For many decades feminists have been telling us that entertainment and media have been setting unrealistic beauty standards for women (young women/girls in particular) and that this is unhealthy. By and large, I think the basic premise of this is generally accepted (albeit with disagreement on some specifics).
Social media seems to have done the same, setting unrealistic standards on how your life should be, how you should behave and react, what your personality should be.
Social media is not reality, just as pornography isn't reality. That doesn't mean that either pornography or social media is bad in and of itself – HN is a social media of sorts – but I do think people's relationship with it can be unhealthy, or that some implementations of it can be.
I think my personal bugbear was "reality TV", in that it deliberately lies about which side of the "fiction"/"nonfiction" barrier it's on and thereby erodes it. But we're a long way past that now into the user-created video hole.
> unrealistic beauty standards for women
AI is going to be setting even more unrealistic beauty standards for women. Only 5 fingers? Boring.
Another thing that should be emphasised is how bad news-as-entertainment is. I remember when Alex Jones was sued for libel his defence was effectively that no sensible person should believe what he said and his show was "for entertainment purposes only" - which stands in contrast to the impact it actually had.
That defense isnt that bad, the noid promotion from dominoes ended up with a hostage crisis and that was purely intended for entertainment/advertising.
Cuts closer to a defamation too as the dude who took the hostages did so because he was unhinged and his last name was noid.
I'm relieved to see more of my peers, as well as those slightly older than us, expressing themselves with the silliness and levity of well-off retirees. Sure, it can be cringe-inducing at times, but cringe typically says more about the one doing the cringing than the object thereof.
Maybe it's time we all grew up a little more still.
Jim Carrey's character is one of these dudes who is constantly quoting tv shows and seems to have absorbed his whole worldview from mass media and advertising. The character is taken to an extreme, but this "dude who can only talk in TV references" was a sort of personality type back then out in the real world. They were annoying enough to most "normies" that it was relatable to make a comedy-horror movie about it. There was also a decent bit of "television is rotting people's brains" worry at the time as well driven largely by people's interactions with guys like this.
I think all times and places have this sort of personality type that just doesn't have much of a personality of their own (or the courage to really express one) and consequently just take on the style or posture of whatever popular mass media they're consuming instead. Since it's mass media and popular, surely they too will be popular if they mimic its affect right? TV isn't how taste and culture is made anymore, TikTok and general social media influenceriness is. So this same baseline personality type just ends up expressing itself differently based on the conditions of the present day.
As for movies: I think that since movies introduction into the mainstream they have always played an important role in guiding how people see the world, usually for the better. They normalise scientific concepts, abstract ways of looking at the world, introduce potentially new emotions to the average person, ways of conversing, and used to promote the idea of human ideals and beauty. Generally, when movies have been more genuinely creative and kind to the idea of human greatness society has tended to be happier and more creative. I've seen lots of directors use this for good, and I'm yet to see explicitly malicious use of western cinema (excl propaganda). I don't think it's bad that we're all in different worlds, people have been at different levels of awareness and connection to reality for as long as we've been around, but well executed movies change us more than many of us admit.
As for anime, it's really interesting how animated pictures do something different to me, they almost feel more cerebral, like it's how I really see the world in my imagination.
Wait, really?
There is a reason why psychologists recommend reducing screen time for everyone.