media literacy

published: 2025.02.23
tagged: girlblogging, games, fandom
by mana

recently, a friend of mine came to me asking about one of my favorite games of all time, yume nikki (which I’ve talked about here before). she mentioned she’d never played it so I informed her it was available for free on steam and sent her on her way.

a few hours later, after I had already gone to bed, I received a message from her, something to the effect of:

“mana…wtf is this game? what am I supposed to do?”

which, while it made me chuckle a little, made me remember something I’d been thinking about recently, a “discovery” (read: thing I noticed) I’d made when I was first getting into the films of David Lynch.

it seems to me, that people do not enjoy having to “figure things out” on their own. that’s not necessarily a positive or negative thing on its own (far be it from me pass judgment on how one spends what meager leisure time we are afforded in this capitalist hellscape), but it’s something I’ve noticed as of late.

people, and not just gamers, but also film enjoyers, watchers of television, and other media enjoyers, seem to be so used to having stories spoonfed to them that engaging with any media that requires one to arrive at their own interpretation is frequently disregarded, dismissed as “too highbrow or pretentious” at best and actively despised for “making (one) feel stupid” at worst.

it is interesting to me, having the experiences I have in fandom, which has a reputation for people ignoring the canon in favor of their own headcanons, interpreting characters in whatever way speaks to them and “fixing” any perceived problems in the original media via the vehicle of fanworks - art, fiction, etc.

these two things seem to be antithetical to one another, but it’s something I’ve observed time and time again. on the one hand, people get creative with the source material, but also seem to have trouble engaging with anything that isn’t clearly spelled out for the viewer - no loose ends allowed!

it just struck me as rather bizarre that creativity within the confines of fandom seems to know no bounds - dreaming up new situations and stories for beloved characters - but engaging with anything that says “what do you think happened?” or leaves one guessing gets written off as bizarre, too difficult to understand, or even derided, as in “they (the creator) thinks they’re so much smarter than the rest of us.”

perhaps this phenomenon is something I’ve experienced by virtue of growing up and living in the USA; we are not exactly known for our literacy (media or otherwise) or intellect, but I’ve also noticed it within the english-speaking internet at large.

one all too often sees evidence of this phenomenon within english-speaking corners of the internet - for example, tumblr’s reputation as the “reading comprehension website” (aka the “how dare you say we piss on the poor” website), but one could argue that it’s much the same on any majority english-speaking social media website. I specify the english-speaking corners of the internet, as that is what I have experience with, but if you frequent another linguistic sphere of the internet and have noticed (or not noticed!) this phenomenon, please let me know!

the boomers of facebook (now meta) are famous for believing any barely-researched or obviously AI-generated (or edited) thing placed in front of them, and it’s much the same with xitter and the rest - are we as a society getting dumber? or perhaps this is how things have always been on the english side of the internet, and I am simply now old enough to recognize it in other adults.

I’m not sure, but what I do know is this: perhaps exercising one’s brain isn’t such a bad idea after all. perhaps, what one needs to continue growing and learning is to challenge ourselves on occasion rather than lapping up whatever SEO or AI slop has been tossed into our collective troughs (in the form of dashboards or timelines) on any given day.

I’m aware I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but it’s becoming alarming, honestly, how much of their time people are spending regurgitating easily debunked misinformation (how else does one explain the completely unfounded Q nonsense becoming so ubiquitous in the older population?) - or engaging with obvious rage or engagement bait, purposefully misinterpreting statements in bad faith and then immediately devolving into ad hominem attacks as soon as one encounters an opinion that isn’t in line with one’s own.

I’m not speaking of the obvious fascist agitprop, of course, which absolutely is rampant and needs to be addressed, but more of the general climate of so-called “mainstream” social media in general these days. I do not have rose-colored glasses for the past; I don’t think social media has ever been good, to be honest. But then again, much of society hasn’t been “good” either, historically speaking.

I don’t really know what conclusion it is I’m trying to draw here, just that these have been some thoughts I’ve been rotating in my mind for some time. Perhaps you feel similarly? Perhaps not. Either way, things sure are exhausting as of late, aren’t they?