Lensherr
kiwifarms.net
As most of us I’m sure are aware of via the Consoomer meme:
there’s a ubiquitous modern phenomenon of adult men and women who invest a tremendous amount of time and money in a fictional universe to the point where their identity largely revolves around being a consumer of whatever IP or IPs are prevalent at the time. This primarily happens with large, sprawling corporate-owned franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, and both the Marvel and DC pantheon of superheroes to name a few.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying any of these franchises (or fiction in general) in and of itself. However, I’m not talking about people who occasionally go to see a superhero movie with their friends in their spare time. Rather, I’m talking about those who are so heavily invested in these properties that they tie their entire sense of self-worth to it. We see this manifest in, among other things, the constant dick-measuring contests that they have as to who owns the most disposable plastic crap and the extreme, over-the-top emotional reactions that they have to movie trailers:
(On the flip side, we have people having mental breakdowns whenever these franchises release entries that suck)
So how did it come to this? How did this low to middle-brow nerd pop culture stuff become like a religion to these people. Well, I have a few theories, and they aren’t mutually exclusive:
1. The receding influence of actual religion. Because fewer people are religious in the sense that they adhere to one of the five major religions in the western world, they have supplanted it with the aforementioned pop-culture, thus filling the void for the sense of meaning and guiding wisdom that religion used to fill.
2. Lack of meaningful connection to history and culture. As people have started to become deracinated, rootless cosmopolitans, they attach themselves to these corporate IPs as a means of getting invested in some sort of history (i.e., lore/canon), albeit a fictional one, as opposed to real-world history and heritage.
3. Corporate marketing. Basically, the corporations that produce this pop culture have become very adept at exploiting the fanatical devotion of and emotionally manipulating these consumers. Ultimately, they don’t care about quality as long as they can keep milking their consumer base of enough money to make a profit. In other words, they encourage the unhealthy, all-consuming obsessing that people have with these IPs, because after all, healthy, well-adjusted people don’t spend hundreds of dollars on Star Wars toys.
Do you guys think that any of these hypotheses are accurate, or do you have your own theories as to how the phenomenon I’m describing came about? And how can we, as a society, wean ourself off of this obsession with corporate franchises that primarily exist to make money off us?
Endnotes:
Two videos that I recommend that go further into detail on/cover similar ground as to what I’m talking about are ‘The Infantilization Of Popular Culture’ by Paul Joseph Watson and ‘What could replace nerd culture?’ by Endeavour:
there’s a ubiquitous modern phenomenon of adult men and women who invest a tremendous amount of time and money in a fictional universe to the point where their identity largely revolves around being a consumer of whatever IP or IPs are prevalent at the time. This primarily happens with large, sprawling corporate-owned franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones, and both the Marvel and DC pantheon of superheroes to name a few.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying any of these franchises (or fiction in general) in and of itself. However, I’m not talking about people who occasionally go to see a superhero movie with their friends in their spare time. Rather, I’m talking about those who are so heavily invested in these properties that they tie their entire sense of self-worth to it. We see this manifest in, among other things, the constant dick-measuring contests that they have as to who owns the most disposable plastic crap and the extreme, over-the-top emotional reactions that they have to movie trailers:
(On the flip side, we have people having mental breakdowns whenever these franchises release entries that suck)
So how did it come to this? How did this low to middle-brow nerd pop culture stuff become like a religion to these people. Well, I have a few theories, and they aren’t mutually exclusive:
1. The receding influence of actual religion. Because fewer people are religious in the sense that they adhere to one of the five major religions in the western world, they have supplanted it with the aforementioned pop-culture, thus filling the void for the sense of meaning and guiding wisdom that religion used to fill.
2. Lack of meaningful connection to history and culture. As people have started to become deracinated, rootless cosmopolitans, they attach themselves to these corporate IPs as a means of getting invested in some sort of history (i.e., lore/canon), albeit a fictional one, as opposed to real-world history and heritage.
3. Corporate marketing. Basically, the corporations that produce this pop culture have become very adept at exploiting the fanatical devotion of and emotionally manipulating these consumers. Ultimately, they don’t care about quality as long as they can keep milking their consumer base of enough money to make a profit. In other words, they encourage the unhealthy, all-consuming obsessing that people have with these IPs, because after all, healthy, well-adjusted people don’t spend hundreds of dollars on Star Wars toys.
Do you guys think that any of these hypotheses are accurate, or do you have your own theories as to how the phenomenon I’m describing came about? And how can we, as a society, wean ourself off of this obsession with corporate franchises that primarily exist to make money off us?
Endnotes:
Two videos that I recommend that go further into detail on/cover similar ground as to what I’m talking about are ‘The Infantilization Of Popular Culture’ by Paul Joseph Watson and ‘What could replace nerd culture?’ by Endeavour:
