Film
"The profound ideas at which American Beauty grasped now seemed passé at best and clueless at worst. Here was a saga about blue bloods, whose wealth, education and good looks had bored them to the point of crisis. The class depiction at the center seemed more like low-hanging snark than trenchant analysis. In a roundabout way, Sept. 11 was the beginning of the end for this sort of movie, much like the Vietnam War luring 1970s Hollywood away from the once-prolific Western genre."
Literature
"Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, an adaptation of the 2011 novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, is about to debut. And the internet is ready and waiting to tell him why that’s a terrible idea.
“Ready Player One is a terrible book and it will be a terrible movie,” the Outline proclaimed
.
“Many people find its take on games and so-called genre art to be a dull, pandering tableau of reference points as an end unto themselves,” the A.V. Club informed.
Reading the end of Ready Player One, opined a writer for Tor, “I felt like a kid who thinks eating an entire cake by himself sounded fun — I was sick of it, and craving something of real substance.”
A time traveler from 2011 could be forgiven for being deeply confused by this response. In 2011, Ready Player One was beloved. It was “a guaranteed pleasure.” It was “witty.” It was not only “a simple bit of fun” but also “a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”
What gives? How did the consensus on a single book go from “exuberant and meaningful fun!” to “everything that is wrong with the internet!” over the span of seven years?"
“Ready Player One is a terrible book and it will be a terrible movie,” the Outline proclaimed
.“Many people find its take on games and so-called genre art to be a dull, pandering tableau of reference points as an end unto themselves,” the A.V. Club informed
.Reading the end of Ready Player One, opined a writer for Tor
, “I felt like a kid who thinks eating an entire cake by himself sounded fun — I was sick of it, and craving something of real substance.”A time traveler from 2011 could be forgiven for being deeply confused by this response. In 2011, Ready Player One was beloved. It was “a guaranteed pleasure
.” It was “witty.” It was not only “a simple bit of fun” but also “a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”What gives? How did the consensus on a single book go from “exuberant and meaningful fun!” to “everything that is wrong with the internet!” over the span of seven years?"
"Let’s be real, here. Ready Player One is not going to be a book people remember forever. It’s a book that’s going to fade into the ranks of mediocre sci-fi novels and, hopefully, be forgotten. And there’s several reasons for this:
1. The movie is, as many of you have informed me, superior in most aspects to the book.
2. The book was never that good to begin with. There’s nothing really original about it, it doesn’t have anything meaningful to say, the plot isn’t especially gripping, and the only thing most people will remember is the acres of references.
3. Even if Cline manages to write some more books that are smash hits, they’re not going to elevate Ready Player One by association. When Armada came out, the book was blasted as a shitty copy of Ready Player One, and it became very apparent that Cline is a one-trick pony who uses cheap nostalgia as a substitute for actual quality.
4. Attitudes toward gamers and obsessive fans have changed a lot over the years. Ready Player One was released in 2011; since then, there’s been a whole lot of very negative things that have happened including gamers and other toxic fans. I’m pretty sure we’re not allowed to go into any more detail than that, but I think you all know what we’re talking about. Either way, a book that encourages and endorses elitism and making your life revolve around games and movies isn’t going to go down well in this day and age."
—Astra, Das Sporking
Live-Action TV
"That's it. We're deader than tank tops!"
—The Cat, Red Dwarf
Music
""Zingalamaduni" didn't just sell low numbers, it arguably sold negative numbers, in that it seemed to retroactively undo the success of the first album. No one thinks about them anymore, even when you mention them by name - people think you're talking about the show!"
. No one thinks about them anymore, even when you mention them by name - people think you're talking about the show!"—Todd in the Shadows on '90s hip hop group Arrested Development
Video Games
"There's a difference between something that's old-school and something that's outdated. Old-school is like Atari 2600, the games are primitive but they're still fun to play, you can always go back to them. Outdated is something you never wanna go back to!"
"So [Shaq Fu] was released on October 28th, 1994, and how was it? ...What are you talking about? What are you- you know exactly how bad the game is because nobody would shut up about it for years! This is widely considered now to be one of the worst fighting games of all time, but back when it was first released, it was given... mixed to positive reviews?
Yeah, Shaq Fu being terrible is actually something that came about with the turn of the millennium. Whether it's the passage of time making Shaq Fu age like milk or people getting higher standards for what fighting games should be, Shaq Fu's legacy began well after its release."
Yeah, Shaq Fu being terrible is actually something that came about with the turn of the millennium. Whether it's the passage of time making Shaq Fu age like milk or people getting higher standards for what fighting games should be, Shaq Fu's legacy began well after its release."
"The first time I ever saw [Devil May Cry], I actually saw it before it came out because Gamespot actually had video of it, they had like a minute of video of it on their E3 website that year, and what ended up happening is they called it 'Capcom's answer to Castlevania!' and 'Will this be able to compete with, like, any upcoming Konami 3D Castlevanias?' And what a fucking time capsule that idea is!"
Web Video
"Traditions and holidays are important to all cultures, but a hero in one era may become a villain in the next as our historical knowledge expands and our values evolve."
—History On Trial - History vs. Christopher Columbus
"Chameleon Twist 2. Chameleon PISS POO! Anybody remember when those early AVGN ripoffs would say stuff like that and expect people to find it funny? Those were the days..."
—Nitro Rad in his Chameleon Twist 2 review
"One of the worst feelings you can ever have with any game is coming back to it years later, and realizing it wasn't as good as you remember. And with how much I and many others like to discuss older games, this is far from uncommon. Now, I say 'fell from grace' and not 'loved, but are now hated', because most of these games are less bad, and more just... poorly aged."
"So congrats! Your legacy's in ashes! Remembered as the fascist sympathizing cause of climate change and car crashes!"
—Karl Marx, talking to Henry Ford, Epic Rap Battles of History.
Western Animation
Trevor: Yeah! For example, my favorite movie is Fighting Family's Valentine's Vacation.
Students: BOO!
Candle Fox: NOBODY LIKES THAT MOVIE, ANYMORE!
Students: BOO!
Candle Fox: NOBODY LIKES THAT MOVIE, ANYMORE!
—Kiff
Real Life
"Every artistic form -— the blank-verse drama, the Greek plays, the novel — has only so many possibilities and only so long a life. And I have a feeling that in movies, until we break completely, we are only increasing the library of good works."
