16 ms·

It's the infantilization of the newer generations of adults. We are now kids until we are in our forties, still playing with Lego and Star Wars and hankering fo

• agentultra 4y ago
  > it's just sad to me to see grown men spend all their time on video games and comic books Why do you care what other men do with their spare time? Maybe spend less time thinking about what other people ought to enjoy and find something that makes you happy.
• notpachet 4y ago
  • pohl 4y ago
    It makes me sad that we (the United States) have entirely lost our e pluribus unum. In some quarters, folks consider the mere idea to be communism. Of course they're not exactly deep thinkers, those folks, but that's the dominant POV in the deep red state in which I live.
    • StevePerkins 4y ago
      In the other quarters, I'm not sure that the e pluribus unum melting pot concept is any less obsolete. All of our various factions seem headed in the direction of fracture and balkanization, we just vary on the details.
    • smackeyacky 4y ago
      Externally, America had never looked as united as America has liked to project. Segregation, Jim Crow laws, "No Irish, no Italians" signs in windows, rife religious sectarianism and a law enforcement system with a long history of directed violence. It probably seems like America is getting divided more starkly, but to outsiders its just more of the same from a country that had a civil war over slavery. It waxes and wanes but it never really goes away.
      • jimbokun 4y ago
        It was meant as a goal to strive for, not an end already achieved.
    • jimbokun 4y ago
      > In some quarters, folks consider the mere idea to be communism. And in other quarters, they believe we have permanent, irreconcilable differences based on race, sex, and sexuality making the whole idea of "out of many, one" unthinkable.
      • pohl 4y ago
        At bare minimum, one would think we could all agree that it's a good thing to honestly teach our nation's actual history — rather than trying to ban teaching it so that we can pretend that systemic racism is not and never was a thing.
    • dbbr 4y ago
      I would argue that, to this day, in most quarters, e pluribus unum is deeply engraved. It’s presence can be considered a true test of one’s metal. Any newly minted ethos just won’t do.
      • notpachet 4y ago
        > newly minted eth Cryptocurrencies make their inevitable appearance in the thread! :]
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Yep and the sad thing is to see it most apparent in "conservative" voices, when traditional conservativism was most specifically about this moral fiber, community service, and something "greater than yourself" in one's church, town, nation, etc. I'm not a conservative, myself, but it's kinda crazy to watch from a distance. Especially in the current context of watching Ukrainians fighting on the battlefield, Poles giving up half their homes, etc. to refugees from Ukraine, etc. EDIT: also, it isn't restricted to the USA. It has been on full display here in Canada, and in Europe as well.
    • mardifoufs 4y ago
      Well the Canadian government decided to suspend the charter over a protest, so if anything to me that just shows the opposite of what you are saying (that people are supposedly just hysterical about a loss of rights that doesn't exist). And before you say that it was nothing out of the ordinary, remember that even during the Oka Crisis the federal government did not take such extreme measures. That was a multi week armed standoff with hundreds of armed combatants, killed police officers, led to a very damaging blockade around montreal. Yet, no charter was suspended and the federal government did not do everything to antagonize the Mohawks. Pretty crazy compared to what happened in ottawa. So there is definitely a reason to be worried, and saying that it's worse somewhere else is irrelevant. Or do we just dismiss any social justice movement too since wow, they are complaining about trivial stuff compared to the sacrifice ukrainians are making?
      • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        lol, a "protest". Please. Listen, I'm 48 years old and have been protesting since I was a teen. I've been teargassed, pepper sprayed, charged by horse mounted police, faced a line of riot cops. Mostly after said protest went, maybe, I dunno, one hour past what its permitted time was or beyond some fenced area, or encroached near where a gov't figure was. I wasn't at it, but for kicks some time, google "g20 kettling toronto" and see what happened to protesters peacefully sitting in the middle of an intersection in Toronto in a vaguely festive atmosphere when the police decide to go completely apeshit and actually really violate people's charter rights. These anti-vax "protesters" blocked two international border crossings, harassed people in downtown Ottawa, blasted horns, kept stores closed, displayed hate speech and flags, threatened public officials, kept illegal firearms, the list goes on. For weeks. Many weeks. 24/7. "supend the charter" -- much more extreme measures have been taken against myself and others I've protested with -- they just didn't bother to "suspend the charter" officially before doing it. They just did it. Threw people in detention, searched their crap illegally, whatever they felt like doing. Because that's what police do to actual protesters, as opposed to wanky authoritarian far-right neo-fascists that they publicly sympathize with. They didn't suspend the charter in the Oka crisis because they didn't need to. They just tear gassed, used concussion grenades, arrested and beat people (Ronaldo Casalpro) in captivity. Or used bayonets on them (Waneek Horn-Miller). The charter had to be "suspended" and governments were forced to intervene because the police refused to do their job... a job they are far far too eager to exercise when it's people they don't agree with. Charter is a piece of paper.
  • naoqj 4y ago
    > Life is best spent in service to others. [citation needed]
    • avgcorrection 4y ago
      I think this is one of those things that is learned through experience (wisdom) and will never be proven with any citations (i.e. peer-reviewed, rigorous collective experience). Not that I have that wisdom myself. I only think I might arrive at that conclusion eventually.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • jimbokun 4y ago
      You can't get from an is to an ought.
  • silicon2401 4y ago
    > Life is best spent in service to others. Maybe for you, not for me. I live life to serve myself above all else. It so happens that helping people I care about also serves me, because it makes me happy. But "for the greater good" is an incredibly toxic, near cult-like mentality that should absolutely not be encouraged without nuance.
    • notpachet 4y ago
      I don't want to die feeling like I took more from the universe than I gave back, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I'm not advocating cult-like asceticism or pointless self-deprivation. You could argue that those are the dark side of selfishness anyway.
    • animal_spirits 4y ago
      Self worship is also incredibly toxic and should not be encouraged without nuance. Selfishness can lead to a lack of empathy for others and a lack of awareness of how one's actions can affect other people.
  • greggman3 4y ago
    Wat? Superhero movies are all about sacrifice. Almost every superhero is practically dedicating their life to serving the public good. Half the superhero movies are about how things only work when we come together and cooperate. Maybe I mis-understood your point?
    • notpachet 4y ago
      I think they're only superficially about sacrifice. Look what you gain in exchange: apotheosis. The child-god in all of us wants to be recognized as special, exceptional, unique.
  • mardifoufs 4y ago
    That's a ridiculous strawman. Your comment amounts to being mad that people do no do what you think they should do. That's it. You can literally use that argument for everything. "Why don't gay people just shut up and stay in the closest for the benefit of societal cohesion? So egoistic." "People who are afraid of covid are so self centered and would rather shut down entire societies than to self sacrifice a bit!! Why should we accomodate the hypochondriacs" And as a muslim your comment, ironically enough, reminds me of how some neocons excused discriminating against Muslims. "Wow I mean there are terrorists out there and we should care about "muh freedomz" for Muslims? After 9/11? Well discriminating and targeting all Muslims is just a small sacrifice for the greater good of our society, it's just the rational thing to do." There's absolutely no merit to that type of argument. obviously anyone fighting for "mah freedum" as you call it will always be ridiculed and not taken seriously by everyone, by definition. The only thing different and unique this time is the honestly troubling trend of mocking and belittling the concept of freedom or rights in general, just to "own the other side". I'm sure that normalizing such a dangerous rhetoric won't turn against you eventually.
    • notpachet 4y ago
      > Your comment amounts to being mad that people do no do what you think they should do. That's it. You can literally use that argument for everything. Well, if we're going to go reaching for the fallacy labels -- that's a pretty textbook appeal to extremes. Discrimination against any portion of the population is reprehensible. But the big moral challenge is determining what exactly constitutes discrimination. Where is the line between just punishment under the law, and discrimination? Society's laws are designed to protect the interests of everyone in that society (without discrimination!) from those around them that would hurt them, whether through malice or negligence. Implicit in those laws is the idea that you seem to be protesting: that in certain situations, Person A knows better than Person B what's good for Person B. Or, as it may be, what liberties to withhold from Person B to protect others from them. That's prison. And as fucked up and inhumane as I think the American prison system is, I don't know whether it's really possible to have a society without _some_ sort of way of withholding certain rights from people for the protection of others. And yes, that line of thinking absolutely can (and does) slide down the hellchute into totalitarianism. Avoiding either extreme of that spectrum is the challenge of living in a democracy (or what masquerades as one these days).
  • psyc 4y ago
    It matters a lot whether self-sacrifice and service are self-chosen, or whether they are forced by the state, or under threat of retaliation. Many people who are individualists advocate for self-sacrifice and service as virtues, freely chosen. Virtue under threat of punishment or retaliation is not virtue at all.
• SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  My dad's favourite hobby was tinkering on cars. I don't honestly see much difference between me playing video games and tinkering on my PC than him driving and getting his hands greasy. My grandfather's was walking around in the woods hunting or sitting in a boat fishing. Why are those mature and virtuous, while my love of games infantilizing? Are video games innately childish due to their medium? Is a comic book movie actually that much more childish than Die Hard or James Bond?
  • jdsully 4y ago
    I don’t know about virtuous but the clear difference is fishing and fixing cars produces useful byproducts: food & working transportation. Playing with the PC may do that but usually video games do not unless you are making them yourself.
    • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      The hunting and fishing byproduct was only the pretense, it was to spend an afternoon in the woods or on the lake. And the cars weren't exactly practical, they were impractical muscle cars that broke down often and were a mess of upkeep. If we're looking at useful byproducts that tells me factory working is the best past time one can have.
    • jenny91 4y ago
      I don't think this is a compelling argument. It's an extremely inefficient way of producing those "useful byproducts". A person fixing and tuning the same old car for years?
    • colechristensen 4y ago
      Fishing is mostly an excuse to sit on a boat and drink beer all day (a high quality activity I fully support in moderation) Car enthusiasts are mostly about making something look cool and have certain stats, it’s about fun not utility.
      • s1artibartfast 4y ago
• Apocryphon 4y ago
  The easy explanation for this is that adults, with the disposable income that they never had as children, are good consumers of products they couldn’t previously afford. Nostalgia sells. You bemoan the consumption of video games and superhero fiction as low value content. And you don’t blame their formats, but their content. But is that right? Past generations were dominated by all sorts of cheap, disposable entertainment- soap operas, radio shows, pulp fiction. What do yearly superhero films resemble? The serial films that arrived at the beginning of cinema. Is this base content really so much baser than the entertainment of the past?
  • thfuran 4y ago
    It surely is. After all, how could any modern cinema hope to be even half as profound and meaningful as the three stooges?
• bin_bash 4y ago
  considering the alternatives are likely sports, celebrity gossip, and reality TV—I think superheroes are fine.
• smiddereens 4y ago
• colechristensen 4y ago
  Mozart also produced a lot of rubbish low brow humor, Shakespeare is full of cheap dirty jokes. What you have is a value judgement of the golden age conservatism nonsense imagining the past as so much higher quality. The truth is that superhero movies are the latest incarnation of a type of entertainment which is as old as the oldest human culture we know about. The Iliad is the same kind of entertainment in a different format. Commentators said the same about gladiators chariot races in the Colosseum. There are dick jokes scrawled on the walls of Pompeii. The childish attitude is making a dichotomy between childish and adult things and criticizing the childish things pretending the latest incarnation is somehow a new kind of thing.
  • Der_Einzige 4y ago
    But unlike any superhero movie in the past 10 years, the illiad is a wonderful LGBT love story... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus
    • colechristensen 4y ago
      Have you actually read the Iliad? Much of the plot revolves around Achilles being sullen because a woman given to him as a slave and spoil of war was taken away by Agamemnon. Projecting modern ideas of gender on to an ancient Greek epic and then calling it a wonderful love story is quite misguided.
  • vinceguidry 4y ago
    You seemed to have missed the author's point. Superhero stories were supposed to represent an escape from the old, adult-focused form of entertainment. Where they ended up was of course just another form of it. The money quote is: "Wallowing in death isn’t a sophisticated leap beyond the superhero concept; it’s the failure to imagine what it means not to die." You can liken this to the sitcom. Storytellers had to envision a platform upon which an endless number of stories could be told in a particular format, without getting boring. The setting, including the characters, have to remain static. Breaking the sitcom mold doesn't make for an evolved sitcom, it makes for a devolved one. One that brought back all the problems that the sitcom format resolved. Superhero comic books had to appeal to seven year-olds, while still retaining enough in there to keep the teens and then adults they grew up into entertained. You need a story that can live forever, and still remain interesting. The bad guys have to get handled with a minimum of fuss, and understated magic, such as Batman never killing anyone, is an appropriate storytelling device. The morality play, good beating evil, and all the whimsy and silliness that conjuring it entailed, is just part of the superhero format. Without all that, they're not superheroes, they're just story protagonists with special powers that are sometimes heroic. That's the argument the author's making.
• RHSeeger 4y ago
  > the content is usually rubbish There is a fair amount of good content, in both video games and comic books. Both are fairly reasonably considered art. I don't see a lot of people saying we should destroy art museums because they're escapism. Yes, there's a lot of bad video games and comic books, too. But I dare say exactly that is true of arts, books, and a variety of other things people widely consider worthwhile forms of entertainment.
• paxys 4y ago
  Fantasy sports is perfectly acceptable as an adult hobby. So is reality TV. Or gambling/playing the lottery. Or just getting drunk every weekend till all sense of reality is warped. All of these (and lots more) are perfect examples of escapism. But as soon as we start talking about superheroes or sci-fi suddenly it becomes "infantilization" because those are associated with nerds. There's no deeper logic here than decades worth of social stigma.
  • _jal 4y ago
    > There's no deeper logic here than decades worth of social stigma. Oh, there is. There's a whole school of thought that is basically non-stop hand-wringing about how superheroes are displacing religion, and We Must Take Back Our Media from those Hollywood heathens and so on. Stupid, yes. But dangerous too - book-burning season looks like it is just getting started, they already are going after Disney, and those people seem geared up for a serious push.
    • PaulHoule 4y ago
      As a radio ham you're not supposed to talk about religion but I got away with running an APRS beacon that said "It's Thorsday!" every Thorsday
      • agiacalone 4y ago
        As an Amateur Extra myself, I 100% approve :D
    • LegitShady 4y ago
      > they already are going after Disney They aren't going after Disney because of adult infantilization, but the opposite - introducing kids to adult concepts in a particularly politically motivated way that makes them not a good source of kids entertainment in the opinion of many adults. The comic books that Disney Marvel has produced are 98% low quality poorly written poorly drawn trash, and their movies mostly ok until now (except we seem to be getting into the girl-boss post success phase of the MCU and I expect a downturn). The issue with Disney is their attempt to become a source of propaganda for social policies aimed towards people's kids, and their choice to be vocal about wanting to influence laws being passed the government in Florida. Their choice, but they also reap the consequences.
• UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  I remember comics in the 1980's and they weren't pure escapist fantasy written for children. They tackled very adult subjects like reparations and slavery through the Genotia series in the X-Men and how the mutants were the stand-ins for the African Americans, where Genotia (a fictitious nation) enslaved them and America stripped their rights away, using the force of the Sentinels to do so. I was maybe 12 during this story line and it was foundational on how I treat and view people. Then there are the comics written by Alan Moore, including The Watchmen. Again, I read these during my formative years but they are most certainly not aimed at children. They do show that these heroes of men, stand ins for the adults of children, are fallible. It was door opening in its literary literary narrative, not just its illustration (which is not the best, as far as comics go - I say to much disapproval). Many of these comics, which often get maligned as literature for children, are very much written for adults by adults, tackling adult themes and adult sensibilities. Well, they were. Modern comics have lost me, chasing an audience is not a way to sell to the audience, I'm afraid. If you want to capture an audience, it isn't with focus groups and charts and data, it's with story and vision... if you have a real story to tell, you hope there's an audience for it. It's an artistic process, not one grown in a lab =(
  • LegitShady 4y ago
    I will agree there were some comics that talked about social issues, but even those tended to not hit you on the head with the message so hard, and they weren't the majority of comics books - they were a small minority of books. Now everyone wants to be Alan Moore, or they don't understand why Alan Moore is important and they want to dress their heroes up for party instead of make interesting stories with cool action. Comics are alive and well in non-western comic traditions. It's the big two (Marvel,DC) as well some some smaller companies like IDW that can't produce stories people want to read on a regular basis.
    • UnpossibleJim 4y ago
      I was never a DC fan, so I can't speak to them, but Marvel used to give their writers much more freedom in the 80's and early 90's (coincidentally, when comic sales were doing great) as well as owning smaller "independent" publishers, to let their talent publish small, offbeat, "risky" comics with subversive themes. It was GREAT. That's what Image Comics was (owned by Marvel). It was like how Large movie studios would own small art house film studios in order to entice good directors (like Spielberg and Lucas) to make blockbusters for them. Besides, good literature isn't supposed to hit you with their message so hard. Good literature isn't a blunt instrument to be wielded like some dullard wielding a sledge hammer in a slaughter house. It's a gentle and subtle poison that changes your mind from the inside. V for Vendetta is a great example. On the outside it just shows how government is corrupt, but it also shows the risks of human experimentation, the problems of corporate and government cooperation, how easily people are swayed by a compliant media, how easily small things in the beginning can have huge consequences far down the line that were never suspected, even in a time of conflict and rage the need for human connection is important... and all of these things are laid out in the sub plot of a comic book. Again, from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when risks could be taken =)
• spelunker 4y ago
  I'm curious to know what you would consider better or at least not-rubbish pursuits, just as a comparison.
  • beefield 4y ago
    This should be the top comment for the GP. To a very good approximation all pursuits of all adults are fundamentally rubbish in a childish level. Just as an example, I think it is widely accepted that following sports is a decent way for a proper adult to spend their time. Like...what? Seriously, you call e.g. watching other people driving in circles competing who is fastest as a serious, non-rubbish adult-like way to spend time? (Okay, I agree, it may be fun. But so are all the other pursuits to whoever pursue them, so no difference there.)
    • jimbokun 4y ago
      Of course not. Devoting yourself to watching sports is equally a waste of time. But playing sport leads to all kinds of benefits like getting exercise, socializing and developing bonds with others, overcoming adversity, fresh air, a feeling of increasing mastery over time. I imagine writing and drawing comics would have similar mental health benefits (if not the exercise and fresh air). The problem for many of us (myself included) is consuming vs. producing.
      • giantrobot 4y ago
        I produce enough shit when working. I don't need to constantly produce. The idea that I should always be doing something "of value" is toxic and soul crushing. If I want to produce something in my non-work time that's my choice. It's also my choice if I just want to read a comic book. I work to live, not live to work.
      • beefield 4y ago
        Frankly, I personally and subjectively agree with you more than you might guess. But objectively... I do not quite see why our "feeling of increasing mastery" of kicking around a rubber ball is somehow more "adult" or "beneficial" or otherwise superior to the thrill of reading a comic book.
• em-bee 4y ago
  it's just sad to me to see grown men spend all their time on video games and comic books high quality comics targeted at adults have existed in europe for decades. there was no infantilization there. and the fact that i enjoy playing videogames occasionally allows me to spend quality time with my children in ways that my parents never could.
• Quarrelsome 4y ago
  bravo sir! It is only the opera and the delicate art of croquet that hold any moral character. The rest of these ragamuffins are filling their heads with nonsense like philistines instead of reading through the classics 24/7 like anyone sensible would. What-ho!
• time_to_smile 4y ago
  The real problem with rampant neoteny isn't adults playing video games, it's the very revulsion at the idea (and I hate this phrase) of "adulting". The entire point of the transition from childhood to adulthood is that you become responsible for yourself and others which is a transition from you being the responsibility of others. The idea that responsibilities are somehow an injustice has dominated thinking of my generation and latter. I really enjoy playing a round of Elden Ring after I've gotten all my house work done and taken care of the things that people rely on me for. Just on the basic standards of household maintenance I'm shocked how often my friends apartments look like they are lived in by a teenager. The whole idea of "ghosting" is another example of this bizarre inability to just do the things you need to do. Being an "adult" in just about any culture, means you do somethings that are uncomfortable because those things need to be done. Sure it can be hard to tell some people "no" but ignoring them completely because you can't stand a bit of discomfort is the very essence of "childish" behavior. I grew up in a dysfunctional household, where I was not taken care of as a child, so I was very eager to become an adult. Taking responsibility and taking care of myself where things I looked forward to because I'd be taken care of, even if I was the one doing it. Now that climate change is starting to show undeniable consequences it's a bit hard for me to take demands for climate action seriously from people who just a few months ago complained about "adulting" when doing their own taxes in their late 20s.
  • yamazakiwi 4y ago
    Did you just say "a round" of Elden Ring?....now I have a suspicion that I'm replying to a bot haha. What if I told you I ghost people because I don't care and it has nothing to do with maturity. I experience 0 discomfort cutting ties and relationships with people that I've moved on from or didn't see myself interacting with in the first place. I find no grace in extending interactions to make some people feel better that feel like they're owed conversation or an explanation. What's so wrong with just moving on? If someone doesn't gel with you or reply, you should really just take the hint. Or would it be better for me to be honest and say something like, "Sorry, I just find you intolerable once I got to know you, so I think it's better if you don't talk to me anymore, thank you!" I think it's childish to expect everyone to give you the time of day in a world where we are busier than ever before. I'd prefer to be ghosted by people who decide to ghost me. Most people complain about "adulting" do it in jest or use it as a device to insult the job their parents did of teaching them important skills. I raised myself and I never complain about "adulting" but find it fun to groan about becoming older.
• braingenious 4y ago
  I agree that adults engage in all manner of pointless, infantilizing ways to waste their time. The only enormous time and energy sink I’ve seen that’s completely universal and worse than marvel movies or funko pops is Posting — random grown adults online that have been told that their opinions should hold sway over other random adults online because of the sheer value of their opinions. For every sad weirdo with a room full of expensive anime figurines, there are hundreds of sad, weird Facebook Aunts espousing “the importance of traditional values and maybe urine therapy” It’s like we’ve all got a new commonality. It used to be eating, shitting, pissing, fucking and sleeping. Now it’s that plus “screaming into an uncaring void”
• openknot 4y ago
  I know a few people who spend hours doing intensive work a day (PhD program for one, medical school for another), and don't want to become involved in more intensive hobbies (e.g. literature study, art films). The deeper pursuits are left for the career, and hobbies are an easy way to get your mind off it during rest periods.
• frereubu 4y ago
  As Bill Hicks said, "I think a lot of people could do with discovering their inner adult."
• rndmize 4y ago
  Not really sure how it's infantilization. Do super powers make a movie more infantile than not having them? Does it change the moral challenges and difficulties encountered? Is an action movie or heist movie better or more mature without such things? Are sitcoms and reality TV somehow less rubbish? Perhaps people should only spend their time reading and discussing serious philosophers and political policy. I have a liking for the current crop of superhero stuff because its light-hearted. The tone is hopeful. (It's ironic, honestly, that the article goes on about the mature/miserable nature of current superhero stuff when the flagship Marvel stuff is all pretty positive, with the exception of the ten-year culmination of the Avengers storyline they cite). It's a nice break from worrying about the real world, which these days seems to have this constant, vague, oppressive feeling of inevitable doom. (An exaggeration, perhaps, but the universal problems around corruption, collective action issues, personal wealth above general good, etc. is tiring and depressing.)
• TillE 4y ago
  > the infantilization of the newer generations of adults I think when you reach the age of like 25, you realize that you don't have a clue, and the "adults" around you mostly don't have a clue either. But it's always been like that. It is in fact a childish view to conceive of adulthood as some fundamentally different stage of life where everything changes and you've got it all figured out. The real difference with past generations is that you were expected and able to slot into a rigid social order, to fill a certain role. That rigidity has partly been rejected, and is partly simply out of reach due to economic factors.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  > I know it's a value judgement, it's just sad to me to see grown men spend all their time on video games and comic books - not because of the formats themselves but because the content is usually rubbish. Cultural junk food. So you think they should move on to an "adult" hobby like stamp collecting or model trains?
• PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I don't think maturity is a function of one's hobbies, and I believe that to do so is to use a poison-the-well fallacy, where the poison is the emphasis on the association of the hobby with children as a means to argue that there exists a common component (=immaturity) shared between the two classes of people that has a causal relationship with the hobby in question. Maturity is, in my opinion, a function of one's perception of the consequences of their actions and how they weigh said consequences. An immature person, regardless of their hobbies behaves like a child when they don't consider e.g. the feelings of other people or the harm they impose onto others. As we get older and accumulate more experiences through interactions with other people, we tend to take into consideration a far longer and wider horizon. This usually happens by increasing one's responsibilities as they become older.
• more_corn 4y ago
  This comment is funny. The article complains that comics are not for kids anymore because they treat adult themes. This comment complains that adults are somehow children because they engage with entertainment formats that were traditionally geared towards children.
• Fidelix 4y ago
  You angered the neckbeards, look at the other comments... Look, I consume all of this cultural junk food you mentioned. But at least I recognise it as such. The fact that others are in a so vehement denial about it just shows EXACTLY how right you are. Minds of childs.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• wlesieutre 4y ago
  Star Wars is hardly the first time adults have enjoyed a pastime that isn't a "deeper pursuit" or sufficiently thought provoking. Heck, "America's pastime" is a game of people hitting a ball with a stick, and has drawn millions of viewers. If you had a time machine and went back a couple thousand years, I think you'd find that people already did unproductive things for entertainment. And people have probably been disapproving of younger generations enjoying the wrong entertainment for about as long as we've done things for entertainment.
• gilbetron 4y ago
  Ugh, please, attitudes like yours is the infantile one. Enjoying Lego and Star Wars isn't in opposition to being a good adult. Especially being a good parent. Creativity and imagination are hugely important in the modern world, and those endeavors require a playful mindset to excel at. It's sad to me to see that you find other's enjoyment as "sad". But I'm sure you have "proper" grown man pursuits, why don't you share with us what I, as a 50+ year old man should spend my time on? It might be shocking, but I spend my time on whatever it is you think I should be doing as well. Here's an idea: being an adult shouldn't be one dimensional. I can play with legos, play video games, read scifi and fantasy, and also raise my son, renovate my house, and, I dunno, wrestle bears? Conquer nations? Drink beer and yell at the TV about sports? Or maybe it is denigration of others that you think is the hobby real men do. If so, you're correct, I'm just a child then with my silly belief that people getting joy from activities is a good thing. Also, there's plenty for kids to get into these days, including comics, books, video games, and whatever. More than I had when I was a kid.
• MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  Go read the Superman stories from Action Comics #1 - #10. Tell me how kid-friendly they are.