Ask Lemmy

There's merit to this. One of the beautiful things about this era is it's cheap as fuck (compared to other eras of history) to make and put out cool shit. Hell, we had a kid in town a few years back make a feature-length horror film with their phone that got screened at the indie theatre here. But you've got to dig and deal with the Sturgeon's Law factor to find gems among all the cruft out there.

Also noted that folks may want the mainstream entertainment of old, but real talk - once you're a certain age/level of experience, there's a good chance you're not part of the mainstream audience. Large groups don't make the stuff you like because you're not the target audience anymore, and four-quadrant approaches are dealing with a very different audience than they used to.

Been thinking about this quote from Terrence McKenna a lot recently (might seem a little quaint in the face of today's media landscape, but I take away a good message):

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y.

This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.