Better than you think, worse than you hope

And he kept doing it. Scene after scene.

He spent the film expecting someone to make a joke about how unserious things were or to break the fourth wall or do some other self referential type thing.

Now, maybe I'm just at that point in my cycle or maybe I'm too delicate in general, but I literally teared up hearing that. Straight up cried a bit. It is so fucking sad that sincerity and genuineness is being bred out of people.

People say all the time 'this generation can't take anything seriously!' and really, is it any wonder? Younger people have been trained out of it. You are no longer encouraged to be genuine or show emotion or be honest. You are actively punished for it. In fact, you are almost guaranteed to suffer for it.

That is so fucked up. I'm sorry to go on a bit of a random ramble rant but it's so fucking gut wrenching to see younger people lose that element of themselves. You can't express your passion without being told you're 'crashing out' or 'cringe'. You have to live in this neutral state of fear of perception, and god forbid anybody step outside of it!

You're told you should only consume and succumb and be ironic and emotionless and cool.

Listen, if you're following me and you're like.... 25 or under, let's say. Please. I beg of you. Do not fall for this rhetoric. Please, for the love of all things, feel. Feel and create and be honest with yourself. Indulge in things that make you happy. Be sincere. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Do not let this hyper-capitalistic, hyper-consumerist, self-centred, individualist culture take that from you.

Like it's my understanding that the timeline diverges from our own after WW2, with the United States entering a golden atomic age driven by relentless xenophobic and expansionist conquest, plunging the world into a fascistic death spiral that lead to the resource wars and nuclear armageddon. And to deliver that bleak premise with a satirical edge, it's canonical that American culture is, at least by the 2070s when the world ends, stuck in a sort of neo 50s obsession where the only music and art that's popular enough to survive the nukes is all stuff that originated more than a century beforehand.

Like I get that the criticism being made is that a culture obsessed with its own past is indicative of a bleak present crushed by imperialism and nationalism, but can you really expect me to believe that Fallout's American empire was so bad that culture and art and aesthetics were just. Frozen in time for more than 100 years? Addicted to their own past? That the American people were so embroiled in reactionary ideologies that they were incapable of moving forward and creating anything new?

Anyway did you hear they're rebooting Malcolm in the Middle this year? And the Mummy. And the Devil Wears Prada. And Masters of the Universe. And Meet the Parents. And a 5th toy story movie. And a moana remake.