We're gonna Dieeeeeee!!!

 Reposting this comment I made at According To Hoyt.

Yes, we’re all doomed. All going to die, the end is nigh, hasta la vista, baby. Doom and destruction all over TV, radio, streaming. Films, music, books. Yer gonna die.

Well, unless you listen to Korean pop idols. K-Pop is making HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY internationally by being sweet bubbly candy with cute girls and fun dancing that kids can actually -do- while they sing along. Lots of blown kisses and making your hands into heart symbols.

Leaving aside the fan armies and social media dramatics of K-Pop, their business model is to sell entertainment to kids.

No one (that I know of) is doing this in the USA/Britain/Canada right now. The closest you get is Trance, where there’s no singing and you just zone-out while moving your feet. There’s no “Positive Message” in Western music right now, the best you can hope for is “never mind, just drop some molly and dance until you puke.”

Being a geezer I can’t pretend to an encyclopedic knowledge of trendy trends for 2023, but if you look at the -wasteland- of modern entertainment the only shiny spots are in Asia. Japan, Korea, and weirdly, China.

That, my friends, smacks of an Arrangement.

We know for sure, given Sad Puppies, that dead-tree publishing is rigged to favor grimdark grey goo. Books, comics, all the same. Goo.

We know for sure it isn’t selling because bookstores (the few that are still open) are filled with manga now. Western SF/F, one bookcase. Manga, three -aisles- of book cases.

So they are deliberately doing what they KNOW doesn’t work. They know it. For sure. The proof is in the sales numbers. But there they are, persisting. So wtf are they doing?

Well, where else do we see this? Gun control, one example. I know -for sure- it doesn’t work to accomplish the stated purpose of reducing violent crime. Everybody knows it doesn’t work. It is exquisitely obvious that it doesn’t work. But they still do it.

Renewable energy, another example. Windmills and solar can’t supply the electrical grid with reliable power. Everyone knows this. Self evidently, solar doesn’t make power when the sun goes down. Windmills don’t make power when there’s no wind. But what are they doing? Putting up windmills and solar. Which don’t work. For sure.

There are many other examples like recycling, veganism, electric cars, carbon taxes, paper masks for the flu etc. Waste motion, all of it.

So I look at all that, the steady diet of grimdark, the waste of resources, the oppression of individuals at every turn, and it occurs to me I don’t really care any more why they’re doing it. It doesn’t matter why, even if I knew it wouldn’t help.

I’m pretty well done trying to figure out their motivation, and I’m done trying to convince by sweet reason. Where I’m at now is actively subverting their actions by simply saying the truth.

Recycling, sacred cow of Enviros, is a lie. Gun control, sacred cow of the Perennially Concerned and Caring, is a lie. Renewable energy, lie.

Grimdark literature, sacred cow of the Cognoscenti, is worse than a mere lie. It is a mind poison aimed at harming the people who read it.

K-Pop. Manga. Anime. That’s the thing.