critical thinking crisis: the effects on movies, social media & information

So a few months ago, I finished the book.

I, who I've never known, men.

I won't spoil the book entirely, but basically it's a book that just doesn't explain itself at all.

It's a first point of view story where the main character essentially doesn't really know why she's anywhere, or what is happening to her, where she's going and doesn't know anything about the world that she lives in, and knows that she will never find out.

If that sounds only vague. It's because the book is also pretty vague.

Anyways, after I finished the book, I decided to go on TikTok and see some of the reviews that people had about it, because I know that I had initially seen some hype about this book on the app.

So I'm like, what are the Booktok girls saying?

And well, I found some really good takes from some people also that like, didn't even like the book, but they still had a good like perspective on it.

There were also so many people so many people mad about the fact the book didn't explain itself.

tied up with a bow at the end and like, send you like a goodbye kiss whenever you finished it.

Get zero answers and I've read a few reviews saying that's the point.

Draw your own conclusion.

I'm not an author.

Why do I have to draw my own conclusion?

Give me the conclusion.

The whole point of this book, I guess, is we don't need men.

But like, we already knew that, did we?

So why do we need 100 and.

But it was just so confusing because people that are book tokkers like the whole thing that you do is like, you read books, and if you can't even sort of enjoy a book, that is it, like a Colleen Hoover book.

I just really don't understand why you love to read so much.

I get that you could read for pleasure.

I'm just being nit picky here, but I was really just confused at this with like, the book talk community, or at least the videos that I'm doing.

Like, this is what Book Tok was.

That being said, it got me thinking about how I feel like we're at the point recently where if people can't get their answers extremely easily, they just don't even try to get the answers at all.

And sometimes people can get the answer extremely easily, and they just choose not to pursue it, because it's like one ounce of effort.

And it's not even just the audience.

I feel like there's been a rise in media where everything is spoon fed to the viewer because they know that, like as a whole, as a society, we are just lacking critical thinking skills.

Also, I'm a little sick, so please ignore my nasally voice.

Media and information literacy is let's just be frank here, a skill that a lot of people are lacking in case we need a refresh of what those two things are.

Media literacy is defined as the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media, and to determine their accuracy or credibility.

Information literacy is defined as the ability to recognize what information is needed, find it effectively, evaluate its quality, and use it responsibly to achieve a specific purpose.

I feel like a lot of people use these terms interchangeably, which makes sense, like especially online where it's mostly going to be media literacy.

But I thought for the sake of this video, I would make the distinction because I am going to be talking slightly about the difference of the two.

And just in general, like the topics that we talk about.

Let's start with media literacy as this is what sparked this video.

Movies are kind of dumb now.

This is kind of like a YouTube title here, but I feel like I couldn't really think of a better way to put it.

What do I mean by movies are dumb? No, I don't mean dumb as in movies are pointless or they're not worthy of watching.

I mean it in a way that a lot of movies.

I feel like that I've seen recently, or that are just being made today, have simplified the intellectual content of it so it can appeal to the largest audience possible, even if it's that expense of the story.

Well, this can be a good thing.

I feel like it helps encourage people that might not want a certain type of content to watch it and understand it, but with trying to appeal to a larger audience, filmmakers and executives are beginning to spoon feed the audience every single point they want to make, and not allowing for complex plots or characters to really exist within the story without being like, this guy's, this guy's bad in this.

This guy is good.

Maybe it's like the movie lover in me, but I'm just missing on my screen, like these complex characters where, like, maybe you love them.

Maybe you hate them. Maybe you love to hate them.

Have you hate to love them?

It just feels so cut and dry recently.

And I feel like there's a few reasons as to why this is happening.

So I'm going to go through a few of my opinions.

On one side of the coin, I feel like the reason a lot of these filmmakers or companies, whoever is making this show, are dumbing down these shows movies because they don't have faith in their audience at all.

And I'm not even talking about actually understanding the movie.

They barely have faith that someone can sit through a whole movie without looking at their phone.

The second screen idea is something that's been floating around a lot.

You might have heard about it, but if you have it, basically the idea is that movies and TV's are being made with the assumption that the viewer is going to be looking at their phone for like 50% of watching the show or movie.

It doesn't feel good to admit this, but I legitimately don't have the attention span anymore for TV or movies.

Like I put something on and I think I'm going to enjoy it.

And then the next thing I know, I'm not enjoying it because I'm just looking at my phone and sometimes they delay putting the TV on. I'm like, I'm not ready yet.

I'm not ready to commit.

Which requires the show or movie to reiterate, like the plot or the characters over and over again, because they're assuming that you're missing, like half of it.

Which are they really wrong?

I feel like I've seen so many people talk about how, like, they literally can't sit through a movie anymore without going on their phone, or they might even be like invested in the movie and they just instinctively go on their phone without even realizing it.

And you might be thinking, oh, that only applies for like, the shitty Netflix shows.

But if we think about how many movies are being made with the intention of immediately go to streaming, or we're seeing movies being pulled out of theaters only after a few weeks because I know they'll get more revenue if they put it on HBO Max or Max or whatever the fuck it's called.

And while that's true, a lot of the second screen is for the shitty Netflix documentaries, that could be a singular episode.

I think it's also starting to apply to our major blockbuster movies, because of the way that theaters are dying before movies would literally be in theaters for months, and now I feel like there's this expectation that if someone sees something they want to watch, they're like, oh, just wait for it to go to streaming, which is a little bit depressing.

I love movie theaters. I get that everyone loves them.

Well, obviously the goal of making a movie or TV show is to tell a story, especially by passionate filmmakers.

The overarching goal, even if you don't want it to be, is to make money off of the thing that you made.

But obviously you can only make money off of something if people watch it.

So it's sad.

But I feel like to think that these big movies aren't considering that they're going to be watched on TV at home, probably by the majority of the audience, is not too far fetched.

It's also weird because as time is going on, especially recently, the idea of the second screen is starting to fall out of that because there's not even a first screen anymore.

And by that I mean there's content being made by like real production companies that is intended to be watched vertically and on your phone.

I've seen people online and on LinkedIn because obviously, like I am a filmmaker, I wouldn't go as a filmmaker.

I work in the film and television industry, and I've seen these people on LinkedIn or online, whatever, say that you can make so much more money if you start to go into the vertical world instead of film and television in the traditional sense.

Also, if you don't know what a vertical is, this is a vertical.

Chasing after that delectable miss Lily, I guess I need to remind you that any woman I want, I get very confident.

Let's make things interesting, shall we?

Interesting, I wager three days.

Three days to bed. Lily.

In my opinion, most of what I've seen of verticals are they are just like, shitty. But also, I wouldn't be surprised if they're actually some good ones out there.

I haven't really dive deep into it, so I'm not going to make a full opinion on it, but it's just surprising that people are making more money off of doing these verticals than doing it in a traditional sense, or even like a web series vibe.

Do I think verticals will become the new normal?

I hope not, but it's sort of hard to tell.

In the past, we've already seen people make web series that become really popular, which are then turned into like more traditional movies and TV shows.

And also I know that and I have myself watched like a full episode or something on TikTok, like, you know, when you're scrolling and you're like about 30 minutes into a Young Sheldon episode.

I've always loved.

Trains.

And then you put on your phone and it's time to go to work.

But still, it's surprising that people are inclined to watch a whole TV show or a whole movie on TikTok or like on their phone, which makes me think that it is more possible than I would think.

But either way, it just feels a little dystopian that we can't get off our phones to watch a two hour movie.

But we can watch a whole movie on TikTok because you have that scrolling motion and you can read the comments, which I guess the comments kind of make it more fun, but still, it's like confusing.

Another obvious lack of media literacy that we're seeing is the idea that bad guys are bad and good guys are good.

Maybe I'm biased on the side in some ways because I love a good movie or TV show that has an antagonist for the main character, and sadly, I feel like we're seeing this less and less because people just cannot comprehend the idea that there could be a complex character that's not good or bad, they just go straight to hating on the show when something morally conflicting happens.

Obviously is not everyone who watches movies, but I don't know.

Sometimes I'm like, why do you hate like that?

You don't have to like a character, but why are you bullying the actor?

Because that character did something bad.

And I think a lot of our villains recently have become a pancake of what a villain can really be, with people thinking they should always be the opposition that gets defeated at the end.

In my opinion, movie characters like real life people should be complex.

Obviously, if it's like a silly, fun show, like you don't need to go that deal with it, but also Adventure Time, complex characters, silly fun show like we can have both and it makes shows better in general.

People's lack of critical thinking skills.

I feel like it's making filmmakers or producers or whatever pull away from the idea of like a really good villain, because audiences have begun to like hate on the actual show or creator thinking that the show or movie is promoting this idea, rather than maybe having a critique on it.

Think about if they made Breaking Bad in 2025, and people's main like conclusion of the show was that they were promoting drugs.

I do think that if they beat that show in 2025, it would still do well, but I think there was a lot of stuff that they did in the show when it was being made that like couldn't necessarily be done now.

And I just think it's a disservice to watch things only at face value all the time.

A more recent example of this feel like slightly different, so I'm not saying it's exact.

You'll see what I'm taking a second.

When the fourth season of The Boys dropped and people started hating on it and be like, this shit is way too woke.

It was mind blowing.

It's like, did you watch the show at all?

Or were you just like, yeah, rich people and superheroes.

And I know it's a bit of a stereotype for like frat boys, which also are a stereotype to like that show and like not really pick up on what it's saying, which is why, like, I thought of this example when I was writing the section overall, I think in general, especially when it comes to like antagonists and villains, we're just losing the plot a little bit.

We need to put our critical thinking hats on our media literacy hats on to really start to enjoy these shows, movies with some bad guys.

A quick side tangent here sort of goes into what I'm saying right now.

When I was doing research for this video, I read an article about how it's an obvious trend happening in film and TV right now that, like, anti-capitalism, is like a major plot.

A lot of these shows are movies, and then a lot of major studios are producing these shows that are very anti-capitalist, which you would think a lot of Billion-Dollar companies wouldn't want to be having shows that are making a critique on capitalism because they are profiting the most from capitalism, but actually because these studios see how popular this anti-capitalist idea is right now.

They're like, I can make money off of that.

To sort of sum up the idea that was like talked about in this article, I'll put it down below.

This generation or this time period right now is very into anti-capitalist content.

And these major studios want to keep people on their streaming services or watching these TV shows as long as possible.

So they make this anti-capitalist content to keep people on their streaming services, to keep people giving them money, basically risk and reward.

And it's like way more reward to make something that's anti-capitalist and hope that people don't really pick up on it too much then just to not make it at all and ignore it.

It's just this kind of confusing and ironic cycle that these studios see people being anti-capitalist and they're like, oh, you hate rich people.

Like a lot like you would watch a show about hating rich people.

All right, just get your fantasy out with watching this show, but don't actually try to make any moves to stop all of that.

And then everyone goes, including myself. Thank you.

Here's $45. Everyone, back to the main point of this.

Well, I think a lot of movies are like this.

Not all movies of recent have been like this, and one movie that I saw recently that I really enjoyed and feel like it didn't really spoon feed me too much in that movie was sinners. Ooh.

Oh my God, it was so good. Yes.

I didn't spend a little bit too much time trying to figure out how they found another guy that looks so much like Michael B Jordan, only then to realize that it was actually both him.

I don't know, the one wearing red, one wearing blue.

It just really it worked.

Aside from that, I want to talk about the big music and what kind of musical number, but the big number in the middle.

Well, I did sort of explain the idea that music can transcend like time, generations, people.

They didn't just explain it, they showed it.

And I felt it to my core, in my bones.

I was I was emotional in that movie.

I just really did a really good job of showing, not saying, like there wasn't too much dialog. That was Overexplain.

There weren't characters that were too overexplain basically around the section off.

I'm not saying that all movies and TV shows had to be this deep, complex story because I love a good silly fart movie.

Don't get me wrong, I just think everyone would be better off if we just put more critical thought into what we're watching, not only to like, get a better experience out of the experience, but to help us progress in society as a whole.

To slight sidestep here, but I feel like this still fits into media literacy.

And I want to talk about social media literacy.

Social media literacy is new, and like the span of life, I guess in general, social media has only been around the way it is for the last 20 years.

You'd think as we spent more time online consuming content, that our skills of comprehension would have gotten better, but instead it feels like we're all just turning into Facebook grandparents.

That reposts I Jesus memes don't really feel like talking about AI yet, but instead I want to talk about just how people interact with each other online.

So obviously there's a very glaring example of this that we've seen talked about a lot online, and that is how fast people are falling down the alt right pipeline.

And it's getting faster and faster as years go on and more people are falling down it because there's more misinformation being spread, because Republicans love misinformation and lack of media literacy.

in the alt right pipeline, and I feel like there's a lot of really good videos about it out there that I'll find somewhere.

I'll put them down below.

So right now I will be choosing to protect my piece for this video, and we will get back to it in a different one.

So instead, I want to focus on how people interact with social media drama.

Because while you might not think about it, the way people interact with drama online is a form of social media literacy.

First of all, people have lost the art of recognizing when someone is a troll or is doing something purely for attention, sort of like a PR stunt.

In the past.

I kind of understand why people are struggling with this more and more, because now it's not so much like these big creators that are producing fake drama.

It's also creators who have like 3000 followers coming from someone who has 3000 subscribers, who will just make up some shit or say something crazy for 30s of fame.

And I would bet one scrolling that like 30% of like, storytimes or just anything online is purely made up for attention.

And where I think this is just getting a little bit concerning as people will be so invested in this drama that they will be fighting other people in comment sections over something they might not even know is true.

And while I do think drama is interesting, like who doesn't?

You know, but the amount of drama that's being created or just dragged out for views is tiring.

I think another way social media literacy sort of fits into this is how people don't know when to not share something on the internet.

People have become very comfortable with spilling all of their good and bad thoughts online to a faceless crowd of people who will probably tear them apart for it, which I do agree.

So in some ways it is easier to tell, like a faceless mob, your problems and like your friends.

It's just encouraging people to post their most unthought out thoughts.

And because we're all lacking social media literacy, it's just creating this weird toxic cycle.

Another thing along those lines than most social media literacy is how fast people are willing to sway their opinion.

It's almost inevitable that if you're an online creator, that at some point people are going to start turning on you.

Maybe they didn't even like you in the first place, but they will make it more well-known.

And then eventually after that passes, people will come back and pretend like nothing even happened unless you did something crazy.

And in that case, you deserve to not have people come back to you.

And while I think it's fine to, like, sway your opinion or change how you feel about someone, where I think people are lacking social media literacy is that they might even still like this person because they read one comment that's like, blink is annoying.

They're like, yeah, she is annoying, which you can feel that way as well, but like, your opinion shouldn't be able to be swayed so much by like a singular TikTok comment section.

This way can also go in a bad way sometimes too, because people will be forgiven for something in the public opinion, will say back in their favor because people's opinions are swayed so easily when maybe they shouldn't be getting the good press back.

A very clear case of this happening.

Someone whose opinion online has swayed back and forth between if people love them, if they hate them, that person is Trisha Paytas.

Why do you think she's done a lot of horrible damage that can honestly ever be undone?

I do think it's interesting that she's been canceled and on canceled about 20 times, because even to me at this point, I'm like, how do I feel about Trisha Paytas?

Like, I don't know, I think I feel that way because she was an OG internet troll.

And that is just so interesting to me that a person really doesn't care as long as people are talking about them.

If you've never seen blond sand, all MJ or whatever her original YouTube username was, if you have never seen those old videos of Trisha Paytas, you should really go watch them because it's it's like a case study of an early internet troll.

And yeah, she has kind of simmered out since Runaways has ended.

And as she's just like older in general.

But my main point with bringing her up is that because people lack social media literacy, they really don't care what you are like.

Actually, as long as they are being entertained, whether that be in a good or a bad way.

Now let's talk about some information literacy.

And when I think about information literacy and social media, of course, I am thinking about the bean soup of it all.

If you don't know what I mean by that, there's a creator that goes by Princess Milky. Her name's Molly.

I don't know if it's used Princess Milk, so whatever.

She made a video a few years ago that lives in my mind.

So to this day.

And the video was about a video that she saw that was someone making bean soup.

And in the comment section she saw someone asking, what if I don't like beans on a bean soup video?

She goes, and for the people who.

Asked me what to use if you don't like beans, no, I don't think so.

No, I don't, I don't think we're going to do that right now. Nope.

What the fuck do you mean?

It's a bean soup.

Well, if you don't like beans, go crack open a can of fucking chicken noodle, bitch.

And stop pissing me off like I'm so like.

What do you mean?

It's a fucking hilarious video and it's so true.

People online today love to not look anything up and just expect someone to give them the answer in a comment section.

There's been so many times myself, I've seen comments on videos where they're asking a question that is literally explained within the video, like, you can't get a better answer than that if you just watch the video.

I don't really know why people just refuse to look anything up anymore.

One of my best guesses is that people are so used to being on like a scrolling platform where if you click on the comment section, like the search of what you are watching automatically pops up so you don't even have to go to Google.

You just click a second button.

But other than that, I don't really know exactly why people just don't understand how to Google things anymore.

It's not particularly hurting anyone to be dumb in the comment section about beans soup.

However, it is hurtful to be dumb in a comment section about politics or important issues because when you mix people's lack of desire to actually learn anything with something like politics, we end up with just a bunch of overconfident people just typing bullshit in comment sections because no one actually wants to learn anything.

So how can they even really have an opinion that is like based in anything, which is how opinion should be speaking and people are not actually wanting to learn things, but instead just want a simple answer presented to them as soon as they want it.

Let's talk about chat GPT.

I think a main argument for chat, GPT and technology like it by most people is that it just makes life easier.

Like it just so easy to go boop boop boop.

And get simple answers for like how many teaspoons are in a cup?

Or how to do a certain type of math problem.

But you know it's better than ChatGPT figuring it out on your own.

I know nowadays that Google has also just morphed into this shitty sponsored AI search engine.

God never forget when Google was telling people that they should eat like one rock a day, because there was some random Reddit thread that they pulled that information from and decided to plaster it as the top answer.

But either way, on Google, once you get through the mess of it all, you can still find real valuable information and find real websites that give you actual explanations for something, or explain how to actually do something, maybe giving you more context to a situation, or telling you how to remember how many tablespoons are in a cup instead of just looking it up over and over and over again.

In my opinion, when you ask ChatGPT something, more often than not you're getting an incomplete answer.

In some ways, yes, you get the answer.

But what's the point of having the answer if you don't really understand it?

We've begun to see how using ChatGPT too, when it comes to education is particularly bad, especially higher education.

And a half don't just kind of happen.

You don't just kind of happen. It all just kind of happened.

It all just kind of.

Something I've seen people talk about online is the overall reliance of ChatGPT in college is so confusing.

Like, why are you paying money to basically scam yourself?

I've seen a lot of conversation online talking about the idea that if you use ChatGPT in college, you are essentially giving the software information to replace you in a full.

Back and I graduated college in 2023, so pretty much right before I was like normal to use in everyday life.

So I can't sit here and say, oh, I would never do that because I have no way of knowing if I would never do that.

And this might just be a difference of an opinion here.

I know a lot of people see college as just purely a way to get a job to make more money, but I'm a believer of you can go to college because you want to learn more about a subject, rather than just basically paying for a piece of paper to get a higher paying job.

I highly remember.

It's not only scary for current students to think that potentially they could be replaced, but also it's scary for people that will be receiving these services that people are not learning.

Oh God, I'm scared.

Okay, I'm about to do it.

I'm doing it. But, I'm going all the way.

Shut up.

I don't know, in general, I'm just very anti.

I like I don't even really use it for the simple questions on I even to be on my high horse, but it just freaks me out.

So this is slightly different than what I was talking about before, but I'm still going to put it into this video.

Obviously, this whole video is about how I think people should continue to pursue learning and find out new things.

Finding the answers to the questions that we have about life.

However, there's one aspect of that idea that I think people need to tone it down on, and that is how people feel entitled to know things about other people's lives.

And I'm not even talking about celebrities.

I'm talking about just the random people that post online.

I love that quote.

That's like, we weren't supposed to see so many faces in our lifetime because true, which is in reference to how like 20 years ago, you'd probably see the same amount of people's faces in a whole year that we now see on a singular day scrolling through TikTok.

And I think this also applies to the idea that we weren't supposed to know so much about everyone.

Posting on social media is fun, and it can be a great way to relate to other people, but I think we've hit a point where it's like, I don't want to know anything about random people anymore.

I already have enough to know about the people around me in my real community.

I don't need to be stressed about some random girl's college boyfriend.

There'll be so many times where someone will post a simple video.

For example, the couch guy. If you don't know the couch guy for you.

Basically, this girl posted a video of her surprising her boyfriend and he had an underwhelming reaction like, let's be honest, but the internet went crazy.

On breaking down his every movement in the video being like, did he was his arm around that girl?

Did he put his phone away? Did he la la la la la?

Eventually leading to comments demanding an answer on what was happening in the video. In the end, nothing actually happened.

I don't think they even broke up, to my knowledge, and everyone was severely disappointed that there wasn't some dramatic end to the story.

But it's not a story.

It's a real person and it's just funny.

We see so many people online having somewhat critical thought when it comes to some random person's boyfriend sitting on a couch, but when it comes to, I don't know, having thoughts of value can't do that.

And I feel like usually this critical thought when it comes to online drama, it's just like lowkey bullying.

At some point.

But in general, I just feel like we weren't supposed to know so many intimate details about so many people's lives.

I know for me at least, it gives me weird anxiety.

I don't even really know how to explain why.

It makes me, like, uncomfortable to think about the fact that I think I know more about people's stories when I might not even know that much information about some of my friends.

So yeah, I don't really know, like how to end that off, but it's just we weren't supposed to know so much about people, right?

Like just like the point of this video in general is that there's this overarching feeling that the most important conversation that we should be having, or the best film we should be watching or books we should be reading, are just being thrown to the wayside because no one wants to really dig deep into it.

And obviously life is busy.

You might not always have time to dig deep into something, but I just feel like we're beginning to lose the fun part of media content and life in general because not enough people want to engage in it, myself included.

I feel like there's definitely times where I could be better at critical thinking and be better at choosing media that will actually help me understand my life better in the world around me better.

And I hope with making this video for myself as well, that I will just encourage myself to do more of that in the future.

But yeah, I don't know.

Let's all just put our critical thinking hats on again.

Only you don't think of them all the time, but just sometimes put them on.

All right. My throat hurts.

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