Capitalism realized a while ago that a huge swath of young millennials and elder Gen Z are just broke enough to not comfortably start a family or buy a house but just flush with enough cash to fill the emotional holes left by shitty boomer parents with overpriced children’s toys.

https://bsky.app/profile/wapplehouse.bsky.social/post/3ly23expml22j

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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    12 days ago

    If you had told the early teen me in 1977 that Star Wars would still be incredibly popular in 2025 - I probably would say “Super cool!” But then just a few seconds later I might say “Why?”

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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        12 days ago

        I’m sorry about your mom’s passing.

        I saw Star Wars and Jaws at movie theaters. Star Wars blew my mind. Jaws scared the crap out me. For the life of me - I can’t remember exactly when I saw The Exorcist. It came out in 1973. Did I see it before the other two? After? In any case - the vital thing is I watched it on tv. I must have secretly watched it late at night on Creature Features. And in the fat-back tv era - the tv experience was shit. The resolution was low. Maybe like a sort of crappy 480p rip today? Broadcasts were “edited for tv” and there was pan-and-scan. At best watching a movie like The Exorcist was 1/10th as powerful as watching it at the movies.

        Unlike the other two - I thought it was “scary” but I quickly forgot about it. Decades later I watched it at home and I really liked it. Right now - I’m thinking about watching it again. Maybe I can’t. I used to love horror - cough - to death. The problem is that I’ve watched 100s of hours of terrible, shitty movies and tv series that ripped off The Exorcist in a way that might make it hard for me to enjoy it now.

        An example is a series I watched where possessed people spewed CGI vomit that flowed upwards so it covered the ceiling. For fuck’s sake. That’s not scary. That’s silly and dumb! [Ninja edit. Maybe it was Outcast?]

        -–

        Pan and scan

        Pan and scan is a film editing technique used to modify widescreen images for display on a fullscreen screen. It involves cropping the sides of the original widescreen image and panning across it when the shot’s focus changes. This cropping can result in the loss of key visual elements but may draw the viewers’ attention towards a particular portion of the scene.

          • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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            12 days ago

            Google rant

            As is my custom - I thought got all the details wrong. It turns out - I was spot on. The series I was thinking of is called Outcast and it has 20 episodes. Never mind the vomit - can’t find a CGI screengrab of anything from that series and I can’t find anything useful at all. Incredible. Every time I think google can’t get more garbage-y - it surprises me and it beats my expectations. Top-notch, google - top-notch.

    • SovietBeerTruckOperator@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      Eh, there’s older franchises, by like A LOT. None quite as big as Star Wars but close. Heck one is quite popular here (technically) picard

      I think if I lived in 1977 and was told the same thing I would just assume the movie turned into a SciFi TV show, not that it’s become a sprawling slop empire of mid-overall-quality (with the very occasional banger). Though I think it would be hard for someone in the 70s to imagine modern media enshittification.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netOP
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        12 days ago

        I would have been equally surprised that Star Trek was super-popular in 2025. How? In 1977 - I thought of the series as “really old”. And it was in ~10 year old reruns after all. If I thought about “trekkies” at all - I surely thought of them as dumb dorks. Plus the first trek movie was two years away.