Tag: television

Analog Horror: The Past as Nightmare, Not Nostalgia

In recent years, a fascinating trend has emerged within the horror genre that has captivated the imaginations of Generation Z: analog horror. Cribbing the aesthetics of VHS tapes, public access television, and other analog media, this subgenre is the opposite of retrowave. Becauuse instead of eliciting nostalgia for simpler times,…

August 13, 20249 Comments

The New Norm Is a Scam at Best

Public reaction to animated web series The New Norm has ranged from cringing to sad head shaking since the show's first promos dropped. It turns out we weren't cynical enough. Not only is it worse than we thought, The New Norm is a scam at best. And in all likelihood,…

August 1, 20247 Comments

Rooster Teeth Bites the Dust

Earlier reports of geek culture cartoon studio Rooster Teeth Productions' demise turned out to have been premature. But now, the Time-Warner subsidiary's general manager has issued a statement confirming that the animation company has indeed given up the ghost. Dear Rooster Teeth, Since our founders created and uploaded their first…

March 7, 202427 Comments

Late-Night HypnoJourno Clowns

If you were of college age back in the aughts, it was impossible to miss the late-night news parody show craze. Once Comedy Central's saucy puppet shows went off air for the day, the syncopated sounds of smug one-liners punctuated with mindless laughter would filter from dorm rooms, cheap apartments,…

February 6, 202416 Comments

The Nostalgia Jukebox Effect

Nostalgia for pre-Ground Zero pop culture is a subject that comes up a lot on this blog. Pining for the awesome 80s and rad 90s is such a defining feature of Generation Y that this cohort is almost solely responsible for the glut of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles retro action…

January 18, 202416 Comments

Get a Life

One unintended consequence of internet search algorithms' increasing uselessness for finding what you want is sometimes finding what you didn't know you wanted. For instance, the other day I was wrestling with YouTube in search of some obscure clip I was looking for. Instead, YT's search engine spat out some…

February 20, 20237 Comments

Anime Ground Zero

You knew it was coming sooner or later. In another blow to the meme of Based Japan, I regret to inform you that anime did not escape the blast wave of Cultural Ground Zero. H/t to author JD Cowan, whose post last week inspired this one. To give an example…

December 26, 202229 Comments

Nerdocracy

Anyone who's been paying attention knows that the entertainment industry is now the Death Cult's propaganda organ. The more astute observers know that the subversion of Hollywood started decades ago. The movie, music, and game industries aren't alone in their anti-evangelism for the new civic religion. Almost every major corporation…

July 21, 202210 Comments

This Tube

Reader Rudolph Harrier writes in a comment on yesterday's post: I’ve been spending a lot of time with older relatives over the holidays and with the boomer-tier that always means the TV is on in the background, especially for the news (even if it’s the 9 o’clock news and they…

December 30, 20219 Comments

Biggest Loser

Regular readers know I'm always on the lookout for new cultural insights. To that effect, a recent Twitter thread just caught my eye. This thread resonates with a post I wrote earlier this year about the same phenomenon. The only difference is the decade. If you want to gauge how…

October 19, 202112 Comments