Note: This is not meant to be angry, or inflammatory, or bashing on anybody. This is just a point that crossed my mind, and wanted to express. I don’t mean to hurt anyone or anything or to start any hate or drama. Sincerity mode!
Why Tumblr Is Ruining Everything:
Okay before anybody has a fit, let me say one thing; I love tumblr. It’s great, it’s fun, and all that jazz. But the longer I use it, the more I notice I very upsetting trend in the ‘fandom’ branches of tumblr ((which comprise most of the freaking tree, and we all know it)).
That trend, you see, is blowing everything into a huge messy paroxysm of screeching hyperbole.
I’ll take some of the most notable recent examples, The Lorax, and The Avengers. There are tons of examples, because the problem I shall elaborate upon affects everything; this is just the two I’m use for eg because they’re what are suffering from it most, at least on my dash.
First of all, The Lorax was a mediocre movie. Even a majority of the fans admit that; it’s popular because of The Onceler. The fandom that happened overnight for the Onceler is astounding, and normally, it would not be a problem. The problem is, that it revolves around the perverse sexual lust for this character and nothing else. People can claim it goes deeper, but the truth is that if The Onceler was not a cute young man voiced by Ed Helms, this would not have happened. Even if the movie was good, its primary focal point to those who like it is this, and it makes the entire rest of the film so much more shallow as a result. People also refuse to shut up about it; I do not mind people with passions and are huge fans of something, but literally crammed what they like into everything else, nonstop, and squeezing all the way about how flawlessly perfect everything they touch becomes, grates on my nerves.
Second, The Avengers. This one is different, because The Avengers was actually a GOOD movie. But this is what makes it even worse than The Lorax, and I’ll explain why in a minute; in less than 24 hours of the film’s release, The Avengers was ALL OVER my dash. All the best jokes, all the major plot points, the villain… even who ends up DYING was spoiled to me within hours without me even looking for it. So now, I had almost no reason to see it myself. What makes it worse, was that those who had done this, those lucky folks who saw it on launch and didn’t have the experience tainted beforehand, now refuse to stop talking about it constantly.
But it’s not the character depths, or the story, or the special effects or cinematography, that everybody is discussing. No. You see, all the hard work and effort put into the film has been boiled down to nothing but reblogged photosets and butts. Gifs and hindquarters, is all that people focus on now. It’s not just The Avengers, everything is falling into this now.
Even just ten years ago, when people saw a film, regardless of quality, did they visit every single café, every single shop, go to every one’s houses, screaming about how hot one character was, screeching and flapping their arms like a circus seal, and wetting their own trousers with the wailing guffawing of somebody cutting a character’s head out from a poster and putting it over a PlayBoy?
Not that I recall. It happened to an extent I’m sure, usually if you were with friends, and it was a joke, and it just flowed in and out of conversation.
In the age of the internet, people are free to act as silly as they want; that’s fine! Don’t get me wrong, the freedom to be a complete dork without being judged is one of the best things ever, but the problem is now it seems as time goes on, people feel more and more obligated to act as freakish as possible. As if things HAVE to be blown out of proportion, flanderized into oblivion and back, because… well actually I don’t know the reason, which is what scares me.
Sometimes you need to take a step back and wonder what it’d be like to spend years of your life, working very hard to make something good, and then you finally release it for the world to see and experience, but nobody seems to be taking it in. They’re too busy making GIFs of a character falling over or compiling every single specifically angled camera shot of characters’ butts as possible so everybody can SCREECH OMG BEST LOLOLOL DYING CANT HAHA SEXYHOT BABUPRECOUSDFEELS THERE GO MY BONERS PEES SELF
…I’m sure it’d be flattering, but what it if that was all people ever did?
I’ve seen maybe two remotely insightful or constructive posts regarding the Avengers. The rest- and there has been literally THOUSANDS of them I have to scroll through every day, because even if I had tumblr savior, a lot of people don’t tag their posts- is nothing but over the top, forced dribble that just seems to get frothier and more inane as time goes on.
I’m not saying people should stop loving things they love, or to stop loving in their way; just, give it some thought, that we’re degrading the value of everything by boiling it down to the shallow screams of hyperbole for, apparently, its own sake.
