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The forgotten pleasures of analog media

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Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#51

Post by slekker »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #23
999900000999 wrote: post #13

Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix t…

On the other hand: I had basic Top 40-adjascent music available to me. Nothing impressive was to be had at Wal-Mart or Target. Target had better selection than the chain music store in the mall, wal-mart was out of the question due to censorship (they'd sell movies with strong language and sexual situations, but wouldn't sell music with the same). I've never met anyone in a movie rental place. I currently have a wide…

Let me guess: Ragnarok Online?

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#52

Post by charles_f »

> There’s great pleasure in repetition and ritual. My family came to know a lot of dialogue by heart.

That bit resonates a lot with me. We had a rotation of regular movies that we would watch with my family and it was a pleasure every time. I remember the cheer comfort that came out of this, when someone proposed to watch a classic. We keep quoting some of these to this day.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#53

Post by Loughla »

dfxm12 wrote: post #48
Loughla wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now. So many multi billion dollar companies nudging me in this direction or that direction… This is exactly what I haven't been able to put into words without sounding and feeling like a giant hipster douche. It's not about finding smaller…

The internet has 100% made the world less fun. More accessible, sure, but way less fun now that it's mostly corporate (or at least seems that way). The world, especially the media world, was always "mostly corporate", from the big 3 TV networks, big 4 record labels, big 5 movie studios, etc. The Internet brings independent media to you in a way that was never possible in the past. The record store still exists, and i…

>Now, in addition to the guy there, you can get additional opinions/recommendations from across the world on message boards, twitter, blogs, wherever, too.

I 100% agree with your first statements - the access is way better now than it was.

But this sentence is where I absolutely see the problem. Again, I could trust that guy to recommend music because he liked the music. Now, every blog, every tweet, every recommendation just feels gamed. It seems to me that astroturfing is just everywhere. It's impossible to escape, and it ruins the experience of finding new music.

Everything is for sale and it feels awful.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#54

Post by dfxm12 »

Loughla wrote: post #53
dfxm12 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet has 100% made the world less fun. More accessible, sure, but way less fun now that it's mostly corporate (or at least seems that way). The world, especially the media world, was always "mostly corporate", from the big 3 TV networks, big 4 record labels, big 5 movie studios, etc. The Internet brings independent media to you in a way that was never possible in the past. The record store still exists, and i…

>Now, in addition to the guy there, you can get additional opinions/recommendations from across the world on message boards, twitter, blogs, wherever, too. I 100% agree with your first statements - the access is way better now than it was. But this sentence is where I absolutely see the problem. Again, I could trust that guy to recommend music because he liked the music . Now, every blog, every tweet, every recommend…

Everything is for sale... including the records the guy at the record store likes. To claim everything else is gamed/astroturfing because of your feeling is pretty disingenuous.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#55

Post by Broken_Hippo »

slekker wrote: post #51
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand: I had basic Top 40-adjascent music available to me. Nothing impressive was to be had at Wal-Mart or Target. Target had better selection than the chain music store in the mall, wal-mart was out of the question due to censorship (they'd sell movies with strong language and sexual situations, but wouldn't sell music with the same). I've never met anyone in a movie rental place. I currently have a wide…

Let me guess: Ragnarok Online?

Oh, that would have been fancy. No, this was one of the multitudes of text-based games that were out some years back, most of which had the same basic layout and features. This one was Samurai themed, but I've seen plenty of other themes.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#56

Post by brandonmenc »

999900000999 wrote: post #13

Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix t…

> I went out with a girl I met at a record store once

I went out with a girl I met on last.fm once.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#57

Post by madengr »

stryan wrote: post #31
spacemadness wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tape is fetishized like crazy right now so that’s not surprising. I see runs of 500 tapes on Bandcamp sold out immediately all the time for not-so-well-known artists.

I think the vinyl shortage is contributing a lot to this. Right now if you want a physical copy that's not a CD or by a major act (Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran both released vinyl albums that supposedly took up the majority of the worlds music vinyl production), you're stuck with tapes. And very few people seem to want CDs. I remember only a couple years ago that tapes were the dirt cheap option of getting something p…

No post body was provided.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#58

Post by WalterSear »

999900000999 wrote: post #13

Another thing not mentioned is the fun in finding media itself. I went out with a girl I met at a record store once, and I’ve met several musicians when I’m out buying music. When you can get everything beamed directly to your house, you miss out on so many adventures. I imagine many marriages originated from chance encounters at Blockbuster. Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix t…

> Instead of some cool college student suggesting an old 80’s film, Netflix tells you to watch it’s new 50 million dollar movie. While I love the internet , the world feels less fun now.

Netflix isn't the internet. Those cool 80's films are still out there.

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#59

Post by MiddleEndian »

ghaff wrote: post #43
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #37

Reminds me of the Hedonistic Treadmill - whatever your environment, your brain adapts as the baseline and everything slightly below it is now disappointing while everything above it slightly elating. Usually this concept is used to explain why lottery winners do not seem to be all that much happier than the rest of the populace, but it applies here to: Whatever is required to get media is the normal: You build little…

In general, you adjust to what is available and what is relatively easy. This is true in a lot of contexts. If some activity isn't available to you or is a big hassle--say you don't have enough room in your apartment to store some outdoor activity gear or a ready way to transport it--you probably just do something that's easier most of the time. And you probably adapt to that rather than banging your head against the…

>say you don't have enough room in your apartment

It's all good until you disagree with your roommate/SO on what fits into your apartment... then the head-wall-banging can be indefinite!

Re: The forgotten pleasures of analog media

#60

Post by pjerem »

a-dub wrote: post #21

i feel the same way about spotify. it's great having access to everything, but it ultimately kinda destroyed my music hobby. the version of me from 10 or 20 years ago would be ashamed of what i listen to now... but that could also just be the natural effects of aging.

I’m younger than you and as a teen with no money, I used to listen free music on Jamendo. There were a lot of crap on it but also a good number of very authentic, very nice albums. They were hard to found but it was so good once you discovered some new thing like. It was like the music was made for me. Waiting for me to discover it and listening it in loop.

Spotify is full of music I like. But it’s probably because it’s full of music that was intentionally made to be liked by most humans.

It’s like industrial food. Sure I like it and I could probably eat that everyday (health issues aside). But it’s boring.

All these feels like being a spoiled kid.

I sometimes wonder if I wouldn’t be more happy just going back to piracy. « Owning » those movies, that music library on this hard drive.

I don’t really miss the physical mediums (ok, a little) but what I miss is owning the stuff. Even if it’s files.

I am absurdly irritated when things just disappear on Netflix or when Season $x it’s not available there whereas I’m paying every month to access those things. It really feels like the industry disrespects me.

At this point, I think the only reason why I’m still paying is that I’m sharing my account with other people.

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