Downfall of the American Media Empire and the importization of foreign cultures

FlangerFobia

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I think its pretty clear that the american media empire is on the decline somewhat, as hollywood has been increasingly losing revenue, mainstream news is losing viewers, people watching less tv in general, a good deal of music coming from independent creators and so on. When many people decide to tune out of american made media many turn elsewhere, as things related to japanese culture have gotten so popular within the past 15 years. Look at anime for example, it was seen as weird not too long ago, now i would say more teens and young adults watch anime than they do american tv shows. I may be wrong, but from anecdotal evidence it seems to be true. I think this is what happens when the media loses touch with the populace, people will seek other sources to consume entertainment, but in the long run im wondering where this will ultimately end up. I think we will definitely see a decrease in power among media conglomerates and independent content creators will likely continue to rise in popularity in addition to consuming more media from outside the usa. What is your guys opinions?
 
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Outer Heaven

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The first signs of a declining empire is it's fraying edges. This can be seen both in the physical territory the US controls/has influence over (Afghanistan + Ukraine currently) and in the soft power it once held waning. People all over the world, not just in the US see America in a far more negative light than the beacon of freedom it portrayed itself as in the past. Part of this is because of globalization and the internet allowing others to eat away at the global American media market share but another part of this is the shift into a multi polar world we will experience in the next 20 years.

While the political landscape might seem irrelevant to media, keep in mind that soft power is still the name of the game and media exports are a big part of the way countries build and exert political clout. The biggest social media platform on earth right now is owned by the Chinese. That alone is a huge signal for changes to come. Imagine telling someone in 2010 that most people would be using a Chinese Youtube competitor.

The real change here is not a grassroots uprising of independents, its a war between US conglomerates and their foreign counterparts over who gets to influence and spy on you for their governments instead of just the Americans doing it.
 
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Jade

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I don't think you're entirely wrong, but it's important to remember that just because most people don't trust american media, or necessarily even watch american media, that doesn't immediately signal the death knell of the whole system. The reason for this is due their ability to disseminate information over large areas and hit diverse groups of people with it. Take the transgender issue. Very few people are actually transgender, yet talk about it is still everywhere regardless. Even if people are apathetic or against the acceptance of it, they're still talking about it. The sheer repetition, saturation, and noise of the issue can shape everything else around it. That's the kind of power the american media holds.

Furthermore, and more importantly, the american media (and the american economy, for that matter) is backed by the american military. There has never in the history of the world been a military so powerful as america's. I don't think the dominance of american media will go away until the american military loses its ability to enforce its will - which could be relatively soon, if you look at the appalling degradation in the american military at the moment. Morale is terrible because nobody is enthused to fight for a group of parasitic elites that think of them only as things to be used and discarded at their leisure, and political infighting within the military, as well as the more recent focus on lowering military standards - and thus the quality of the troops - so that special interests can champion that they pushed the bar to allow X group of underprivileged people to qualify who otherwise would not have, in order to further their own political goals.
 
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FlangerFobia

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I don't think you're entirely wrong, but it's important to remember that just because most people don't trust american media, or necessarily even watch american media, that doesn't immediately signal the death knell of the whole system. The reason for this is due their ability to disseminate information over large areas and hit diverse groups of people with it. Take the transgender issue. Very few people are actually transgender, yet talk about it is still everywhere regardless. Even if people are apathetic or against the acceptance of it, they're still talking about it. The sheer repetition, saturation, and noise of the issue can shape everything else around it. That's the kind of power the american media holds.

Furthermore, and more importantly, the american media (and the american economy, for that matter) is backed by the american military. There has never in the history of the world been a military so powerful as america's. I don't think the dominance of american media will go away until the american military loses its ability to enforce its will - which could be relatively soon, if you look at the appalling degradation in the american military at the moment. Morale is terrible because nobody is enthused to fight for a group of parasitic elites that think of them only as things to be used and discarded at their leisure, and political infighting within the military, as well as the more recent focus on lowering military standards - and thus the quality of the troops - so that special interests can champion that they pushed the bar to allow X group of underprivileged people to qualify who otherwise would not have, in order to further their own political goals.
I agree with this. I think the issue with afghanistan certainly has signaled the fact that the usa will never win a war again imo
 
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Outer Heaven

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Furthermore, and more importantly, the american media (and the american economy, for that matter) is backed by the american military. There has never in the history of the world been a military so powerful as america's. I don't think the dominance of american media will go away until the american military loses its ability to enforce its will - which could be relatively soon, if you look at the appalling degradation in the american military at the moment. Morale is terrible because nobody is enthused to fight for a group of parasitic elites that think of them only as things to be used and discarded at their leisure, and political infighting within the military, as well as the more recent focus on lowering military standards - and thus the quality of the troops - so that special interests can champion that they pushed the bar to allow X group of underprivileged people to qualify who otherwise would not have, in order to further their own political goals.
I'm too tired to write a full response to this atm but the long and short of it is that the military has been neutered by design to prevent an armed uprising in the US. They arnt meant to win foreign wars, the empire is shrinking and its focussing in on itself so it doesn't collapse. Forget the soldiers and look into how many generals are pozzed. The merchant class replaced the warrior class with their own people so that there is 0 chance that the military turns against the system. The military exists now only as a threat to US civilians that act up.
 
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Tbh, long time ago i started to ignore american media and trendings as much as possible, and focusing in asian culture and entertainment in general, did you know how many overlooked gold you can find there? From Japanese Animes, South Korean and Hong Kong Movies, to Turkish Dramas, Russian masterpieces and Indian Bollywood, what they lack in budget, they compensate with creativity and over the top scenes. (And you got the plus of getting ahead in fashion and aesthetics, because nowadays it seems people like to copy that region trendings too lol)


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYCh5nxyCI
 
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Jade

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Tbh, long time ago i started to ignore american media and trendings as much as possible, and focusing in asian culture and entertainment in general, did you know how many overlooked gold you can find there? From Japanese Animes, South Korean and Hong Kong Movies, to Turkish Dramas, Russian masterpieces and Indian Bollywood, what they lack in budget, they compensate with creativity and over the top scenes. (And you got the plus of getting ahead in fashion and aesthetics, because nowadays it seems people like to copy that region trendings too lol)


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wYCh5nxyCI

There's a really good Turkish series called Yunis Emre my mom was obsessed with for a while, about an Ottoman poet of the same name. It's a historical fiction series and is a great look into life during the time of the Ottomans. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing.
 
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The biggest social media platform on earth right now is owned by the Chinese. That alone is a huge signal for changes to come. Imagine telling someone in 2010 that most people would be using a Chinese Youtube competitor.
There are lots of good points getting brought up in this thread, but I only have the time to focus on one, so this will be it. I'm genuinely baffled by how popular Tik Tok has gotten. As far as I can tell, and admittedly I've never used either platform, Tik Tok is literally just a Chinese owned version of Vine. It makes no sense to me why Vine died, yet Tik Tok is taking over the web when it's basically the same thing.

Furthermore, while I know that Google and Facebook and all the platforms under their ownership are essentially sophisticated forms of spyware, there's just something about surrendering my information to the Chinese that doesn't sit well with me. Maybe it's latent patriotism in me, or maybe it's just that I don't see the appeal of extremely short form content (I'm similarly baffled by Twitter's success). I don't know, I just really don't get Tik Tok. And would appreciate if somebody could intelligently explain it's appeal.

If you want to post 3 second content you can do that just as easily on YouTube... But at least on YouTube there is a chance to eventually stumble upon something of quality.
 
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There's a really good Turkish series called Yunis Emre my mom was obsessed with for a while, about an Ottoman poet of the same name. It's a historical fiction series and is a great look into life during the time of the Ottomans. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing.
Hey, what a coincidence, my mother also like Turkish series, should i check it out, maybe i pass her the recomendation, thanks.
 
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There are lots of good points getting brought up in this thread, but I only have the time to focus on one, so this will be it. I'm genuinely baffled by how popular Tik Tok has gotten. As far as I can tell, and admittedly I've never used either platform, Tik Tok is literally just a Chinese owned version of Vine. It makes no sense to me why Vine died, yet Tik Tok is taking over the web when it's basically the same thing.

Furthermore, while I know that Google and Facebook and all the platforms under their ownership are essentially sophisticated forms of spyware, there's just something about surrendering my information to the Chinese that doesn't sit well with me. Maybe it's latent patriotism in me, or maybe it's just that I don't see the appeal of extremely short form content (I'm similarly baffled by Twitter's success). I don't know, I just really don't get Tik Tok. And would appreciate if somebody could intelligently explain it's appeal.

If you want to post 3 second content you can do that just as easily on YouTube... But at least on YouTube there is a chance to eventually stumble upon something of quality.
I do not care about all that chinese stuff going on, but i don't use TikTok because of how cringey it is to use it, it's the same format over and over again, lack of originality + my lack of sense of normie humor = just a really annoying plataform to use, if i would like an ugly asshole talking over someone else content, i would watch the news, at least i got more information in the news than the one i got from tik-tok
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brentw

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Look at anime for example, it was seen as weird not too long ago, now i would say more teens and young adults watch anime than they do american tv shows.

Look at manga vs comics.
The US comics industry is in such shambles there's been months where a single manga title outsold the entire US comic industry.
 
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Chao Tse-Tung

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There are lots of good points getting brought up in this thread, but I only have the time to focus on one, so this will be it. I'm genuinely baffled by how popular Tik Tok has gotten. As far as I can tell, and admittedly I've never used either platform, Tik Tok is literally just a Chinese owned version of Vine. It makes no sense to me why Vine died, yet Tik Tok is taking over the web when it's basically the same thing.
My take on this is a fairly simple one, although I admit I've never used/been interested in tiktok or vines, I've been surrounded by people who do, so this is anecdotal but nonetheless I suspect that it plays a significant role.

Basically a large portion of the userbase/viewers on vine were all very, very young, like, usually pre-highschool young, as limiting things to sub-minute clips is going to naturally attract people more susceptible to instant-gratifcatiom video-bites. When vine dies, all these kids now have a mind geared towards that sort of content and no real outlet (besides YouTube where you had to wade through real content to find your short nonsense). Then, along comes tiktok a few years later, like a direct heroin IV into the arm of a withdrawaling opioid addict, and suddenly now this new platform gets the originally intended audience of middle-schoolers as well as the original vine-watchers, now old enough to produce content as well as your young millenial and old gen-z content creators hoping to make a buck of off the easily exploitable low bar for kids' humor. Factor in that it's not largely English/American-centric which brings in a whole hemisphere of users, as well as contributes to the point of the OP of this thread, that American kids are also interested in seeing media and culture from that hemisphere.

This is, of course, I'm sure only a part of the apps success, but it explains enough for me to have an answer in my mind when I ask myself "how???"
 
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Outer Heaven

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There are lots of good points getting brought up in this thread, but I only have the time to focus on one, so this will be it. I'm genuinely baffled by how popular Tik Tok has gotten. As far as I can tell, and admittedly I've never used either platform, Tik Tok is literally just a Chinese owned version of Vine. It makes no sense to me why Vine died, yet Tik Tok is taking over the web when it's basically the same thing.
Its all in the algorithm and the format. Vine was too limiting in having only 6 second videos. TikTok goes up to a minute I believe which is short enough for a person to binge many videos but not too short as to lose meaning. TikTok also has the react feature which as tasteless as it is helps promote and circulate 'good content'.

The TikTok algorithm works by perpetually recommending you things even if you weren't interested in them directly (unlike YouTube for example) which gets people watching obscure content, giving anybody a chance to blow up and making people interested to watch a variety of content instead of just popular creators. The algorithm on TikTok has a way of creating communities through its recommendations. If there's a video about bonsai trees that gets an unusual amount of views, suddenly you have 'bonsai TikTok'. By constantly highlighting niche communities at random, TikTok content stays more fresh than 6 seconds deez nuts memes.

Don't get me wrong the app is satanic but you have to appreciate the workmanship here. TikTok's success is not an accident by any means.
 
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American cultural hegemony is eroding away gradually, but not swiftly. As much as how fucking fake the Chinese are, they are attracting much of current western corporate favoritism and preference in the form of media and big tech companies setting up their businesses there as the CCP is much more lax in the way how they practice labor(i.e see any Liveleak video set in a factory in China). With in time, when some major armed conflict involving China comes, only the actions of the companies will prove whose loyalties lie. And that's where I think why we are kind of due for some armed civil war in the United States with the presence of BLM chimping out and causing general destruction.

Already people are losing their patience for certain political liberal talking points in the west. Why should I support open borders and blm if the groups they represent just burn shit down and vectors of drugs and violence, why should I have to support LGBT faggotry if it allows for drag queens to molest children, children(who are vulnerable and very impressionable) to be convinced into taking life changing chemicals that will have vast consequences as they have not had enough independence yet to formulate their own coherent world view, corrupt corporations to use progressive politics to mask deceitful and draconian practices, and in short, I think there's going to be a huge right wing counterculture backlash against many established left wing politics. Many left wing or left wing adjacent individuals and people who act like there's any major conservative groups or politicians that have any voting or societal power act as if they are still oppressed or minorities when they can practically just get mass media and government sympathy if something bad happens to them, same with any minority that is in any pro-progressive western country. I'm not exactly a wignat, but current consensus media and government structures are far more left leaning and the American structure is going to extremely suffer if some pandora papers style leak happens.
 
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Stinkfist

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It seems to me that american media/culture is taking a slurp at its own "poison", since it dwells on exporting itself to grow and survive. Now it's being threatened by foreing culture coming in mainly from Japan, Korea and elsewhere.
 
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I'm not American, so I'm not sure if my opinion on this is even relevant, but I think the biggest threat is not the imported stuff, but the insufferably policed woke shit that is being produced within your borders and then spreads all over the western world because "America gr8t, we cannot think for ourselves duh so we have to follow them". It's like for every fucking production there has to be a quota of minorites that have to be "represented" otherwise the production is "oppressive". The minute you start favouring a group over another, especially when it's a minority (LGBT and all) or plainly and simply unhealthy (obese people) and treating them like helpless victims who have to be "saved" and "represented correctly" rather than actually weaving them into the cultural fabric along with everyone else, so to speak, that's when things start to go to shit. Now if there are too many white people it's like, oh my god, there are not enough minorities represented, this is white supremacist, this can't go on any longer, let's add a couple blacks and oh yes why not a couple gay/trans people while we're at it, and then you get a watered down bullshit show that lost all of its potential because the goddamn wokes ruined it. The black/gay/fat/whatever token characters have usually no other personality and you can tell it's just "for the quota". It just brings the quality of the show down. In a properly made show you don't introduce a character to a series just because they're fat, or trans, they just HAPPEN to be trans or fat, but have otherwise a full fledged personality and all. It's part of their character rather than their raison d'être.

The enemy is within, not without. If American culture ends up as a garbage woke trash fire, people will just seek their good stuff elsewhere, which means more interest in non-American stuff. The rats leave the sinking ship, that's a well-known concept. Plus to many westerners, the other end of the planet is exotic and mysterious in some way. It's "unusual", it's more "special". Another reason for them to want to take a look there. It's more enticing because of novelty and unusual-ness.

No really. It's not the importation of other cultures you should be worried about, but the woke hysteria. Let other cultures come: after all, getting exposed to alterity, as opposed to be closed off, is how we evolve. You can have the most beautiful culture in the world, but if your ideas don't evolve past stone age, people will get sick of it and go away. Getting exposed to other cultures has never meant "lose your own identity". There is a whole world between having friendly relations with another nation while retaining your own identity vs. being engulfed and losing your individuality.
 
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Kenshiro

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I'm gonna disagree. Especially with things like Disney plus, netflix and amazon. These are all really popular and drive a big part of internet traffic. Their really popular where they are available. Crunchyroll has an estimated 4 million subscribers vs Netflix and disney's 200 milion+ each. INB4 piracy, the mandalorian was estimated to be the most pirated show in the world at one point.
 
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Nothing Hollywood has produced in the last 30 years can compare with even the smallest of overseas productions. WAKALIWOOD WILL RISE, NOW IS THE TIME SUPA SOLDIERS


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LostintheCycle

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I'm genuinely baffled by how popular Tik Tok has gotten. As far as I can tell, and admittedly I've never used either platform, Tik Tok is literally just a Chinese owned version of Vine. It makes no sense to me why Vine died, yet Tik Tok is taking over the web when it's basically the same thing.
The format really doesn't play as much of a part as you may think. Vine had its heyday but the content was always specific. It was the land of skits to everyone. I remember it being a bad service towards the end, like videos not loading or whatever, which is why I noped out of it, and not long after it got bought and died. TikTok came in a different landscape than Vine because Internet culture had firmly established itself as the mainstream, instead of just what certain kids did. I watched this happen in real-time in high school. Almost all the youth are 'in' on the modern meme. TikTok acts less like a certain format alone, and more like a hub of many streams of content. There was another thread on this forum talking about the monoculture, one person brought up the subcultures was meant to carve out spaces away from the monoculture until they got swallowed up by it. Well TikTok is that, simultaneously the monoculture but also letting you stay in your own overseen bubble. Vine could never do that. TikTok is the home of the mainstream and altstream, it is the harbinger of trends and aesthetics, and the cutting edge zoom-humor And I swear to god it is the reason why everyone has those fucking RGB strip lights and gay keyboards. how did they astroturf RGB lights into video games?? Perhaps it doesn't even serve any other purpose but to prove they are in control, the kids WILL buy their Chinese manufactured strip lights and there's nothing you can do.

Okay I've ranted enough, so here's an actually interesting thing which practically nobody has mentioned about TikTok that I can't help but notice. On TikTok, there is a crazy amount of views an average person can get compared to most other social medias. if I want to make some YouTube video on a new channel, I can expect maybe twenty views after a day. On TikTok, my low was a fifty, my normals were a hundred or two hundred, and once I hit a high of maybe six hundred? All over the span of a month, and I wasn't trying to make anything viral, it was actual crap, yet it seemed I was hot stuff. I've seen accounts of people I know personally one guy who makes terrible shit, but garnered a cool eight hundred on a video of him lip syncing to a video I think there is some algorithmic magic at work which makes people feel like they get tons of views, and this is part of the magic that ropes them in, eager to seek their next Warholian success. It's the communal television where everyone has their spotlight, and there is no need for anything except emulation and mockery, and maybe a bit of debauchery. The real content, as in the content itself, doesn't matter. I don't know if it's because of the mushy meme culture, peoples mushy brains, or both of those mushed together.

It may seem like Vine is the same format as TikTok, but it goes deeper than the video limitations. TikTok is impressive the way a monolithic skyscraper is. It is a shelter for all its 'cultures' under its single watchful eye. It is the peak of all social media ideals. It is now the intimately expressive medium of our age regardless of it being good or bad, it just is. It triumphs over an app that spits out King Bach skits about 'When you wit da guys but yo girl say she home alone :schitztroll:'
 
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