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Thread: Why "geeking out" is pointless

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    Devil'sAdvocate's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Xl View Post
    Everything in life is ultimately pointless.
    Every "thing" is, once one realizes that "things" are a construct and don't exist outside mental illusions, then they can embrace that which isn't pointless.

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    Standing Wolf's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Devil'sAdvocate View Post
    In a way, that jives with my thoughts about their being parallels between fandom, and other forms of religious or ideological extremism, to the point that "fandom" may even just be a modern psychological surrogate for what religious fanaticism once served.
    It's true, but not only fanaticism - simple and sincere devotion, as well, and even observance. (I know individuals for whom various Comic Conventions are an annual pilgrimage.) And sports fandom, for many, fills the same niche.
    Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard

    "Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry

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    Captdon's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Devil'sAdvocate View Post
    "Geeking out" doesn't imply well-read, it just implies unhealthy and disproportionately obsessive, or to "fandom" what an Islamic fundamentalist is to religion.

    And what you wrote above argues my point, people have been into various stories of different kinds for most of history, so that begs the question why any obsessive 'fandom' disproportionately devoted to a specific franchise, character, genre, etc would need to exist (e.x. I see nothing "objective" about Star Wars that warrants such a disproportionate level of fandom compared other films of similar subject matter and quality).

    In a way, that jives with my thoughts about their being parallels between fandom, and other forms of religious or ideological extremism, to the point that "fandom" may even just be a modern psychological surrogate for what religious fanaticism once served.
    You have to take into consideration one of the oldest thoughts in mankind's history. Each to their own.

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    Chris's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Xl View Post
    Everything in life is ultimately pointless.
    ^^Self-annihilating sentence.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Kacper's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Devil'sAdvocate View Post
    Films, TV, popular music, and mass media as a whole are primarily just mindless entertainment, as they've been since their earliest origins - if they weren't, they wouldn't sell to millions of people to begin with. And the majority of "critics" are just sales pitchmen who have no depth of knowledge and understanding of their subject matter, and are just using 'big words' to write pseudo-intellectual advertisements under the guise of 'critical reviews'.

    Why would anyone trust an overweight, balding, man-child (or woman-child) on the internet who writes "critical reviews" of movies to understand anything about "plot" or "character" development to begin with, when it's obvious that their emotional intelligence became stunted at around age 11? (Or worse yet, trust their opinions on political issues).


    There isn't a single film, TV show, or popular song I've heard in my life which has ever struck me as profoundly as deeper literature I've read, the authors of which, most have never heard has heard of. Even films which are given "Oscars" or shows given "Emmies" are primarily just mindless action or drama and the awards are really just 'participation' awards with the primary aim of enhancing sales.

    This is why "geeking out" is ultimately pointless, it's a vice, not a virtue - just about arguing over the most insignificant details possible as if they were life or death issues, or using TL;DR essays full of fluffy words to try to locate "depth" in things which the author was too ADHD to have cared about to begin with. It's the equivalent of tween girls talking about horoscopes in an issue of Teen Vogue, nothing more than a guilty pleasure devoid of any substance.

    That doesn't mean it's "wrong", but profound? It's as "profound" as beating as beating one off in the guy's locker room.
    1) Magazines, etc demand writers use New Journalism which in my mind is largely masturbatory anyway for the writer. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism )

    2) A buddy of mind is a journalist who writes a lot of what offends you across numerous sites/publications. I have constantly berated him for never giving anything a bad review. He deflects with, "Well there is so much good stuff out there, there is no reason for me to spend my time on the bad stuff." That is code for, "If I write a bad review, the studio/record label/management company will pull my access to their talent and then I won't have a job because I won't have any celebrities that people want to read about to write about; I won't be getting free trips to do interviews; and people will stop flooding me with free screeners to watch and CD's to listen to."

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