The dumber your content is, the better. It applies to all forms of mass media like movies, songs, music, videogames and social media like YouTube, Instagram, Quora. Unless you aren’t targeting a specific high IQ audience, you can use this rule to your advantage. Create dumb or cringe content and it will sell like hotcakes. Here’s a breakdown of a few popular mediums that prove the point.
1: Movies
One of the biggest forms of media in today’s time with the power to influence millions, if not billions. In 1972, a film that is 3 hours long, dark, serious, devoid of jokes broke all records and became a big commercial success. Will it be possible today? Yes, the film will win a lot of awards, but it will not be commercially successful or popular. It will become famous only when it wins some big award and people will be aware that a masterpiece like it exists.
However, if a movie is made today that has a storyline so dumb that the majority of the population can understand and filled with stupid, cheesy jokes up to the brim then it becomes an instant commercial success. Such movies were being made earlier and there’s no problem watching them for a guilty pleasure. But there is a problem when people, a lot of people, consider such movies to be a masterpiece, an intelligent piece of art, and sadly even the greatest film of all time.
Why are such movies being made and why such movies becoming famous? There’s no doubt that if the story is simple or even dumb, then the majority of the population will be able to understand it. Most average people wouldn’t want to watch something that they can’t understand. They will pay to watch something that is within their capacity to interpret, causing more cash flow to the producers. But trouble is, movies are becoming dumber and dumber and richer and richer. With the constant mass production of such dumb movies, it is becoming or has become the new normal. People feel that this is how movies are supposed to be, like the frog in the well. They have no idea what good content is; they have nothing to compare with, nothing to look up to.
What’s the secret formula of making a commercially successful movie. Bathos
Bathos is a tool in literature where a serious situation suddenly turns into something ridiculous. This form of writing has the highest chance of making someone laugh regardless of the type of movie, but at what cost? The quality. When you put in some joke after a serious moment it will make the audience laugh but also destroy the mood of the scene. When you put in a cheesy joke at an average of one min eighteen seconds and then kill a main character at the end, that could have easily survived, to make people cry, what you get is a total stupid mess. Or bring back a dead character to surprise the stupid audience. You can’t expect people to believe you at the end if all you do is keeping lying throughout. But sadly today people believe this.
History has witnessed movies that are three or even four hours long that kept the audience at the edge of their seats without putting any stupid joke in between. Look at The Lord of the rings as an example. All three movies are three to four hours long with simple storylines made for the mass audience. These films were light and funny at moments, but it didn’t have bathos unless used for a prank. Eg: When Gandalf impersonated Saruman to prank his friends. Here bathos works cause it is used at the right place to prank the audience with no scars on the main story. Bathos works the best in parodies. The first movie didn’t have a lot of action comparatively. But the mass audience watched these superlong movies and loved them. But now it won’t happen and there are many more reasons for that. Another splendid example is the Harry Potter franchise. The first two movies were lighthearted and funny (Not bathos.) However, the third film took a big turn and went on the complete dark mode by making many changes and it is considered the best movie of the series by the majority. However, today almost all big franchises are becoming as child-friendly and light as possible by putting in bathos. Kids are the biggest audience and kids laugh at the silliest things like watching someone fall. But sadly even adults are not only consuming and liking such movies but also fighting with everyone to promote that movie like kids. War is a matter of life and death where you won’t waste time talking about your teammate’s beard or keep bouncing. If a movie shows that, then it’s stupid. If that movie does it in every single scene then it’s downright bad, no debate. Shout-out to Cinema Sleuth, Thoughty2, JustTheFacts and youngdefiant for exposing such movies.
The best example of a great action movie is Terminator 2: Judgement day.
First, that movie has an extremely powerful and almost undefeatable antagonist paired up against a vulnerable and weaker protagonist. This creates a sense of threat and makes the audience experience it through its well-directed action sequences. Cameron does this with almost all of his movies.
Second, every punch counts. If the terminator has a dent on his face, then that dent stays there throughout the movie. In Terminator 1 the terminator burns his eyebrows for good when he rides through a wall of fire. That’s the level-of-detail put in these movies. In Terminator 2 the antagonist aka T-1000 is made of liquid metal that makes it almost undefeatable. However, the protagonist is a weaker T-800 made of normal metal. If T-800 breaks his arm in a fight then it’s gone for good. It is realistic and makes the audience care about the characters. It’s not like today’s cash grab blockbusters in which action scenes are inserted purely for fun where the protagonist does get hit a few times, but it has no long-lasting impact.
Third, it is a movie made for kids. It shows the journey of a kid and his friendly robot. But compared to today’s movies, it feels way more mature. Yes, the time travel was illogical, but the rest of the plot is portrayed with enough seriousness to make it believable. The sequel Terminator 3 inserted many unnecessary cheesy jokes, and the movie was criticized for that. But today, movies containing hundred times more cheesy jokes than Terminator 3 are considered masterpieces.
Today movies are being made just for the sake of introducing a character for their future movies. They utilize the same basic story structure over and over again. There are real gems like Logan or joker being made but these are famous because of the franchise and already established popular characters. It wouldn’t have been famous if it had a normal person instead of some popular character.
Finally, sexualize certain characters to use as a lollipop to lure in audiences. No one fights a war in their underwear. Whenever in a war, wear full body armour so that you don’t have to rely on your tiny bracelets to protect yourself. Most of the female leads are put in just to satisfy the male lead and promote the wrong idea that you need a partner or your life is incomplete. This is why the population is booming cause people believe getting married and having kids is the only way to live. Dollars trilogy neither has any female lead nor do the actors look extremely handsome. They look how anyone would look after traveling for miles in a hot burning desert.
Earlier films had big orchestral/electronic scores from greats like John Williams, James Horner, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, John Powell, etc. that are comparable, if not better than classical symphonies. Today most of the music is reduced to just small sound effects and leitmotifs. Loud bass sounds are considered great music instead of the complex interweaving of multiple instruments used to produce music that makes you experience things unimaginable.
2: Music
Click here: https://brawnykingpoetry.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/dont-listen-to-pop-music/
3: Videogames
Team deathmatch was introduced in the 1990s with games like Quake and doom. It was a great feature for that time but it’s still being dragged till today and shoved into games. Apart from the graphical differences and slightly different weapons, there’s nothing much that has evolved. It’s the same thing that requires minimal mental power, over and over again. To make it even worse, insert pay to win options and overpower certain players to provoke the weaker players into buying that same crap. People are still playing this left, right, and center. Other game modes like capture the flag and zone control are also old and being dragged into 2021.
Most of the major franchises that produced quality games are now making fps shooters with a simple 5-hour linear campaign mode with the majority of their focus being on the multiplayer aspect. Why even bother putting in a low-quality campaign mode. They keep making the same game every year with a new name, minor graphics upgrade or a different story that is still linear and people spend their money to buy that.
H1Z1 brought a change by introducing the battle royale mode and as expected all major companies started dumping their copycat games. There are almost a thousand clones of the same game with the only difference being the map, weapon design, and characters that don’t even matter. Open any game store online, and you will find a pile of crap games using the same old formula. It’s either deathmatch, battle royale, or MMORPG. There’s no innovation, only cloning.
People are buying and playing the same repetitive games. Games where the developers strived to make a unique storyline, gameplay, voiceovers, music are not being played because it requires patience and there’s no instant reward system like multiplayer games. There’s no casino effect involved to keep you engaged. If you win a match, you lose the next one cause the AI pairs you up with harder opponents so that you will lose and play again to take revenge.
Good thing is that there are companies like Rockstar that are spending years developing a unique game and not producing crap games with the same formula every year for a cash grab.
4: Social media
Let’s start with the biggest one. YouTube.
4.1: YouTube
What are the biggest channels on YouTube? Gaming, comedy and, songs. All in all, entertainment content.
Let’s start with fitness content cause that’s what I make. What are the biggest fitness videos? Lose 20 pounds in 10 days, lose fat overnight, get abs in 2 weeks, increase height by 5 inches instantly, decrease your height, gain 10 pounds of muscle in a month, lose arm fat, belly fat, thigh fat. Any person with simple common sense can understand that this is not possible, but today people even lack that. These are just the titles, what’s inside the videos is worse. So many stupid methods being advocated that can be debunked by using just simple common sense. But people believe it cause they want to believe it. It gives them hope to cure their insecurities, and no one likes to lose hope. That’s why they can’t digest the bitter truth.
Reading something like increase height by 5 inches ignites a spark of hope in the mind of a short person which he/she fuels. If someone tells the truth that it’s not possible, then the mind plays all sort of tricks to ignore that. It wants to believe in that comforting lie. This is what makes such scam videos popular. They know very well how to cash on people’s insecurities.
Another way to lure people into watching the videos is by being attractive. Most of the biggest YouTubers are famous because of their extremely good looks or loud, cringe content with a mouth wide open on the thumbnail. Good looks can be hypnotizing as I explained in my blog on music. People blindly believe whatever a good-looking person tells them cause we associate good looks with good personality and intelligence. Most of the popular fitness YouTubers make it big because of their looks, especially females. Certain females genetically have a good physique or butt which they use to get popularity. A big butt can be genetic, it doesn’t indicate that the girl knows what she is talking about. But sadly such crap does get views and people blindly follow such things. The dumber, the better.
People spend their time watching someone else play a game. Entertainment content is what gets views instead of knowledgeable content. If someone is making informational videos, then he/she should be good looking or funny or have fast editing. People prefer to listen to a young good-looking funny person giving misinformation instead of a boring old professor giving accurate info. In fitness, if a person is not huge, muscular then, he will have to rely on comedy or fast editing to get subscribers. All big fitness YouTubers are popular because of their physique, if not then have to do something else like comedy. This is because people feel that a muscular guy knows what he is talking about. Most people will prefer to train under Phil Heath instead of Hany Rambod.
Most of the YouTubers are just re-uploading old videos with a different title and packaging to stimulate the algorithm and SEO. Eg: Lose fat in 2021.
Earlier YouTube comments were of people trying to put something helpful. But now the top comments are kids trying to make a joke or spreading false positivity.
4.2: Instagram and Other Short Video Platforms
Let’s be real. A one-min video will not give you any worthy piece of knowledge.
Instagram is all about looking good and posting useless pictures of where you are, what you are eating or selfies. Fitness on Instagram is dead. Most people just post physique or butt pics to gain followers. Many times they aren’t natural but claim to be natural, and people believe it cause they want to believe that even they can look like that by training hard and eating chicken and broccoli. Few Instagram workouts are good but most of them are crap and even dangerous.
Now it has become harder to get organic reach because Instagram wants you to pay for it.
Also, you have to post daily content to grow. It’s about this instant. The excellent video you posted a year ago is gone. Instagram is like a bad and useless newspaper while YouTube is like a library. Old videos also get views and you don’t have to be consistent. You can upload when you feel like you have made something good.
The scrolling here is endless and you can scroll for a lifetime. It’s almost as bad as a drug. They don’t care if you die, all they want is that you don’t close the app before dying so that they will get keep getting money through ads.
4.3: Quora
This is no different from other social media. Wrong answers with false positivity get upvotes while correct answers with bitter truth get deleted. Most of the answers here are stupid. Even a 13-year-old can debate why his/her idol is better than Bach or Beethoven.
Note: If you are a fan then you do not matter in the slightest cause you are dumb to be an enthusiastic devotee of something that you don’t even understand and you just blindly follow it without using your brain. If you are stupid enough to wait for hours to get a glimpse of your idol or if you spend your valuable time promoting, spamming or arguing for your celebrity then you do not matter. Be your own fan and don’t lose your identity. You may believe that you are something special or intelligent but the reality is that you don’t even know the person you are a fan of. You are just fawning over the false image that is being presented to you by the celebrity. When that celebrity does something human, like show arrogance, anger, hatred then everyone loses their mind.
Sadly having a big fanbase gives you a power that nothing can touch you, cause people believe that you are good just because so many other idiots think the same. But the mass can be wrong. Once the majority of the population believed that the earth was flat but they were wrong.
The argument here could be that the attention span of people is decreasing. But the actual problem is that the amount of content within the reach of your fingertips has increased and there’s limited time. If you aren’t able to grab someone’s attention within the first few seconds, then that person jumps to assume that your content is bad and will watch something better. This is why the number of jokes in movies is increasing, cause people will turn off the T.V. and watch something better if they aren’t engaged. High-quality films like Blade Runner flop cause you have to watch the entire film to get your reward at the end. Multiplayer games are popular cause they have an instant reward system.
It’s up to you if you want to watch really good content that’s not fancy or add on to the steaming pile of crap. At least learn to question. Don’t blindly trust or follow anything. Question everything, even religion. That’s the way you will grow. If you like something then question yourself. What can you watch that is better than this? This will improve your taste. Adopt a higher taste and discard the lower one.
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