yeah yeah i'll post more fic in a minute, had a rough week, but like. listen.
i'm REAL worried about media literacy. and i'm even more worried about what it says about emotional comprehension.
so, yesterday i had this chat with someone. young, sweet, well-meaning queer kid. both in the cyberpunk fandom so that's the context of the convo. he says he doesn't like the endings. i ask why, and he can't articulate it very well beyond that they seemed disappointing. then he says it's the same reason he hated river's rejection scene, because it made him feel bad.
dear readers, he was equating something making him feel bad with quality of storytelling. he thought the endings were bad because they didn't satisfy him personally and none of them felt totally unambiguously good. he thought river's rejection was bad because it hit too close to home.
i told him, as gently as i could, that's the point.
the wild thing is, i've had this kind of discussion before in the context of cyberpunk. back when i was first getting into the fandom, another younger queer person in a totally different fandom and chat said they didn't like kerry because he was problematic. i asked how. looking back, i could probably give a dozen reasons off the top of my head, because this is kerry we're talking about. but the reasons this kid gave were all about how kerry leaves in some of the endings.
HE ONLY REALLY LEAVES IN ONE MAJOR ENDING. HE IS THE MOST DEVOTED LOVE INTEREST. of any reason that could be given, i'd say that's honestly the weakest!! you could call kerry eurodyne a lot of things and be completely justified, but REALLY??? THAT'S your problem????
to me, this all speaks to a wider trend within fandom towards sycophantic storytelling. it's been building for years--i first noticed it in FFXIV RP--but i think it's starting to reach a breaking point with the advent of AI. younger people were never taught to sit with a story and think about what it's trying to say, and because of that, they never come to discussions equipped with the tools to sit and think about what others are trying to say in general, or to sit with their own feelings and make sense of where they're coming from.
and i'm starting to think that maybe this trend towards training people to favor the reaction itself over the substance behind it is intentional on the part of those in power. vibe-based reading and a step away from phonics, comprehension--what we're seeing now was the point of all that, maybe. sap people of their time through labor conditions and rob them of the tools to make sense of why they feel the way they do about it through the education system, and the time required to think about these things and understand the world and other people's situations becomes a luxury good.
we see it when marginalized creators and productions get policed harder than the ones that benefit from cultural hegemony. when uncritical or indulgent narratives that maintain the status quo get more praise despite having the same production problems (or worse ones) than things with more pointed commentary. it all comes back to "this made me feel things that weren't an escape from reality, so it must be bad," a sentiment that's long been discussed in marginalized communities.
but the worst part about it is how difficult it makes empathizing with fellow human beings. reformative justice can barely be discussed anymore. surveillance has become the norm. interpersonal disagreement is branded as toxic behavior. no one talks anything out anymore. no one discusses material conditions that can affect people's realities. when holding out your hand to someone to bring them to you and get you to understand is taken as an attack, you stop doing it.
if everyone who brings soup to the needy gets accused of trying to kill people with allergies, no one brings soup anymore. and we really need to stop and look at things and ask who those kinds of attitudes are helping: marginalized people, or the ones in power who would rather have us all dependent on capital.
for anyone who thinks this is an attack, it isn't. i'm pleading with anyone who reads this to start asking questions about the intent of the media you consume and the people around you, before you slide into being the kind of person who censors and polices. it can happen to anyone. i grew up in that kind of environment; the amount of time i've spent unlearning shit alone would be enough to be legally allowed to vote.
let people tell the stories they want. not liking something doesn't mean it's inherently bad, it just means it's not for you. and that's okay. meet both people and media where they want you to be, in good faith, and then decide whether or not that's where you want to be too. you can even say you're not in the right headspace for a challenging story and that's just as acceptable; not engaging at all is a valid response too.
either way, kill the knee-jerk evangelical that lives in your brain. you'll be a lot happier for it, and get a lot more out of both the people in your life and the media you consume.
origamiaround
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prguitarman
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