a kind of interesting example of a thing that seems to be resistant to this phenomenon is skateboarding. over the past 50 or so years skateboarding has repeatedly died and rebirthed due to the cycle of:
skateboarders start doing new thing on skateboards purely for the love of the game
new thing become cool
everyone starts doing new thing because it’s cool and they want to be cool and maybe make money
new thing stops being cool because everyone is doing it to be cool or make money and not because of the love of the game
trenders stop skateboarding because new thing became uncool, leaving only skateboarders who do it purely for the love of game
and the cycle repeats, as it has pretty much every new decade since the 70s
Erosion of something important to anon, although it'll never be clear if the thing was in fact terrible and should have been changed or if it was a genuine loss of something that should have been preserved.
It matters because just as often as not the lament is over the loss of some harmful aspect that existed as a part of something larger, and it was the impunity to do harm that was eroded.
Like it or not, your morality dictates your right to receive sympathy.
The bland-ification of just about everything for the sake of widespread appeal. Games with loyal fan bases being beaten down and reshaped into something completely different. Shows taking complex characters and flanderizing them to their most basic attributes. Popular movie franchises leaning away from what made them popular in favor of dad jokes and nonsensical plots. Hell, outside of entertainment, even all of the big restaurant groups/chains have been getting progressively mediocre because of all the private equity firms buying them out and milking them to their last cent, leaving a husk of distant memories from a better time. The various facets of the world have become increasingly run by people who insist on being right despite knowing nothing about what they’re doing, and their petulant insistence sucks the life out of everything we love in the process, taking away every shred of uniqueness in our media, our food, and everything else that isn’t small in scale, leaving our once colorful world full of gray and beige.
Everything. This is actually even an observed effect in economics in regards to network effects for platforms.
New technologies usually have a similar life cycle, they start off by attracting early adopters which value the innovation the new technology brings, over time as the technology grows late adopters and laggards start to join. These usually care less about the innovativeness and more about the advantages gained through network effects. This means that as a platform/technology grows the owner focuses less on the part that actually differentiates it and more on growing the installed base through network effects. This often comes at the cost of early adopters that valued the differentiating aspect more than the size of the installed base.
That depends on the audience, but largely no. It is almost always a loud and vocal minority making things worse for the silent, but happy majority.
Look at politics. The vast, vast majority of people are okay with womens access to healthcare and abortion as healthcare. The vast, vast majority are fine with trans people and disagree with the cultural grifting targeting them.
But here we are, cause a bunch of loud fuck ups made it worse for everybody. Now apply that to things that you have argued for censorship or changed of as well, that were fine the way they were. Maybe not perfect, but fine.
This is pretty much the entire video game industry. There are plenty of examples, but this is the one that sticks out in my mind the most. Looking at games like apex, overwatch 2, and dark and darker
Monster Hunter has been going through it over the past several games where it went from niche series to one of the biggest in the industry. Each entry has watered down combat, grinding, and skill requirement to make it easier to get into because Capcom tasted success with World and is chasing that high. Personally, most of the changes have been for the better, but Wilds (the newest) definitely feels sterile and sacrificed identity for appeal. The latest updates have addressed several of the big issues like the low difficulty so things are looking up.
Pikmin 4 is another one. Pikmin 1 and 2 are RTS games that punish rash decision making and poor planning with heavy casualties and aren't afraid to let you suffer multiple crushing defeats to teach you how not to do things and reward learning and strategy. 3 was still good but too short and had a noticeable difficulty decrease despite the increase in multitasking. Then 4 comes out and neutered the difficulty even further with very weak enemies, that are spaced out, that don't respawn, and can only kill 2-3 Pikmin per attack, AND you have auto-lock on so you never miss a throw. This is on top of the new companion who can attack enemies, transport your squad quickly, and stun enemies so you can one-shot almost anything. Nintendo wanted to make the series, which is known for its difficulty, more appealing to children and casual players to make it more marketable.
Mario Kart (price drama aside) has also been slowly making new courses wider with gentler turns, and remaking old tracks to be much easier to play by removing turns and shortening them. The average lap time drops with each entry because people don't want to spend 3-4 minutes on a race anymore.
Mario Wonder dropped lives entirely so dying is just a slap on the wrist and you can respawn in a level by touching another player/standee allowing you to keep playing and cheese difficult areas. The big coins you collect stay collected even if you die before completing a level. Badges give you abilities that break the difficulty even further. The difficulty through the base game is laughably easy. Even the intended difficult levels and significantly easier than past games.
Honestly, most games once they reach mass appeal sacrifice identity and quirkiness for marketability and mass appeal. I miss when Nintendo Hard was still a gaming trope and something to overcome, and you were rewarded for it. Now its all about ensuring everyone has the ability to beat the game- which is fine, but I wouldn't be so bummed about it if there were bragging rights rewards for playing in a way that challenges you, but as the rewards are the same regardless how you do it so why bother? Add the creeping factor of pay to win (RE4 Remastered) with their credit card warriors and its a mess.
fuck no we don't. we as a species have existed for 200-300k years. if we ain't normalized it yet there is a reason. your crazy ass doesn't need validation for your crazy shit you don't want to be crazy for doing.
Every object or idea will slowly erode or becomes replaced with something else. you can gatekeep everything you love but it won't matter. Now see,hear and let this new "thing" stimulate you (not enrich), you will fucking like it and become a parasocial animal.
"i have been asked dont i think its odd that i would be alive to witness the death of everything, and i do think its odd but that doesnt mean it isnt so. somebody has to be here."
Anon wrote about upward cultural pressure - that's not the same.
Take Assassin's Creed for example, ever since Ubishit doubled with RPG elements into the series, people have been asking for more indepth RPG elements, which started eroding stealth roots by having guys impervious to stabbing them in the neck. Then people started asking for dialogue options and decisions which makes little sense when the whole story is you are reading genetic memories of the ancestors
I mean, it's not just people's fault, it's easier to sell people microtransactions when it's P2W items you buy for use in combat and you can't circumevent that with pesky stealthy assassinations but still.
The really fucking weird thing with that is even if you do pay ubisoft their dlc bribes and do the in game transactions to buy as much power in your single player game as possible you still dont get to get around the "ahahah no you see Castor here actually took a semester of 201:"not getting stabbed in the neck" intermediate level back in the day so he's always ready for your ass" bullshit.
I did not say anything about enshittification. I just don't believe enshittifcation happens not because "shitty people have cultural pressure". Anon is a simpleton that likes to see one simple problem causing all of other problems. I believe the world to be more complicated.
Some people do enshittify because of profits, others - for power or clout, sometimes loudly proposing something progressive-looking. At the same moment other people do act to do good, and cause "societal pressure". Can those get mixed? Sure, Depp vs Heard for example.
Yeah but then again 4chan is the website where racism is very thinly disguised if at all from what I gather. I mean, I don't claim to be an expert but personally I'd expect mourning open racism on 4chan to be more open than this.
But maybe it's the one 4channer who is socially aware and emotionally inteligent enough to be a good manipulator, what do I know?
When you come up with something and you KNOW you are the only one who can cash in on it you will mipk it until its destroyed
Now if you know that other peoppe can cash in on that IP then suddenly it stops being about "milking this one thing until it dies" and starts being "ok I gotta either milk this thing but gotta make sure its better than everyone else's or I need to come up with something new"
Hyperstringent easily exploitable IP protection laws are the innovation and creativitykiller.
Why risk making something new/unique if you can now safely milk the same thing.
Who cares if people don't like it as long as you make money.
...and that in a nutshell is why there is so much slop these days.
ckpwrson@reddit
a kind of interesting example of a thing that seems to be resistant to this phenomenon is skateboarding. over the past 50 or so years skateboarding has repeatedly died and rebirthed due to the cycle of:
and the cycle repeats, as it has pretty much every new decade since the 70s
soiboi64@reddit
What the ever living fuck is this even about?
Mysterious_Lab_9043@reddit
Paradox of tolerance
TENTAtheSane@reddit
The breasts of his favourite 2d women were 20% smaller this year :(
igerardcom@reddit
The West has fallen.... Billions must oggle smaller waifu mammaries.
iDontRagequit@reddit
It’s about World of Warcraft
ChangingMonkfish@reddit
Trying to gatekeep something I’m guessing.
eossfounder@reddit
Erosion of something important to anon, although it'll never be clear if the thing was in fact terrible and should have been changed or if it was a genuine loss of something that should have been preserved.
Metrix145@reddit
Does it matter ? It clearly meant something to someone.
eossfounder@reddit
It matters because just as often as not the lament is over the loss of some harmful aspect that existed as a part of something larger, and it was the impunity to do harm that was eroded.
Like it or not, your morality dictates your right to receive sympathy.
The_PhilosopherKing@reddit
You sound like an insufferable cunt.
Kicooi@reddit
People are still mad that Disney bought Star Wars and haven’t moved on with their lives to a different hobby
Frequent_Beat4527@reddit
Gays and islamists
JustABigBruhMoment@reddit
The bland-ification of just about everything for the sake of widespread appeal. Games with loyal fan bases being beaten down and reshaped into something completely different. Shows taking complex characters and flanderizing them to their most basic attributes. Popular movie franchises leaning away from what made them popular in favor of dad jokes and nonsensical plots. Hell, outside of entertainment, even all of the big restaurant groups/chains have been getting progressively mediocre because of all the private equity firms buying them out and milking them to their last cent, leaving a husk of distant memories from a better time. The various facets of the world have become increasingly run by people who insist on being right despite knowing nothing about what they’re doing, and their petulant insistence sucks the life out of everything we love in the process, taking away every shred of uniqueness in our media, our food, and everything else that isn’t small in scale, leaving our once colorful world full of gray and beige.
PomegranateHot9916@reddit
maybe he mad they took slavery away from him
or maybe he is mad that popular fictional story was rebooted and had gay people in it
or maybe it is something I agree with. you can project your own thing onto it.
for me.. it is the internet.
Kel4597@reddit
Literally any kind of niche hobby that later entered mainstream and then got watered down for mass appeal.
CaloricDumbellIntake@reddit
Everything. This is actually even an observed effect in economics in regards to network effects for platforms.
New technologies usually have a similar life cycle, they start off by attracting early adopters which value the innovation the new technology brings, over time as the technology grows late adopters and laggards start to join. These usually care less about the innovativeness and more about the advantages gained through network effects. This means that as a platform/technology grows the owner focuses less on the part that actually differentiates it and more on growing the installed base through network effects. This often comes at the cost of early adopters that valued the differentiating aspect more than the size of the installed base.
MonkeManWPG@reddit
Is "cultural upward pressure" not just "what people want"?
MrBones-Necromancer@reddit
That depends on the audience, but largely no. It is almost always a loud and vocal minority making things worse for the silent, but happy majority.
Look at politics. The vast, vast majority of people are okay with womens access to healthcare and abortion as healthcare. The vast, vast majority are fine with trans people and disagree with the cultural grifting targeting them.
But here we are, cause a bunch of loud fuck ups made it worse for everybody. Now apply that to things that you have argued for censorship or changed of as well, that were fine the way they were. Maybe not perfect, but fine.
And thats how we all got here.
Kicooi@reddit
Anon is mad he is no longer in the majority
Psykopatate@reddit
But also when small change is in the opposite direction: "Duh this small change will not solve [very complex situation], it's pointless to do it".
Incremental destruction: YESSSS
Incremental improvement: HELL NO
TerryFalcone@reddit
I need a specific example of this happening as no one has mentioned one yet
a_code_mage@reddit
This is pretty much the entire video game industry. There are plenty of examples, but this is the one that sticks out in my mind the most. Looking at games like apex, overwatch 2, and dark and darker
3Ambitions@reddit
Dark and darker mentioned 😞
But Fr, this can and has happened to a lot of stuff. Rainbow 6, Pokemon TCG, and magic TCG all had it happen as well.
francescomagn02@reddit
Hey, maybe yu-gi-oh's community shitting on everyone who dares criticizing the game is not too bad after all lol
wirelesswizard64@reddit
Monster Hunter has been going through it over the past several games where it went from niche series to one of the biggest in the industry. Each entry has watered down combat, grinding, and skill requirement to make it easier to get into because Capcom tasted success with World and is chasing that high. Personally, most of the changes have been for the better, but Wilds (the newest) definitely feels sterile and sacrificed identity for appeal. The latest updates have addressed several of the big issues like the low difficulty so things are looking up.
Pikmin 4 is another one. Pikmin 1 and 2 are RTS games that punish rash decision making and poor planning with heavy casualties and aren't afraid to let you suffer multiple crushing defeats to teach you how not to do things and reward learning and strategy. 3 was still good but too short and had a noticeable difficulty decrease despite the increase in multitasking. Then 4 comes out and neutered the difficulty even further with very weak enemies, that are spaced out, that don't respawn, and can only kill 2-3 Pikmin per attack, AND you have auto-lock on so you never miss a throw. This is on top of the new companion who can attack enemies, transport your squad quickly, and stun enemies so you can one-shot almost anything. Nintendo wanted to make the series, which is known for its difficulty, more appealing to children and casual players to make it more marketable.
Mario Kart (price drama aside) has also been slowly making new courses wider with gentler turns, and remaking old tracks to be much easier to play by removing turns and shortening them. The average lap time drops with each entry because people don't want to spend 3-4 minutes on a race anymore.
Mario Wonder dropped lives entirely so dying is just a slap on the wrist and you can respawn in a level by touching another player/standee allowing you to keep playing and cheese difficult areas. The big coins you collect stay collected even if you die before completing a level. Badges give you abilities that break the difficulty even further. The difficulty through the base game is laughably easy. Even the intended difficult levels and significantly easier than past games.
Honestly, most games once they reach mass appeal sacrifice identity and quirkiness for marketability and mass appeal. I miss when Nintendo Hard was still a gaming trope and something to overcome, and you were rewarded for it. Now its all about ensuring everyone has the ability to beat the game- which is fine, but I wouldn't be so bummed about it if there were bragging rights rewards for playing in a way that challenges you, but as the rewards are the same regardless how you do it so why bother? Add the creeping factor of pay to win (RE4 Remastered) with their credit card warriors and its a mess.
ReturnRadio@reddit
Destiny 2
Honky-Balaam@reddit
It's crazy how redditors refuse to accept this reality because "erm, gatekeeping is... le heccin UNWHOLESOME!".
To be against gatekeeping is to be against art. Protect the things you enjoy from enshittification at all costs.
Armejden@reddit
They hate it because they're the ones being kept out and for good reason.
wirelesswizard64@reddit
Not everything is for everyone nor should it be, and that's ok.
eossfounder@reddit
Not everything should be protected
wirelesswizard64@reddit
Also true, and that's ok too!
fart-tag@reddit
RC aircraft. Fuck the FAA.
CompactAvocado@reddit
We need to normalize.......
fuck no we don't. we as a species have existed for 200-300k years. if we ain't normalized it yet there is a reason. your crazy ass doesn't need validation for your crazy shit you don't want to be crazy for doing.
keremhm@reddit
Seeing this happen to everything is pretty depressive.
CruciFuckingAround@reddit
Every object or idea will slowly erode or becomes replaced with something else. you can gatekeep everything you love but it won't matter. Now see,hear and let this new "thing" stimulate you (not enrich), you will fucking like it and become a parasocial animal.
MarvelousOxman@reddit
What, you don’t like your favourite setting becoming generic slop filled with Gary Stus quipping about everything?
Automatic_Humor_8167@reddit
"i have been asked dont i think its odd that i would be alive to witness the death of everything, and i do think its odd but that doesnt mean it isnt so. somebody has to be here."
Tablesafety@reddit
Haha this shit is so depressing 🙃
PleasantVanilla@reddit
Anon complains about the forces of entropy.
Things change, shift or degrade over time simply because that's how the universe works.
Even if the things you love impossibly stay the same forever, you certainly cannot.
Accept that things change and be changed yourself, or hopelessly wring your hands at the ever-changing, indifferent nature of our universe, anon.
TudorG22@reddit
that's not what entropy means
PleasantVanilla@reddit
Intellectually humiliated on my porn app guess I'll prepare the rope now
TudorG22@reddit
lmao, but you were close
NotAPirateLawyer@reddit
Give them a break, they just learned about the word in today's spelling test!
Arstanishe@reddit
Feels like anon is mourning open racism or something
HawasYT@reddit
How?
Arstanishe@reddit
that phrase about "societal pressure". but idk, maybe he meant feminism? Then i stand corrected. anon is not racist, just misogynistic
HawasYT@reddit
Anon wrote about upward cultural pressure - that's not the same.
Take Assassin's Creed for example, ever since Ubishit doubled with RPG elements into the series, people have been asking for more indepth RPG elements, which started eroding stealth roots by having guys impervious to stabbing them in the neck. Then people started asking for dialogue options and decisions which makes little sense when the whole story is you are reading genetic memories of the ancestors
I mean, it's not just people's fault, it's easier to sell people microtransactions when it's P2W items you buy for use in combat and you can't circumevent that with pesky stealthy assassinations but still.
smokeyphil@reddit
The really fucking weird thing with that is even if you do pay ubisoft their dlc bribes and do the in game transactions to buy as much power in your single player game as possible you still dont get to get around the "ahahah no you see Castor here actually took a semester of 201:"not getting stabbed in the neck" intermediate level back in the day so he's always ready for your ass" bullshit.
Upper_Current@reddit
It's anon, so I won't blame you for jumping to conclusions like you were Gerd Wessig.
But you're acting like enshitification isn't a problem in today's media landscape, and that's hilariously delusional.
Arstanishe@reddit
I did not say anything about enshittification. I just don't believe enshittifcation happens not because "shitty people have cultural pressure". Anon is a simpleton that likes to see one simple problem causing all of other problems. I believe the world to be more complicated.
Some people do enshittify because of profits, others - for power or clout, sometimes loudly proposing something progressive-looking. At the same moment other people do act to do good, and cause "societal pressure". Can those get mixed? Sure, Depp vs Heard for example.
Parctron@reddit
He's on 4Chan
HawasYT@reddit
Yeah but then again 4chan is the website where racism is very thinly disguised if at all from what I gather. I mean, I don't claim to be an expert but personally I'd expect mourning open racism on 4chan to be more open than this.
But maybe it's the one 4channer who is socially aware and emotionally inteligent enough to be a good manipulator, what do I know?
SuspiciousPine@reddit
This post is so vague to be meaningless.
Anon here is complaining that there are fewer "thousand year old vampires" in his anime
YoungDiscord@reddit
Its because of exploited IP protection laws
When you come up with something and you KNOW you are the only one who can cash in on it you will mipk it until its destroyed
Now if you know that other peoppe can cash in on that IP then suddenly it stops being about "milking this one thing until it dies" and starts being "ok I gotta either milk this thing but gotta make sure its better than everyone else's or I need to come up with something new"
Hyperstringent easily exploitable IP protection laws are the innovation and creativitykiller.
Why risk making something new/unique if you can now safely milk the same thing.
Who cares if people don't like it as long as you make money.
...and that in a nutshell is why there is so much slop these days.
I will die on this hill if I need to.