memes

People were bitching and moaning twenty years ago about midichlorians, a one-off throw away line that nobody knows it even exists, outside of huge Star Wars nerds

That's fully true, and I guess it just exposes my oldness, more than anything else. I still have the prequels in the "new shit that just came out, last Thursday" category, in my head. But yeah, that was literally twenty fucking years ago.

Modified theory: I still think nerds used to be a little more "I know oh-so-much more about this media than you ever will" and a little less "I'm eternally uncomfortable about the changes being made to my media." Lucas came along and started tinkering with his own franchise, in a way that had not been very common, in past eras.

People were used to movies and shows being remade, and arguing about the merits of the original, versus the new shit. They were used to adaptations from books and comics often being disappointing. They were used to SEQUELS coming along and bringing new ideas. Ideas that sometimes even included some retcons, which would technically reach back and change some of the sacred original canon.

But Lucas made prequels very fashionable. AND he wasn't very careful with what he changed, and how he changed it. And he didn't listen to all the people telling him "hey, Jar Jar is annoying," and "hey, these Galactic Senate scenes are cringe," and "yo, we don't need to know about how the Force works, on a cellular-biology level." He just did what he wanted, in an entirely selfish, fart-sniffing way.

And that became the TEMPLATE for a lot of prequel media, up to the present day. I think film and TV producers started semi-deliberately antagonizing the oldschool fanbases, because it drives engagement.

That's no excuse for people to act like fucking morons, but I do think that we, the nerds, are being consciously manipulated, to draw out the most inflammatory responses, from the worst of us.

I never really intended it to be a generation complaint. Note that, in the meme itself, I didn't say "old nerds" on the top and "young nerds" on the bottom. I said "nerds back in my day" and "nerds in the current era."

A LOT OF THE NERDS ACTING LIKE SHIT-FOR-BRAINS MANIACS ARE TOTALLY THE SAME NERDS WHO USED TO ACT BETTER, BACK IN THE DAY.

It's a mixture of oldheads who went insane and new nerds who went insane more quickly.

I just think the pointless debates were a little less annoying, when they were at least done from a position of "haha, I'm so smart," as opposed to throwing tantrums.

I think part of it is how social media has allowed us to put so much pressure on producers, writers, showrunners, etc, to deliver "explanations" for stuff that they're doing.

Back in the day, you'd have to write a physical letter, stick it in the mailbox, and hope someone at the studio wouldn't just throw it directly in the trash, before it could even get to the producers you were angry at. So the nerds just talked amongst themselves, knowing it would be pointless to engage in letter-writing campaigns.

But now, we collectively abuse our power, brigading media creators for the slightest little thing that we might dislike.