cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/278438
Noticed that I am extremely tuned out of media discussions bc of Maoism-Autism
, but that sometimes I need to engage products, because I can't be picky about the battlefields. Vidya was a maladaptive coping mechanism for [fun and exciting] childhood
for me, so I view old stuff with a distorted perspective and new stuff, I neither have the money nor the time for anything RPG or timesink wise. Same for anime, shows, movies and other stuff.
Now I don't want to be left out of these convos entirely but is there any way to get back up on what a cultural product was about, preferably in-depth and critically?
You can just do what everyone else is doing anyway but more efficiently by making up how the media in question is actually about a thing you already care about. Who cares if you watched/played the thing or just skimmed half the wikipedia article? The key is to simply have more confidence in what you made up than what everyone else has in what they actually experienced
Seriously though, when you say you can't be picky about the battlefields what exactly do you mean? Like, do you just want to socialize, do you want to make a point about politics etc. or do you feel like you just should be able to say something to fit in?
I dont want to fit in. Believe it or not, but I am not gonna be able to pass and mask, ever. I think being able to understand and say what is wrong with say, the worldview of Game of Thrones, is a useful skill. Or discussing handmaiden's tale. Now, I am specialized in some other cultural area. But it is hard to do what would be thorough cultural criticism of every single popular anglo poduct on my own. I understand I sometimes have to do these things. This is not asking about how to conform to this shitfuck society. This is more asking on where to get the knowledge to gently but firmly criticize the minutae of its cultural industry better
I've been trying to write a response but I'm not very good at expressing my own thoughts in a serious way, so I hope this doesn't come across as really confrontational and I'm sorry if I completely misunderstood. Sorry in general for the terrible wall of text, it was either just post this or give up entirely and maybe make you feel like I was just ignoring you.
It would be hard and quite honestly, to me feeling forced to do that would also be such a miserable and extremely cynical way of interacting with people, I certainly couldn't do it.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a good way of doing what you want since you'd basically need something like a list of prepared talking points for any popular media if you (completely legitimately) don't want to engage with it yourself. I guess I'll try to give some of my personal thoughts about this:
Assuming you mostly want to use media as a gateway of talking about politics since people are already invested in it, I would seriously consider if that's even worth focussing on.
I think we as members of a comsumption driven society (and extremely online community) tend to overrate the importance of media criticism as a tool of making people think about leftist ideas quite a bit and that part of that is the feeling of needing to have a take on anything people talk about. Feeling like we have to connect to people via media slop is one of the things I think is ruining this world and the way people interact. Now, I think that kind of thing it can be great to build some more consciousness in people who are already at least somewhat sympathetic to what you're trying to get across, but in general a lot of people just want to comfortably consume their media to not have to think about real things for a bit and especially don't want to feel like you're intruding on that with uncomfortable reality. So if doing that comes with a cost to yourself I really wonder if it's even worth trying to do.
A good alternative to having to comsume all this garbage for that in the first place might be to try reaching people by talking about the conditions the media is being created in. Bad working conditions, creatively bankrupt executives and the entertainment industry being a shitshow of exploitation in general is always going to be a constant in a capitalist society and right now there's definitely topics people already have on their minds anyway, what with the strikes in the American TV/movie industries going on or the conditions of the anime industry if you're talking to weebs or a medium being flooded with poor AI content to make a quick profit or whatever. As a bonus, that way you can probably also reach people who are the biggest enthusiasts of the medium in question, who might otherwise be the most likely to react poorly to any criticism of actual content or just not be very engaged with real life politics.
There are definitely more and better ways of connecting with people than media nonsense and I think trying to build solidarity and empathy with personal connections and by confronting actual material conditions is a more worthwhile pursuit.
As a schizoid I'm not interested in most media or popular things myself so I think I sort of understand where you're coming from. Most importantly, I really hope you're doing alright and that none of this came across too badly.