversity. But I noted how friendly and unafraid everyone was. They'd greet you passing by and weren't afraid to start up a conversation. Living in a city can make it hard to make friends and socialize. Everyone is constantly suspicious, staring at their phones to avoid eye contact.
We did not evolve for that high a level of population density.
Man, I've gotta get to a small town
Maybe blue collar and little diversity is a good thing then
It shouldn't be that way! But as long as people are staring at their phones, I guess it's gonna. I lived in the "real" city (rowhouses) for 15+ years and very few of the neighbors who ever talked to me casually were fewer than 40 years older than me. The first time many of them were outside interacting was when things were shut down for the pandemic. Cities didn't used to be that way, but I see very little evidence that they are now better than suburbs at getting people out of bubbles, and they might be worse.
In my part of the world (Maryland) small towns tend to be diverse, but segregated. However, until they reach a certain size, that doesn't make them less friendly.
They are not staring at their phones to avoid eye contact, mind control is real..........😮🤯
I'll be looking out for those Plato Republic jokes in forthcoming videos! You never know, eh.
Just thinking about The Allegory of the Cave cracks me up. It is a comedy goldmine.
True. We have become a lame society. It won’t last, so enjoy what was once enjoyed while it’s still available. Just watched Demolition Man and Idiocracy, and I felt like I walked outside the house these days.
If you are not going to crack Plato jokes then I am going to chain myself back in my cave and just watch the shadows.
Just don't drink the hemlock.
I love reading David Lynch's autobiography, he talks about the homogenization of American culture and growing up in the 50s, the magic of it and how all the small cultures died as soon as TV became widespread.
No, there was common experience in the 50s and early 60s. What happened was the rise of the Lefty culture (I use the term loosely) and its demand that everything conform.
The homogenization in that time period was due - in part - of both the KGB infiltrating schools and the US government forcing anti-commie propaganda into said schools. Notice how the hippies came about in the 60's? Yeah, they knew then kids' minds were the battlefield no different than now. The idea of the KGB's bullshit was to dull the boundaries of everything, shame people into conformity, eliminate non-conformants, double-down and move another inch and begin again. There were three pillars of society that needed to be infiltrated to do so: Academia, media, and authority. If American culture didn't have commie assholes fucking with us, television in itself wouldn't have been enough within itself to dumb down the people. Someone realizing the potential reach of TV in itself was always going to happen, but with more nefarious intent that was how the change happened. Why? Because lowest common denominator catering makes everyone stupid and programmable.
The culture was being destroyed on purpose. Lynch saw that which is how his story of Dune came to be: the rejection of technology once the Spice was discovered. Still, technology or natural discovery, humans are petty ignorant children with a larger asshole controlling them. The idea of media at this point is to make sure everyone has the same experience while rewarding those that reinforce the idea of individuality at the same time. Everyone HAS the same experience, but they have to hold onto victimhood to look like they're different thus distracting ourselves as the rich people run away WITH ALL OF THE FUCKING MONEY.
@@formwiz7096 I think you mean the rise of the right wing culture that everything should conform. Reagan's Its Morning in America. Everyone else, no it isn't its fkn midnight.
@@formwiz7096 Before mass media, you think someone 1,000 miles away had the same culture? Fashion? Slang? Humor? Back then German was the main language in much of America. What do you think spread leftwing ideology, centralized ideologies, "civil rights" which basically just cancelling out the constitution, and brainwashed the nation against itself? The black mirror is the only reason why someone in Oregon has anything in common with someone in Louisiana.
@@silentrob668 I think your wrong on that one. The right wing didn't have much of a culture. Nearly all of the culture at that time was making fun of the right. I was there and was hoping for some kind of response. But Reagan was laughing at the lefties making fun of him. I didn't see the left's lack of sense of humor, until Andrew Dice Clay came along. He wasn't right wing at all, he was making fun of a stereotype. When he dropped an f-bomb on Mtv that was it. They went after him tooth and nail, he folded like a deck of cards. There was only one comedian that one could say was right wing in those days. That was Sam Kinison, but he too made fun of everybody.
Such a great point. There's no more watching TV as a family, no recalling your favourite comedy moments at the office, to a knowing audience of smiling colleagues... That parrot is bereft of life, it waits for the choir eternal.
Yep, I remember back in the 70s, on the school bus we would all talk about some movie that aired on network TV the night before. Good times.
@@gregsmith7949 I bet there were some great movies to talk about, too. I remember doing exactly that with Jaws and Star Wars. (One of which, I was far too young to watch, but dad was either cool or negligent, depending on your point-of-view) 😁
I'm 51 and back in college. The older prof said something and went don't call me Shirley and only I laughed. He didn't get that the kids had never watched Airplane either at the movies or on rerun for the 400th time.
There is no shared TV experiences anymore due to studios streaming there own content on a subscription platform. Not everyone can afford ALL of them.
BUT, we can share the death of shared experiences. The irony!
infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!
That we can.
I agree, audiences are too fractured and binge watching doesn't help either.
One guzzles down a bucket of content so fast, it doesn't stay in our heads long enough to register.
"Fractured", "binge watching" you say... Sure, but isn't it also horribly homogenous? You have a million shows, but they are all pretty much alike, based on "scientific rules for making best selling shows" as one pillar, and political correctness brainwashing as another pillar... It's like listening to a speech of an uninspired politician; there is just nothing to remember or refer to afterwards, no matter how long he babbles...
@@miceliusbeverus6447 I agree, it adds to the issue. But part of tne underlining problem is lack if creativity.
You absolutely nailed it - common shared experience(s). Problem is - in an era where books are being censored or re-written (the readers being tooooo sensitive to be exposed to such venom), where every focus group claims to have found the holy grail of wisdom, where entitlement is always the predominant feature, any ability to laugh at yourself is considered heresy - the cause is holier than that. I fear for comedians, and their freedom of speech - most of what they might want to offload is sacrilege somewhere for someone.
It isn't about sensitive readers, it is socialists that want to normalize censorship, because normalized censorship is esential to propaganda and their system eats and breaths propaganda at all levels for basic survival.
Now whether the drivers are more of the useful idiot socialist or the ulterior motives "socialist" leader, is an open question, but doesn't really change the net effect.
I think the death of shared experiences is very closely linked with the death of shared language. The two either share a cause, or one may be precipitated by the other. As we can no longer agree on the meaning of words, the ability for us to even communicate with each other breaks down, to the detriment of collaboration. Personally, I tend to think that language is more core, since even people with little in common used to be able to use imagination and empathy to understand a person with a different background. However, that method of connecting to others no longer seems to be possible in the modern era of "identity-based" group membership.
Very true. I crossed 40 few years ago and I find it REALLY difficult to even communicate to younger people. I found myself in Discord servers, watching the conversation for like an hour and having absolutely no idea what these people were saying. It might as well have been Hindi, not English. In-group slang, strict rules, lots of forbidden words, memes that had no obvious point, it felt incredibly exclusive. And they were all about inclusion, they said, unless you were over 30, I guess.
Chato you are quickly becoming one of my favorite creators on UA-cam! Thank you
Thank you so much.
Chato likes fallout? Double secret subscription!
@@MrHobbesandlocke amen to that. Hehehe 😜😹🙏
Can't think of another UA-camr who is so consistently entertaining and thought-provoking while doing little more than speak to the camera. More power to you, Chato (and a big 'thumbs up' to The Critical Drinker for pointing me in your direction).
I got a bone to pick with you about (00:54) Dame Edna, Chato.
Dame Edna does, indeed, have purple hair, but in the finest Australian tradition of the _Are You Being Served_ variety, the Dame is (and, has always been) hilarious.
Part of the issue is that modern entertainment and news can be so completely tailored to your preferences that you may never be exposed to the same thing that someone else is.
Back in the day, you could have a shared experience like “Who Shot JR?” because most people were viewing the same few TV channels, reading the same magazines/newspapers, or watching the same comedy routines. Even people talking about it the next day at work/school, helped make sure you were eventually exposed to it whether you watched the show or not.
Now if I don’t have something as part of my viewing history, I may never even know it happened and may never hear someone talking about it because it wasn’t part of their preferences either or they decided to look at it days/months later.
Wait, what? You mean "Who Shot Mr. Burns?", right?
@@Nimachris It was Maggie.
@@earlsmith7428 Um, spoiler alert, buddy! 😄
To add a bit of seriousness, I agree 100% with @Gwagnarr. I hated Dallas back in the day, felt it was just a "prime-time soap opera" and never watched it. Still don't know who shot him and don't care. But it was a massive talking point in our school for months that I couldn't escape. It was a shared experience that I never initially shared but was thrust upon me. Even Simpsons could so wonderfully satire it because it was such a massive shared experience.
I don't see that anymore these days; especially not on that scale.
@@Nimachris HA! I thought the same!
@@Nimachris There are still common experiences, but when we're down to South Park mocking ex-royals, it's rather dreary.
The movie theater was the closest thing to a church I had growing up. It was the communal setting where I had the most profound emotional and spiritual experiences. If Hollywood doesn't 'see the light' soon, the whole theatrical business is going to disappear in our lifetimes. It will be an even greater loss than when the video stores all went belly up.
I think there is something much deeper to this. Look at the amount of people who believe in aliens. Not just believe in them, they believe in the Hollywood depiction, the idea that visitation necessitates a one world government, the idea that aliens will "save us". I was watching X-Files and there are plenty of episodes showing this attitude, people have come to see these fantasy creatures from the sky as saviors of the world. What evidence do we have? Zero. Nothing. Except for generations worth of movies propagating the fantasy. The problem is, religion provided more than entertainment, there is morality, there is a worldview, there are traditions all connected with real life. Movies are entirely a lie. Furthermore they are used to destroy morality and destroy worldviews. Aliens saving everyone serves the same function as a nuclear apocalypse, rendering human civilization and all it's struggles in vain.
I was dragged to church until college. The only emotional experience I had there was boredom. No spiritual ones either.
Shocking was while backpacking the world in the 80s..the entire globe United by a common sound track of Madonna. Michel Jackson and Bob Marley.. the entire globe watching the same movies. from ET to Back to the Future..all the theatres..all the speakers bellowing out a common shared experience....and it was largely American...
I’ve really been into Turkish, Egyptian and Icelandic movies and series, lately.
They don’t force “the message” and their stories are actually interesting.
really? any recommendations?
@@GeoffryGifari
Dark
Hot Skull
Katla
Blue Elephant/Blue Elephant II
To the Lake
The Protector
Shamaran
Better than Us
I like to listen in their language and use subtitle captioning.
I like the actor’s genuine voices
Anything Guillermo del Torro is always entertaining in my opinion.😜🙏 😋
@@wondergirl60s oh i've finished dark and heard of katla. top tier TV
@@wondergirl60s i heard del toro has a horror compilation type show on netflix.... really dig nightmare alley, and pinocchio's next
@@GeoffryGifari
I really like dark, intriguing mysteries and folklore journeys of the hero.
Loved the Kaufman and Hart reference! We did "You Can't Take It With You" several years ago in our local community theater. Had the opportunity to play the "villain" of the piece, Mr. Kirby, the businessman (played by Edward Arnold in the Frank Kapra film). We did not update the play as many people felt should have been done. "The audience won't get it!". Well, the audiences loved it, much to the chagrin of the nascent woksters in the company!
Redd Foxx is a comedy icon. He played the Comedy Store before it was the Comedy Store. He made more than 50 comedy records at a time none of them could be played on the radio. Imagine not far ago the different forms of entertainment had no or very little cross over, would that be more diverse than now? Comedians routinely opened musical acts and strip shows. Foxx had his own strip club and spent many years being featured in Los Vegas with no TV or radio coverage. He was a dirty comic in a time that you could go to jail for that. Most of his early movie appearances are uncredited, likely because the film makers were fans but the studios would have blocked it. Childhood friend of Malcom X. Quite the character.
100% nailed it. Our 70s 80s generation are the last from the "wild". My old friends know. Now these new writers are like over boiled vegetables.
Good new coming in February 2026.
If only these "creatives" - are they really creatives if all they can do is destroy - had one tenth of the talent of Barry Humphries. Dame Edna and Sir Les were fine representatives for the old upside down prison colony.
Dame Edna Everage doesn't deserve to be thrown in with that lot. 0:53 haha
We are living through a post-cultutal apocolypse. In many ways, our nostalgia for shared experiences is our own "old world blues."
Back in the 70s I would say to my friends on Monday morning, "Did you see the movie last night?", and they would know right away which movie, and yes, they did.
'Idiocracy' IS a documentary from the future.
Alienation seems to be a big problem, especially in our narcissistic -- or, I daresay, psychopathic -- culture. Audience becomes atomized individuals, who have no connection with one another, and are therefore unable to have shared experiences.
Our biggest problem is a deliberate turn away from finding what we have in common. And it makes sense. The systemic ‘-ism/-phobia’ fallacy simply can’t coexist with people from varying backgrounds … getting along. 🤷🏻♂️
Really I'm at a bit of a lose for words. I want to shout scream and cry all at once. This kind of bland homogeneity has found its way in to many of the thinks I love. As a long time reader of F&SF I can remember when it was not necessary to have characters that used they as a pronoun or were trans. Where it was fine to have a story where you didn't need to know a characters orientation because it had nothing to do with the story. Now, it seems that you must have at least one trans character if you want to get your story published. And when did we all become so cynical that we never have a happy ending. O.K. Rant over. Thanks for the content Chato!
It seems like there's a lot less things that qualify as shared experiences these days. I remember everyone wanting to know who shot Mr Burns or who Cartman's Dad was, but I can't see that happening ever again. There's just too many places to see different things happening at different times.
The Bass heavy fart I unleashed after breakfast was a shared experience that ended with my wife taking the kids and moving in with her mother. 🌄🥞😋... 😜😖💨🎶💩... 👰🧑🤝🧑... 😳🤧
*"NUFF SAID"™️*
I’ve had friends ask me to join them in the Toronto arts community..and I went with an open mind ..not really my screen ..but I gave it a try ..and it was good…I put the offer out to join me in one of my pastimes ( I’m a competitive shooter ,IPSC in particular) ..and offer them an opportunity to explore what I enjoy…sadly they have yet to take me up on the offer and see the other side of the track..not so much shared experience..but opening yourself to a wider universe.
4:27 - some of us have watched all episodes of "Republic Of Doyle" and appreciate all of the Canadian actors (and mostly actresses) from Newfoundland and, of course, Russell Crowe
You won me back with this video essay. You really put some thought into it. Great episode and I loved the premise. What finished my conversion to a fan again was the One Punch Man, Saitama, t-shirt. I love that show. This definitively proves your point to me. Someone give this man a PhD in sociology.
We're even getting more isolated in our work lives. Just the other day I realized how telling an ahole co-worker over Zoom that he's an idiot just doesn't have the same effect as telling him to f**k off in person.
Who doesn’t enjoy a good Newfie joke? They practically write themselves!
@5:45 "We're sharing a lot of hate for each other these days. That's good for politicians, but it's not good for human beings." You focused on the effects to comedy and general entertainment, but the deficits today's society faces is are much broader than that.
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam describes how the continued loss of "social capital" effects everyday connections. And in 2000, when he published it, the algorithms that seek to weld us to our smart phones were not yet widely deployed.
66 year old here. When I noticed that the three big TV networks (NBC, ABC, CBS for you youngsters) were losing marketshare to specific interest cable channels (the THIS channel, the THAT channel), that's when I knew their would be no shared experiences in the world to come. I knew everyone would be in their own specific interest bubble and you could not count on people having seen the same shows you'd seen and be able to have conversations with people. And behold! I was right! Somehow , even though there are thousands of people around me, I feel like I'm the last person left in the world. That is what shared experiences do. They help you not feel that way.
American society is in steep, steep decline. The degredation of our entertainment offerings is just another symptom of the coming end. Yes, that's pessimistic but ultimately true.
Been saying this for 50 years. Mass culture, I think, goes back to the days when people were literate on a large scale and newspapers (and wire services) and paperback novels (penny dreadfuls, etc.) were plentiful. When I was a kid, people wanted to know who won the World Series, the Army-Navy game, Miss America, the Kentucky Derby, regardless of socio-economic stratum. The Left killed that, starting in the late 60s. Even more so with music.
It also destroyed a lot of the genres we saw in pop entertainment going back to Homer - war stories, romances, Westerns, mysteries, even variety shows. All that's gone. And, yes, the rise of teacher unions standardized what's taught in schools, so kids know only what whoever sets the agenda wants them to, and that ain't much. Math is racist because you have to think and, because of that, you have to learn how to think.
Makes you almost think there's a conspiracy.
Can you imagine how they would remake the Waltons now? Large, rural family would confuse hell out of a modern writer.
Your mention of people not knowing the Bible jokes reminds me of a young coworker who I was talking to about Moses in Ten Commandments. He asked if that was the guy who fought all those animated skeletons with swords on that island. I said no but it would have been cool if DeMille had thrown that in. Demille Who? he asked back.
Though I think you missed one part where IPs are being made for a global audience not a domestic one and has to be simplified for non English speakers so less to translate(comedy being the hardest for foreigners to get). Star Trek which historically didn't do well overseas is a prime example of being morphed into Bourne Trek with just straight to the bone dumb action while being stripped of science or moral or intellectual allegories.
Chato, I was a part of the last true "shared experience" a little over a decade after the last episode of MASH. I lived in LA in '97-99 studying fillm pre-production story-boarding and screenwriting. I was friends with Phil Morris (The lawyer Jackie Chiles on SEINFELD), and after the world-shaking last episode, the next morning I saw Phil ad we screamed our head off. He asked me what I thought, I told him those four were assholes and deserved what they got. He laughed because I was one of the few that got it, and what I said was what Larry David told them before script table read. That was the last epic shared TV experience in the USA.
My daughter and I were listening to the radio last night during a car ride, a rare event in our modern world of music services, and I was explaining this very concept to her. How apropos you are oh wise Chatto. I wish I had your eloquence.
A tip for expanding your horizons: the superhero / sci-fi / fantasy-loving crowd can progress to the literature that inspired these genres. For instance, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is a true-ish story that is not that far removed from heroic fantasy novels. Swap Imperial Russia in 1805 for the Shire, Napoleon for Sauron and the French army for orcs.
If you can’t bring yourself to read the book, watch the BBC’s six-part 2016 adaptation of War and Peace with Paul Dano, Lily James and James Norton.
"I made fun of myself, and that is much funnier." Rodney Dangerfield.
I agree. I think when it comes to sci-fi, it's worse. When there was a common cultural understanding of some situation, the actors and story writers of a show could portray that situation with little effort. This was the backdrop upon which the story itself was presented. As it was an unremarkable backdrop, things that varied the situation were highlighted and could be very subtle in comparison to the story.
The effect, at least in my mind, was that some very philosophically complex ideas could be pointed to by a story without it being clumsily "explained" by the authors of the story themselves. It left it to the imagination of viewers to explore the consequences of those ideas, rather than ending the entertainment experience with the end of the story itself. All of this depended upon a rather neutral backdrop of cultural normality to provide a context in which the more abstract ideas can become observable.
I think it's one reason why modern sci-fi is so simplistic and mind numbingly stupid.
During the seige of Dunkirk, a British naval officer cabled three words to London: “But if not.” That message was clear to all who received it because most Britons were readers of scripture. We have since lost that common understanding. Greater diversity of thought is not necessarily a bad thing, but we do lose so much as we have fewer shared experiences.
Comedy is not taking the low hanging fruit, but the whole tree.
By Jove, I can’t believe I heard so much sense being spoken in these times. Yes it was shared feelings and experiences. In 1990 my parents rented Parenthood and everyone in our home loved it. It touched everyone, so did True Lies, Remains of the Day, Forest Gump, The Road to Wellville and of course the last Star Trek using the original cast which debuted in 1991. All of today’s weird and strange woke creations have gained zero attention from anyone in my own home. Can’t Hollywood regain the magic of the past and drop these woke nightmare abominations?
Such great points, i am also sure others will have noticed and probally conmented that steeaming has been a big killer of the shared experince.
We now do not have regually scheduled programming and so people do not gather in the same way in front of the screen like we used to.
We defiantly get very few of those shared expeinces that are broad and even when we get families togther most are spent with the heads in the phone and not engaging as a group.
This is why i am a big advocate of the family night where you do stuff as a group.
I remeber once an article where the person always got the best comments about how memeorable the barbeques were...the secret they turned off wi-fi forcing people yo interact and create memories.
Was listening to this in the kitchen and my Mum was agreeing to what you were saying. Also love the one Punch man shirt.
And I just want to say my one piece on Bollywood. Is that the only real problem with Bollywood is if you want to make a movie there. There is a checklist for Bollywood films you have to meet and you don't meet those things on the checklist they will not make your movie. That's why a movie like RRR has some random dance stuff in it. Because that is something on the checklist for Bollywood. And they did not put those in that movie. Probably would not have happened. And I only know about this because of a documentary I saw a few years ago were an Indian university student said that if you do not write stuff the way Bollywood wants you to your stuff will never see the light of day. Just throwing my two cents in.
Gone are the days when a simple joke or roasting can make everyone laugh uncontrollably. People today had campaigned their activism and agendas too much that they forgot or had just lost their sense of humour. Moreover, it is very rare to see comedies without hearing any profanities.
I really miss watching Don Rickles, Bob Hope, Foster Brooks and other comedians back when grandpa and I were watching them from his cabinet-type television.
As a Townie I love the shared experience of laughing at a Baymen.
Remember what Mustapha Mond told Helmholtz Watson about why no one could produce Shakespeare in A.F. 632. It was old, and no one would understand it.
No longer is there the "water cooler" conversations about shows or events we saw, they are played out in an individual's time. Gone are the shows that had wisdom, or morals, or even a point of view. We are in an era of feckless, bland and useless media where clicks are more important than insight. We have lost the wisdom that older generations would share, like you, Chato.
Love your shirt, Paul.
This screed pretty much covered all the issues with today's entertainment. Ironically, since I quit watching network television I've seen a lot of movies and tv shows that I never watched as a kid or were not available on tv in my youth. They never showed any Randolph Scott movies when I was a kid and now they're on all of the time. His last movie was Ride the High Country in 1962 when I was two. I later learned that he died while I was in college. And while they've made horror and sci-fi movies more gruesome I still prefer to watch the older movies with their cheesy special effects.
Alright Mr. Chatotama, you are the living proof that you do not need to be an angry "genderless" troll with dyed hair in order to understand modern society. Your insights and ruminations have been extremely useful, thank you so very much.
As a second class geek/nerd, i salute you.
The truth in the guise of comedy. Thank you Paul.
Oh my gosh, you're so right about this. How do we fix it? Do we ever get shared experiences back? It's a serious problem! I miss shared experiences... well, positive ones, anyway.
Almost at 100K subs, Chato - be seeing you, Patrick McGoohan "I am not a number!"
A wise man once said: "Culture is the sum of all stories that a society tells itself." If we lose that common ground, the shared stories that everybody knows, culture ends. It's a process that started in the 70's actually,when we began to give up un educational canons.
It will be evident soon, that a just a constitution will not be enough to make a society cohere.
Winning the internet every time! Great work and depth of thought. I seriously appreciate the intellectual element, which is SOOOOO different from the multitudes of so-called entertainers on UA-cam who provide "similar" content.
at a buffet, i personally sneak corndogs into the buffet so others can enjoy them. I hide 6 corndogs in my jacket pockets. it then, is a joy for me to see other patrons of the establishment eat my corndogs thinking they were part of the buffet.
Yeah, but you always get lint and tobacco all over them. Just cuz many people think it’s relish and dried kraut don’t mean the rest of us don’t notice. I, for one, only eat the hot pockets. Who brings those? Don’t know.
My wife & I talk about this a lot. I'm pretty open minded to new things but everyone is in their own NICHE & no one wants to explore outside of it anymore.
Nuff said, Paul and thank you.
Great stuff as always Chato! About your closing regarding telling you wife a joke and making the mistake of assuming she wanted to hear more; just take a cue from George Costanza and make your exit once something lands. Ah sitcoms, they teach us so much.
Ah yes, George Costanzo, Gerry Seinford's best friend.
@@wavion2 Thank you for that wavion. I want to blame autocorrect for the error, but I don't know if that's the case here. Cheers
@@inblackestnight9256 That was meant to be good-natured, I should have used a 😄
You absolutely nailed it with this one Paul. The arguments you cited, are exactly why I have quit Movies and T.V. as a source of entertainment.
You could make entertainment as, "ethnocentric" as you want but that wouldn't fix the problem of these companies hiring bad writers and directors because they're cheap. It won't fix oversaturation. It won't fix the current business model to give studios the freedom to take a chance on new franchises.
I fear it won’t be long until A.I. completely kills any form of shared experience with everyone watching their own personally generated “films”
OPM make me think of a very different Boot to the head sketch. It's hell when references to what was commonly known is now obscure and nerdy.
Modern echo chambers that isolate people into tribes are the current "reality tv" fad. This too shall pass.
Your video immediately brought to mind the StarTrek:TNG episode "Darmok" where the new culture speaks in metaphor. One is absolutely clueless unless you know the stories, events, players, etc. We confuse each other, and become frustrated, or simply walk away.
Showing my 20-somethings the last episode of M.A.S.H. was "meh" because it is hard to convey how half of the U.S. said good-bye. I love showing them the Chevy Chase / Richard Pryor skit on SNL. Words they are not used to hearing! But Pryor knew exactly what he was doing. And Carlin? LOL
When they complain I simply say "You will laugh at my jokes, and I will show why it's funny. Then you can laugh when I inevitably say the same joke again next week." :p
Has media taken a shot gun approach to shows? lots of them, but the pellets are all the same. LOL Quick running, simple, easy to follow and you can watch each season all at once.
I think you hit on something pretty interesting Chato about the lack of shared experiences. You still sort of see em with sports (think Super Bowl or even when the World Cup finals is played) but in the realm of entertainment not so much. One of the most interesting examples in my life was 1994, the finale of ST:TNG (All Good Things). I live in Toronto, so at the time CityTv (which aired tonnes of trek back then) hosted in the Rogers Centre a screening of the finale on the jumbotron when it aired that week. There was easily 40,000 people in there to watch that finale, and the only reason it didn't sell out was because of the seats that you couldn't see the screen in. They people there were, Black, White, Asian, South Asian, male, female, young and old; and all were there because they really loved a T.V. Show (albeit an iconic one at that). I cannot foresee something like that ever happening again due to how fragmented we have become and I find that kind of sad in my old age.
Sir, as an Indian American , you have made me respect you even more that you love Indian movies for the fact that they aren't forced woke.
Its fitting that Chato is wearing a Saitama shirt for this video. One Punch Man is the embodiment of making fun of super heroe tropes from the past while at the same time elevating them reminding us that we really like that shared experience on what a true heroism looks like.
I own "You can't take it with you" , a favorite DVD, but i am also older and I am not 'modern audience' material.
"It killed in St. John's" is a perfect summary of what your point is. No one will understand what this means, or why it's important.
Your comments help explain this disappointment I have for current entertainment.
It’s sad that these companies have lost the ability to tell good stories. I miss uncomfortable/wonderful films like those of Terry Gilliam.
Uncomfortable dreary atmospheres, wondrous journeys. Happy versions of Michael Mann films?
Bring back good stories!
Nice Saitama T-Shirt! Glad the community here in Japan still like to talk about the entertainment in the japanese market on a daily base (people love to comment and talk about commercials, old and current anime/manga/games), long live to otaku families here hehe. I still pray that Japan don't follow down the same path that the "woke" west took. On western productions, I loved the time where the Simpsons and South Park had more soul, Simpsons had a real soul until season 8, and the old south park always crossed the line that would make everyone talk on the next day (they still do sometimes, but they really got more "light" and kind of afraid of crossing the line lately, compared with old school southpark)
Referencing Fallout and Saitama in the same sentence. You're a legend.
Man you never cease to amaze me at how spot on you are
"Death of shared experiences" is a very valid point, and I'd like to explore a different angle than straight up bastardizing old content. Society is all looking at the same 5"-6" screens, but now every screen is displaying different content. When that happens we lose the shared experience of going to the water cooler & saying "What did you think of Miami Vice this week!? I thought it was great!". I can watch as much football or firearm content as I can digest, but the cultural touchstones seem to be missing. Probably why award shows are dropping in viewership so much. The individual based society has moved on from millionaires congratulating each other & are focused on content that caters to their personal interest. Or maybe I'm just talking out my posterior.
Yes, water cooler talk.
Unfortunately missed this piece post-release. I am highly pleased that it popped up for this is one of your most insightful efforts. A “You Can’t Take It With You” reference and Plato’s “Republic” jokes… Huzzah cubed! Hope this season’s batch of artisanal fireworks you generated in the basement turned out tip-top.
PS - Your “My Dinner With Andre” jokes might fall even flatter with Gen Z.
After re-watching this I'm struck by the memories I have of watching Rescue 911 with my mom as a child.
It was mandatory tuesday night tv for us, and it was like that with a lot of my cousins too.
There was (and still is) something so compelling about the way that show presented the audience with real human drama and tragedy in a way that wasn't grotesquely sensationalized while also subliminally teaching its viewers basic skills to know in an emergency or motivating them to actually go out and learn basic life saving skills like first aid and cpr, which is why its credited with saving the lives of over 300 people during its 7 season run.
0:53 - That's Dame Edna! Barry Humphries has been doing that act since the 50s.
What do you expect in a country that according to the PM has no identity or culture. The CBC is actively telling newcomers not to integrate. It's not how Canadian you are but who you are is a terrible message to send. The CBC's mandate is promote Canadian culture, not eliminate it.
Great rant, to bad the people who should listen to it, aren't interested in other points of view.
I have memories of people in college struggling with a common core curriculum centered around Enlightenment writers and philosophers because they had absolutely no frame of reference with the Bible or even a lot of Greek and Roman mythology, and in turn the struggles a student had creating a peer-taught Western religion class even in my relatively liberal high school. Right now I'm hearing from professors dealing with students who never learned to proofread basic English, or failed to learn upper-level Algebra before trying to do Computer Science courses. We seem to have decided it's oppressive to believe there are things we should all commonly know. Not even "believe" or "agree with", just... know.
Years back a friend of mine that moved here from China said that a one child policy is really bad. First you grow up with no siblings, then your child grows up with no siblings, cousins, aunts, or uncles. Family is necessary to survival.
True...very true..those Plato Republic jokes just don't land the way they used to..
Well said!
You nailed this, I was just thinking about how this aspect is now missing. Ive been watching shows and movies from the 90's which makes me nostalgic for my shared experiences as a kid/teen
They might have had interest but they didn’t pay for it.
We no longer watch/ read/play the same things. So we have nothing to talk about.
Chato: "We're sharing a lot of hate for each other these days." Sad, but true. It's not just politicians and the some crazies on social media who are spreading hate, it's certain "news" organizations, academicians, and others of influence. Instead of trying to understand the concerns of the other side, each side vilifies the other side, asserting that the other side's values and opinions are bad or even evil. And, we all know what we need to do to evil.
Yet they believe they are virtuous.