Much like a lot of Gen X, some of the older Millennials in my life (particularly the white working professionals) are parroting the age old mantra of “I don’t care about passing my skills on to the younger generations or helping those in need, no one ever helped me in my life.”. My response is always “That’s not a good thing!” because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength.
My working class grandparents were never like this. They lived through the great depression and two wars and never wanted anyone to suffer as much as they did. I miss them and their kindness dearly. It’s only from boomers and younger that I’ve seen this attitude. Capitalism is crushing our instincts as a social species. If we can’t stand on the shoulders of giants… well then we will stop advancing as a species. We will stagnate and go extinct because the challenges we face now need all of us. It goes against everything that is human to be this alienated and antagonistic to one another. Particularly frightening is the hatred and contempt modern society has towards children.
This is not going to end well.
I appreciate all the people here, whether you’re 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.
That’s some beautiful language there- “particularly fashionable scars.”
I do wonder about the nature of some toxic fandoms. Are they not aware that their behaviour harms the overall fandom? Or are they so committed to self-satisfaction that they don’t care? Or do they see themselves as an isolated outcrop, that their actions shouldn’t affect the whole community?
WRT Pokemon, how much of the franchise’s Flanderization was actual response to objections of touchy content, and how much is due to risk-averse people being handed a huge money printer, fueled by parents who are easily mobilized against “problematic” content. It’s interesting that they never tried to manufacture a Palworld-style product themselves-- a deliberately independent universe where they don’t need to worry about keeping it rated “E for Everyone”, but using their proven engines and mechanics.
From what I’ve seen, experienced, and even dared to ask about, some people are very uncomfortable with their own enjoyment of things perceived to be “for kids,” and instead of just letting the proverbial inner child out to play and just accepting that it isn’t a “grown-ass adult (usually man but not always)” thing to do but it’s fine to do it anyway, they instead feel the urge to make it adult in the laziest way they know how: smearing it with cynical amounts of blood, gore, death, and SV.
Remember the Reddit-popularized fad of “what if wholesome family-friendly thing… but grimdark and edgy?” Maybe it hasn’t gone fully away, but that was how a lot of emotionally constipated people tried to reach out to something they’d like if only they could get over their hangups about it being “not mature” or the like. The irony being that a lot of that cheap “maturity” seemed more like adolescent sensationalism and angst than an actual adult take on the material.
I think it’s very possible to have an adult-friendly take on a originally-kid-intended setting and characters. Some of the very best kids shows and movies already do that by facing subjects like change, illness, death, and the like. I even saw a Charlie Brown special that was about a new girl in town that had lost her hair because she had cancer.
That’s probably why I’ve always hated Gambo; its original marketing pitch was smug assholery about how “this is for grown-ups” and “isn’t cookie cutter sunshine and rainbows” because it was like a sloppier Tolkien with a lot of blood, gore, shit, and SV in place of a satisfying throughline, or meaningful ending for that matter.
Pokemen had started with adult-friendly concepts and ideas in the subtext while not wallowing in them. I wish that stayed.