On story and evolving taste and sensibilities.

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Basically any anime ever. Maybe it was Bleach, maybe it was graduating High School. Maybe it was actually working security for anime conventions for 2 years, but it just makes my skin crawl now.

So melodramatic. So angsty. So trite and predictable and rote. And not a single believable line of dialogue to be seen in any show across the entire spectrum.

 

[springheeljack]

Megas xlr was definitely one of my favorite shows for a long time. I rewatced it not too long ago and while there was a lot i still liked about it there are definitely things that aren't that great. For one thing most of the episodes have the exact same story beats. Every episode begins with Coop pushing a button or doing something stupid and usually ends it by pushing another button. The show constantly references this by making some of the buttons say don't push this button or push button to save the day

 

[Scarim Coral]

Yeah that would be Adventure in Dinosaur City for me-

Seriously, what did I see in this as a kid? It look so low budget looking back at it now!

 

[Borty The Bort]

I kind of have a reverse effect of this. I used to hate Spongebob,the cartoon when I was younger,but when I looked back on it,it`s surprisingly intelligent and actually funny,especially when you look at the characters,like Squidward for example,who believes himself to be cultured and too busy for Spongebob and Patrick silly games,but in all honesty is a complete gibbon,and the way this is portrayed is genius by the writers. I never really appreciated the design of the show until now.

 

[Borty The Bort]

Yeah that would be Adventure in Dinosaur Ciy for me-

Seriously, what did I see in this as a kid? It look so low budget looking back at it now!

It`s like all of the actors and dinosaurs are made of wax.

 

[Kotaro]

I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I can't begin to count how many anime, for instance, that I used to love, where I now find the writing to be hokey and unnatural, making them pretty difficult to watch.
This applies to around 90% of shounen action anime, actually. (One thing in particular that I no longer have any patience for is when characters stand around and just explain to each other in detail exactly how the special power or whatever that they just used works. Show, don't tell, guys. Unless it's a card game anime or something, this just feels wrong. Like, no one would ever actually do this during a fight.)

 

[Erttheking]

I'm not nearly as big of a fan of anime as I used to be, particularly shonen and ESPECIALLY long running series. Anything that has much more than a hundred episodes I just don't bother with unless I got in early (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) or it's only just above a hundred and I'm interested enough (Legends of the Galactic Heroes). I just get tired because the default approach for so much shonen is "I win because I'm stronger." Not more well trained or more experienced or had better equipment or the high ground, just this vague sense of "stronger." I can buy there being certain characters who are better than others, but I want a better reason than power levels in all but name. For example, Full Metal Alchemist, alchemists are better in fights than non-alchemists for obvious reasons, but the non-alchemist characters can still DO stuff and aren't worthless. And when you get down to it, alchemists were still normal humans who were very much mortal, as a certain Kimblee found out when he got a chimera's fangs in his wind pipe!

So yeah, I still like anime and even some shonen, but my patience is shorter and my tastes have a higher bar now.

 

[FPLOON]

*thinks long and hard* Hmmmmmm... I can't say that I ever felt that way about anything in particular at least in a 180 kind of way... More like my taste evolved like a Pokemon Digimon, but I can still find enjoyment to the media "shit" I experiences when I was younger age-wise...

Other than that, I do find immense enjoyment in re-watching/re-reading something again regardless of its quality...

 

[ManutheBloodedge]

The Pokemon games, but I can't explain why. The first video game I ever owned was Pokemon red, and the last two Pokemon games I started I stopped playing halfway. I guess they got to easy? Again, can't really explain it, although I loved Pokemon as a kid. My second or third game was LoZ Link's Awakening, and I played almost every Zelda game up to this day. They didn't get much harder, and I still love them. No idea what went wrong with Pokemon.
Though, that moment when I played X, my brother was watching me and suddenly a wild Pikachu appeared... we both flipped, and my brother only screamed "catch it, catch it!" That was pure, unadultered nostalgia.

EDIT: Oh now I remember. The first Eragon book was my favorite book growing up. I read it multiple times. Even when the sequels started coming out, I still liked the first one the best. Years later, and I wonder if my budding mind only realized the similarities to star wars unconciously, and that was why I liked it so much. In retrospect, it was neither original nor especially well-written.
The last book pissed me of the most. The author wrote in a really clever way to defeat the villian I must assume unknowingly, because it is never used! During the final battle, the protagonist only had to literally turn his back at the villain and he would have won, and instead uses some deus ex machina to defeat him in a morally just (and bullshit) kind of way. I felt clever because I thought I had picked up subtle hints at the ending, and then felt really disappointed as I realized appearantly I put more thought in this than the author did.

 

[crimsonspear4D]

Anime, manga, and... other japanese animation in totality. A decade ago, I was one of those weeb-ish nerds that thought Japan was the true undisputed animation capitol of the world, just plain superior in every way. Yeah, the west had Cartoon Network's collection of awesome timeless classics (the PPG, Ed, EDD, and Eddy, Megas Xlr, etc) and Nickelodeon produced some good cartoons every so often, but anime was just this large kaiju-sized monstrosity that couldn't be beat that gave us more awesome show's that kids like me back in them days could not even FATHOM exist. I mean, I could list make a dozen PAGES of anime that was good and why, even if they were kinda bad at the time; many of which are still talked about today so I don't have to.

Now I look at all the crap that has come out and I just moan and roll my eyes in annoyance and aggravation. Their comedies no longer make me laugh or even smirk, I have this expression all the while watching:

Whereas back in the times of yore, anime comedy wasn't all that different from our own. Sure most of it was wacky expressions and situations and slapstick (and maybe the occasional actually funny joke), but you could actually tell they now what cartoon comedy is. Now!? Now, its mostly forced jokes, contrived scenarios, OVERTLY over-quirky characters (in that their quirks are supposed to make them funny), and those GOD. DAMN. 4th-wall and meta-humor jokes.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...

And they rely on fanservice humor far, far, FAR to much concerning females, and its probably just me, but the majority of them have gotten even more idiotic and incompetent nowadays, I mean just ungodly childishly inept. We had fanservice back then of course, but it just seems more... desperate now. I mean, I remember a few characters that wore only bikini armor and lace lingerie and STILL could whup an entire platoon of dude's ass like they were children. Now, a female is lucky if they can take down a single mid-tier mook without any help from the rest of the magical powerpuff squad or A SINGLE DUDE (the male protagonist).

Coupled with lazy action animation, crappy cgi, and pacing only an out planet could match and its just... bwuuuuuuuuuuh.

There are some good ones still around and being made, obviously, it's just not as interesting anymore. I can actually judge an anime by it's trailer and be right at least 80% of the time. Like with all things, cynicism is my norm.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Most of the cartoons I watched as a kid, though this came sooner than later. I realized the original pokemon cartoons and movies were crap even as a kid.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is perhaps my defining example of this. I was absolutely mad about it when i first saw it, and hailed it as my favorite film of all time. But when watching it on dvd, without the booming sound and glory of the theater, the blemishes almost poured off the screen. The story is nerd wish fulfillment fantasy of the highest order, Michael Cera is annoying as fuck and nearly all the characters are horrible and unlikable people.

Both Star Wars Battlefront 1&2. I never played the multiplayer as a kid, I was just happy to be shooting droids in authentic locations with authentic sound effects, enemies and music in the bot mode. Playing it as an adult it's revealed to be horrifically repetitive and devoid of any depth. When I bought SWBF2 last summer, I got bored after 4 hours and haven't touched it since.

Recently, I got a copy of "Stan Lee Presents The Origin of Marvel Comics" where he talks about the genesis and creation of their most popular titles (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, The Hulk, etc). The book includes reprints of those issues and the dialogue is just...awful!

Compare that to the writing in "Preacher", "Planetary" or "Transmetropolitan".

I guess as comics matured, so did I.

Not to even mention those text boxes. I never read Marvel comics as a kid, but a couple of years I flipped through some collection of old Silver Surfer comics from the 60's in a library, and was absolutely baffled by the amount of text boxes you had to read, especially since they usually described what you already saw in the panels.

I used to be a massive Tolkien fan. Now... Not so much. The books are long and boring, and the pacing is awful.

I only read the books once as a teenager, because I was mad about the movies and my sister is a legit hardcore Tolkienophobe, and I kinda thought you're supposed to think the book is better merely because it's a book and therefore has to be smarter. Here's the kicker: it's really rather not. I re-read Fellowship a few years back, and was honestly struggling to get on with it. It's rather clear that Tolkien wasn't an author by how one-dimensional his characters are and how he seems to like describing locations and songs more than what's actually happening. In a post-ASOIAF (and most modern fantasy) world it's hard to view it as a fantasy epic anymore. Viewed as a fictional folklore epic it stands much better, since it makes useless characters like Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel easier to forget, and one-note archetypal characters are par for the course for that kind of thing.

 

[happyninja42]

Most of the music I listened to when I was a teenager just doesn't speak to me anymore. Some bands endure for me, like RUSH, Faith No More, TOOL. But most of the others from that era? Eh, I just can't really enjoy them anymore. And even for the bands I do still love, some of their older albums I can't really listen to anymore. Like TOOL, thankfully they've evolved as they aged as well, so I've been able to enjoy their changing musical lineup, while leaving behind their older stuff.

Other than that, not much I can specifically point to. Comic books in general I guess. This came from working in a comic shop in the 90's. Kind of burned me out on most of them, other than the occasional curiosity purchase.

Oh! Anne McCaffery's novels. I LOVED those as a kid, especially the Pern series. Going back to read those as an adult...holy shit is she a sexist, old school social roles kind of woman. My brain as a kid remembers the female protagonists from her books being strong and confident women. What they actually are, are very thinly written sterotypes, that still apparently always need a man with them. Interesting to see how things can change in 30 years, culturally.

 

[Hawki]

I can think of a few, though evolving taste can also make we view a work more positively than before:

-Captain Planet and the Planeeteers (old): "Yay, I love this show! Earth, fire, wind, water, heart! Let your powers combine!"

Captain Planet and the Planeteers (now): "Well, this is showing its age, considering that in-universe it takes place in sync with the production year (e.g. the Rio Conference). I mean, well, the villains are lacking any kind of subtlety, and some of them use pollution as the end rather than the means, but, yeah. I don't think this show is nearly as bad as many people claim, but my childhood experience is still different."

-The Chronicles of Narnia (old): "Yay, talking lions! White witches! Green witches! Badgers! Dwarfs! Fantasy adventure!"

-The Chronicles of Narnia (new): "Well, this is quite an interesting take on Christian theology, wrapped up in a children's story. Writing's a bit basic for me as an adult now, but nice job Mr Lewis. Well, nice job except The Last Battle, but hey, we all need our least favorite book in a septology.

-Dragonball Z (old): "Awesome! Guys are fighting! Stuff's exploding! Yelling, screaming, bloody violence, yay!"

-Dragonball Z (now): "Jesus Chris this is stupid. Half the time is spent talking, and it's not even good dialogue. It doesn't help that you're either a saiyan or you're useless, and the means of defeating the enemy is to just keep getting stronger rather than having a set power level and relying on means other than brute force."

-Spider-Man: The Animated Series (old): "Yay, Spidey! Action! Action! More action!"

-Spider-Man: The Animated Series (now): "Ugh, this has aged terribly. Monologues are dull, fighting is lacklustre, stories are formulaic, I've got no reason to watch this since Spectacular Spider-Man is a thing. Also, it's batshit insane. I mean, Mordo, Doctor Strange...what?!"

-Mortal Kombat (old): "Blood and guts, gore, I'm gonna dress up as Sub-Zero cause he's AWESOME!"

-Mortal Kombat (now): "Well, this is absolutely rediculous. I think there's a good idea/story nestled in her somewhere, what with the realms and whatnot, but it's primarily a fighting game, and aside from Soul Calibur, fighting games aren't really my thing anymore."

-Pokemon anime (old): "Gotta catch 'em all!"

-Pokemon anime (now): "Holy Moltres, this is cheesy! Cheese I could tolerate if not for the knowledge that the reset button is being hit between each region now."

-Power Rangers (old): "Go go power rangers! I'm gonna pretend to be the blue ranger while we fight Rita in the playground!"

-Power Rangers (now): "Well, this is stupid. Over the top and cheesy fun, but still stupid. And while we've had a few, decently written series, it's staggering to see how little the series has evolved in quality of writing (looking at you, Megaforce), when believe it or not, cartoons and "kid's shows" CAN be intelligent."

-Resident Evil movies (old): "Kickass!"

-Resident Evil movies (now): "Well, this is stupid. Doesn't help that the movies have gotten worse with each installment, and even if this wasn't a supposed adaptation, Alice is a Mary Sue in every sense of the word."

-Sonic the Hedgehog (old): "First game I ever played! This series will always be great! Sonic 4ever!"

-Sonic the Hedgehog (now): "Well, the Boom cartoon still gives me a chuckle. But this series has had such an identity crisis and so many incarnations, that while I still like Sonic overall, there's just far better series out there for me to invest my time and money in."

-Starship Troopers movie (old): "Human vs. bug action! Yay!"

-Starship Troopers movie (now): "Well, that was a very...'creative', adaptation of the book. But it's a good action flick with some nice sattire. Certainly the book's equal IMO, if for very different reasons."

-Star Wars prequels (old): "These are even better than the OT! They've got lasers! And droids! And hoo...what, what's a hooker?"

-Star Wars prequels (now): "Well, episodes I and II aren't nearly as good as I remember them, though Ep. III still holds up. Not nearly as good as I remember them, but still the recipients of way too much hate."

-Star Wars original trilogy (old): Lasers! Laser-swords! The Force! Action! Return of the Jedi is my favorite!"

-Star Wars original trilogy (new): "Huh. That holds up surprisingly well. It's effectively a modern day myth with reliance on tropes, but still an excellent piece of space fantasy. A New Hope is my favorite now though."

-Warhammer 40,000 (old): "Space Mareens! For the Emprah! Kill the alien!"

-Warhammer 40,000 (now): "Well, that took creative license from Dune and Isaac Asimov. Very well fleshed out universe, but for God's sake, enough of the Space Marines! They're a power fantasy. I admit to being swept up in them, but come on guys on the Internet, dialogue still needs to be...well, dialogue."

-Doctor Who (old): "This is wonderful! This is amazing! Doctor devah!"

-Doctor Who (now): "Well, this is silly. But still a good kind of silly. Not the best show ever concieved, very hit or miss at times, but as an adult, I can still appreciate it."

-Rowan of Rin (old): "Fantasy adventure, yay!"

-Rowan of Rin (now): "Well, this is still a kid's book series. But certainly a thematically rich, intelligently written one. Always felt it was better than Deltora Quest, but as an adult, I can articulate why now."

 

[Hawki]

And now to quote yee lowly pleebs:

Power Rangers. It domniated my 5 year old life.

Than I lost interest, FAST. The last time I was into Power Rangers was in the Power Rangers Turbo generation (the one with Cars)

Join the club. Though I didn't get as much exposure back then - my parents wouldn't let me watch it, and I could only watch the show at other kids' places. I think I fell out of reguarly watching the show around season 3 of Mighty Morphin.

Lord of the Rings stuff.

Lord of the Rings. You'll notice that it isn't up above in my list. But I'll discuss it here:

The film trilogy is my favorite set of films, ever, at least with the extended versions. It's admittedly been awhile since I watched them, but even in a Game of Thrones-dominated world, they still feel fresh to me. Probably because they commit to their concept, and it feels both simultaniously epic, while also being intimate. Because I will agree that the writing of the books has strengths in worldbuilding more than characters. To me, the books are a lot like the movie Space Odyssey (which I didn't include, because I didn't see it for the first time that all long ago). Not that enjoyable to read/watch, but I can't deny the impact they had on their respective genres.

Thing about my introduction to Middle-earth is that it was coming from many directions at once - sort of the right thing at the right time. I was first introduced to it in a stageplay adaptation of The Hobbit, then read the book. I tried reading the Lord of the Rings books, but failed. Then I saw some of Bashki's film at school, but only some, due to how my timetable was (long story). Then the Jackson films came out, AND the hack n' slash games, AND the Games Workshop tabletop game, AND the ability as a teenager to have some purchasing power to indulge in it, AND the ability to pop across the pond to New Zealand where it was big. Like, nationally-advertised big. So, between The Two Towers and Return of the King, I read all three books, and was able to enjoy them for what they were. Then RotK comes out, then I watch the extended editions, and so on. Years later I read The Silmarillion - great worldbuilding, tedious writing.

So, yeah. My view on Lord of the Rings has never really changed. I do agree that if something like it came out now, it wouldn't fly nearly as well. But for what it is (high fantasy based on European folklore with traditional concepts of good and evil, coupled with analogy to World War I, including the psychological scarring and friendship that can result from war), I can't help but respect and yes, love it.

I watched the Pokemon anime religiously as a kid... for a couple of years until we got the Digimon anime. Digimon was just better. I didn't watch it beyond the first cast change (did anyone?), but there was this clear arc y'see.

I considered adding Digimon, but I never really grew up with it like Pokemon, nor have I really gone back. That said, I don't know if, in the scope of said experience, if I'd say Digimon was better. What put me off with Digimon was that the winning of fights seemed to boil down to 'power levels' rather than anything creative. True, Ash was (and as far as I can still tell, is) an idiot sometimes, but he could think outside the box. Also, he played a role in his victories (telling his monsters what to do), whereas the kids would mostly stay on the sidelines. I know that the digivice sort of did a "power from within" thing, but, yeah.

I was also put off by the cast change from seasons 1 to 2, and the whole "bigger, but better" angle. I liked the idea of the kids being trapped in a weird world rather than having the ability to hop in and out at will. But, yeah. Never went beyond that.

A friend introduced me to ThatGuyWithTheGlasses, especially Nostalgia Critic around 08-09 as well, and that love affair lasted until he changed the format so much (more original stuff and serious videos, less NC). They changed, I changed too perhaps. I owe a big part of my critical thinking about movies to Doug, regardless of how I like his current material.

I can sympathize, but I didn't add it because I don't think I was all that different as a person when I first saw NC. I will say that I kind of agree with you. I feel that Doug's strengths lie primarily as a comedian. When it comes to critical analysis...not so much. As in, he's certainly an intelligent individual, but I feel that a lot of his critique is more an extension of personal preference than something less...well, biased. Which is a tall order, I know, we all have our biases, we can all just try to be honest, but, yeah. I also feel that "To Boldly Flee," to set up a film just to do a swan song to his character, was getting far too melodramatic for what the show actually was.

That said, he's really the only member of TGwtG I watch now. Linkara I grew out of (just not into comics that much), Phealous, Film Brain, Blockbuster Buster, etc., just got bored with. I'm far more a follower of The Dom right now. Maybe it's new blood, maybe because I haven't seen something like "Lost in Adaptation" before, but, hey, still game.

 

[ClockworkAngel]

The Neverending Story. I loved this movie as a kid. It was exciting, scary, mysterious, and magical. But I watched it a few years ago with a friend (who also loved it as a kid), and we both couldn't believe how bad it was. It's so shallow.

Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This game blew me away when I was younger, and I still very much appreciate its place in gaming history and understand what this game represents for the medium as it moved into the third dimension. I'm as huge a Zelda fan as any other, but all subsequent attempts to replay OoT have ended in boredom, and it set in earlier and earlier each time. I beat this game once, and have never been able to do it again.

I was going to do a movie, a game, and a television show. But while I can name a bunch of TV shows I no longer enjoy, I can't think of any one show where it wouldn't be understandable for anyone to grow out of it after aging out of its target audience.

 

[Fox12]

Most of the cartoons I watched as a kid, though this came sooner than later. I realized the original pokemon cartoons and movies were crap even as a kid.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is perhaps my defining example of this. I was absolutely mad about it when i first saw it, and hailed it as my favorite film of all time. But when watching it on dvd, without the booming sound and glory of the theater, the blemishes almost poured off the screen. The story is nerd wish fulfillment fantasy of the highest order, Michael Cera is annoying as fuck and nearly all the characters are horrible and unlikable people.

Both Star Wars Battlefront 1&2. I never played the multiplayer as a kid, I was just happy to be shooting droids in authentic locations with authentic sound effects, enemies and music in the bot mode. Playing it as an adult it's revealed to be horrifically repetitive and devoid of any depth. When I bought SWBF2 last summer, I got bored after 4 hours and haven't touched it since.

Recently, I got a copy of "Stan Lee Presents The Origin of Marvel Comics" where he talks about the genesis and creation of their most popular titles (Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, The Hulk, etc). The book includes reprints of those issues and the dialogue is just...awful!

Compare that to the writing in "Preacher", "Planetary" or "Transmetropolitan".

I guess as comics matured, so did I.

Not to even mention those text boxes. I never read Marvel comics as a kid, but a couple of years I flipped through some collection of old Silver Surfer comics from the 60's in a library, and was absolutely baffled by the amount of text boxes you had to read, especially since they usually described what you already saw in the panels.

I used to be a massive Tolkien fan. Now... Not so much. The books are long and boring, and the pacing is awful.

I only read the books once as a teenager, because I was mad about the movies and my sister is a legit hardcore Tolkienophobe, and I kinda thought you're supposed to think the book is better merely because it's a book and therefore has to be smarter. Here's the kicker: it's really rather not. I re-read Fellowship a few years back, and was honestly struggling to get on with it. It's rather clear that Tolkien wasn't an author by how one-dimensional his characters are and how he seems to like describing locations and songs more than what's actually happening. In a post-ASOIAF (and most modern fantasy) world it's hard to view it as a fantasy epic anymore. Viewed as a fictional folklore epic it stands much better, since it makes useless characters like Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel easier to forget, and one-note archetypal characters are par for the course for that kind of thing.

Tolkien is... Complicated. We tend to lump Tolkien in with the people he inspired. WoW, and D&D, and Eragon, and a million other contemporary writers and fantasy worlds. The problem is that Tolkien wasn't inspired by contemporary writers. He was a professor of medieval literature and language at Oxford. He was inspired by Beowulf, the Kalevala, the Poetic Eda, the Prose Eda, and by Celtic fairy tales. He was inspired by old poetry. Tolkien was an extremely old fashioned writer even when his work was released, because he was following an ancient tradition.

The thing is, Tolkien was brilliant. He was just brilliant at really, really weird things. For instance, he invented multiple functional languages for his world, and made sure that characters were named using those languages. Their names have real meaning. He mapped out Frodo's quest on a timeline, and connected it to the phases of the moon. If he describes the moon in a scene, that's the exact real world phase that the moon would have been in during that stage of the journey. Tolkien disliked French, and he was upset that so much French had made itself into the English language. If you analyze his text, you'll find that he deliberately avoided using words with a French background. He created thousands of years of history, with hundreds of characters for his story. That's the level of detail he was going for. He had done things no one had really done before. Unfortunately, he wasn't a professional writer, and so he tended to have weak prose, characterization, and pacing. The basics typically expected of great writers. His writing wasn't bad, but it wasn't much more then serviceable either.

When his massive brick tome, complete with appendices, was released the academic community didn't know what on earth to make of it. It was clearly written by someone deeply intelligent, but he tended to excel at certain things, but he didn't really excel at the actual writing. Modernists, who were fawning over James Joyce and Faulkner, typically hated it. Medievalists, who understood what Tolkien was doing, generally loved it. Then it hit pop culture in a big way. As it stands, I respect Tolkien a great deal. However, I don't really enjoy his brand of writing as much anymore. It's just not fun, and I don't read things that aren't fun. I still like the movies, which are much easier to sit through.

 

[Fox12]

Everything. I feel like I've just lost patience with everything, and I've probably become quite cynical. I don't have the patience for things which don't hook me, I don't have patience for certain cliches, or even just anything over a certain length. I don't know. Sometimes you give it a go and it's really rewarding and you get something out of it, but so much of the time it's just the same thing over and over, you're just counting time, filling your life with boring crap, low effort filler. So then I just watch, reread, listen to, or play, the same things over and over again, until they've lost all meaning and they're just grey paste that serves the same time filling function.

It's less an evolving taste I guess than being a cynical asshole. I just don't have time for crap, but then I don't do anything better with my time. I do nothing, or tread water. It's all a waste.

The big one has been internet "content" lately. I used to love watching reviews and gameplay footage, reading articles etc. But now I can barely stand it. Half of the stuff I was interested in has either gone away, or has devolved into writing for the sake of writing. So many videos are just cringe shit and clickbait for ad money. With the occassional lecture from some complete hack on what creativity means, or how relevant his histrionics are. Even seeing the words "Game Industry" in some form or another make me roll my eyes. Just so over it. Maybe I thought it mattered or was relevant at some point, but now I realise that none of those reviewers or critics new shit about their medium (Bob Chipman, Doug Walker, Jim Sterling), and also that a bunch of people don't even believe their own opinions or have any sort of position at all. Like, after watching people saying the same thing, where they lecture executives who will never bother with it, in histrionics about "rights" about fucking video games, like it actually matters, or is anything other than a weak attempt to get the viewer frothing along with them, as a reliable sort of outrage... fuck, see, now I sound dumb too. It's all old.

There is nothing new under the sun.

You've pretty much nailed my feelings. It's hard for me to give a crap anymore, or to care. I know everything I consume or create will disappear, so what's the point? And if this is the case, what's the point of criticism? All of these smug, pretentious critics talking about their artistic philosophy? All of these academics trying to separate high and low art? It will disappear anyway, so who cares? The last game to really hit me was Undertale and Dark Soul's, because they pretty much deal with these concepts directly. I just realized that there's a glut of entertainment out there already, more then I could ever consume, so what's the point of me adding to it? I've turned into quite the nihilist, I'm afraid. It's enough to make me consider running back to religion. At least then I was content.

As depressing as that was, at least you aren't alone.