Nothing Left to Watch

Welcome back to the wasteland!

Been a bit since the last post, but there's also been a lot going on behind the scenes. For instance I was suspended from Twitter/X last week for "Inauthenticity" despite my account being a decade old and have been given no actual explanation for it. I severely doubt a human being has even been involved in the process. That said, there's little I can do about it from my end.

Anyway, let's get to today's topic. We're in 2026 and we're nearing the end of a lot of things we thought would be immortal even a decade ago. In fact, we're closer than we've ever been before and there is no turning back.

Movies are over. I bet you've heard that statement before but never really put much thought into it. Why would you? Everyone has been saying it for years. On top of it, it's very difficult to imagine how the death of an entire industry will come about or look like, especially one older than any of us alive today. Well, now you have a very good view of it happening right now and right before your eyes. You are witnessing Hollywood dies as we speak, and it's no embellishment or lie. Everything is coming to an end, and it won't be much longer.

The above video from Red Letter Media features a look at the recent trend of a sea of flops flowing out of Hollywood. Not even movies people aren't seeing but movies people have never even heard of, movies that barely even exist. Content being pumped out into a flood with no destination is everywhere and nowhere at once. These works might as well be AI generated because for all the effort it is making the same impact on the audience as someone who pumps a random joke video out online. No one is seeing anything anymore, and that isn't going to change.

And the question of why that might be is an interesting one. The younger generations are not watching movies or TV anymore. The only thing that makes money is old IP (which means it is primarily Gen X, Y, and Millennials, watching what is put out) and nothing new is being created or built up. There is no younger audience being cultivated which means the industry is destined for the grave. Much like comic books and the music industry before it, the old ways are not attracting new faces anymore. The only people keeping the old crumbling machinery operating are the nostalgic who still consume the old IP hoping for some of that old forgotten magic to return again. Some even tell themselves that it's just as good as it's ever been. This isn't a formula for growth, creativity, or anything new being done, it's just stagnation.

While this is going on in the foreground of the industry for all to see, behind the scenes hides an even bigger disaster.

At this point, it's all just fighting over scraps. Whatever idea that creativity was ever a part of the formula has long since been lost to cynicism and grifting the next couple of bucks out of the nearest mark. This is the only idea anyone in charge has left. There is nothing being built in these formerly big spaces, it's all in decay.

The older generations only want nostalgia and the younger generations want nothing. Nobody wants a future, so one is not coming. In a few generations these industries will be gone, dead, and buried, with the geriatric Gen Y kids who couldn't let that IP die . . . well now they can then be buried with it. So in the end they get what they want.

Though there are plenty of younger people interested in old artforms, none are actually interested in the current state of any of these industries. No one wants to be a movie star or a director, they want to watch Charles Bronson or see David Lynch's filmography. No one wants to go to the theatre, they'll watch an old movie on streaming or (increasingly) DVD and Blu-ray instead. No one wants to rent from Blockbuster, but they want to know how the rental industry worked. In essence, it's more interesting as a myth than as it currently stands, like walking by the ruins of an old civilization and barely remembering it was there not that long ago.

The above example of the video store is actually the subject of a brand new game released on Steam that appears to be gaining traction recently. Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator is about running a rental store, specifically, in the early '90s when rental stores were at their peak. There is a good reason for that.

This is because despite appealing to that Gen Y nostalgia, it was also a unique time in modernity not likely to ever be repeated again, and this is really the only way to present it in a way that makes sense to modern sensibilities. There isn't any way to really explain to people who weren't there how these places operated or why they were a big deal.

But now they can have at least an idea.

One might be surprised at how interested younger folks actually are in these old mediums: movies, TV shows, music, video games, and comics. They are just, like everyone else, not interested in the current zombie versions of these things as they exist in in the void of Current Year. One can't blame them for that. They want something made for them, but their generation gets nothing but table scraps and cynical brain rot appealing to keywords and hashtags (the modern version of buzzwords) that exists only to pander and grift a few dollars out of their already slim wallets. No one is aiming for them because they have no idea who they are.

These industries are all fake, and they know it. However, that doesn't mean they don't still hunger for art and entertainment that means something to them. Everyone will always want that. They just know they won't find it in the modern world where everyone is out to get them, not speak to them. It's just a lost cause.

So what actually is the solution? How does one even talk to the younger generations when we don't even speak the same language anymore? Can it be done?

No, probably not.

The only solution is to create a society that values high trust, shared values, and community. It would have to be the opposite of today's hyper individualist (yet, paradoxically, highly conformative) society of backwards language, constant political agitation, and hatred of the past. As long as these divisions exist, there will never be any sort of world like that one that was lost. It will just be more division and less in common until we are little more than several billion little islands floating around detached from each other in the sea of modern society. It's a dead end.

Until then, well, this is what we're left with, and this is all we'll have. Better get used to it, because we'll eventually lose that too. That's just where we are now at this point in time.

I'll leave you with this bizarre (and oddly common) find on YouTube, before that, too, is also eventually swallowed by the void. Travel back to this strange mirror universe of 1991, back when you still had a shared culture and wonder where it all went.

Because it's not coming back again, and the younger generations seem to understand that a lot better than we do.

Thanks for reading! I'll see you all again soon enough.

In case you missed it, I have a recent entry in my "Fantasy Isn't Real" series up on the Patreon! This one is about Anti-Wonder!