3 ms·

Kids today are growing up in an age where people do not have shared experiences when it comes to media. When I was a kid everybody sat and watched TV every even

Kids today are growing up in an age where people do not have shared experiences when it comes to media. When I was a kid everybody sat and watched TV every evening, and the next day we would discuss it at school. This no longer happens anymore: everybody is watching on-demand content (or TikTok) and there’s so many different services and so much content that it’s rare that anything breaks through and achieves a critical mass of viewers that allows it to enter the cultural consciousness - Squid Game is a good example of that happening.

mbork_pl 3y ago
This is a very good point. On the literature side, Harry Potter seems to have attained this critical mass, too. One of my daughter's school friends was shocked that she hasn't read it, and lent her the first book. She read it, and when I asked her about it, she said "well, it's kind of ok". Of course, one of the reasons of HP's popularity is that it's not difficult to read - the language is relatively simple, the books are not overly long, etc. OTOH, having recently read LotR, Ursula le Guin's Earthsea and some Sanderson it's no wonder that she found JKR a bit... boring.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  As a child of that time the real magic of Harry Potter was that he grew up with you. The books got gradually more mature throughout the sequence, Rowling was writing for her fans as they grew up. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the first full novel that I read. The first books are tame and suitable for young children. By the time the last books came out I was an adolescent and I appreciated the more mature themes. Then a second slightly later generation had the same experience but with the movies instead of the books.
  - zem 3y ago
    as an adult, the magical aspect was that this was a series where the books were coming out on a regular cadence, and millions of people were invested in the series while it was still being written. I can think of very few other recent examples of that - the game of thrones books, but they basically stopped coming out, and everything else was either not an ongoing series or had a much more limited audience.
hinkley 3y ago
I hope they figure out in their twenties what they've missed and try to fix it. Could see a renaissance in hobby clubs.

mbork_pl 3y ago

This is a very good point. On the literature side, Harry Potter seems to have attained this critical mass, too. One of my daughter's school friends was shocked that she hasn't read it, and lent her the first book. She read it, and when I asked her about it, she said "well, it's kind of ok". Of course, one of the reasons of HP's popularity is that it's not difficult to read - the language is relatively simple, the books are not overly long, etc. OTOH, having recently read LotR, Ursula le Guin's Earthsea and some Sanderson it's no wonder that she found JKR a bit... boring.

zarzavat 3y ago
As a child of that time the real magic of Harry Potter was that he grew up with you. The books got gradually more mature throughout the sequence, Rowling was writing for her fans as they grew up. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the first full novel that I read. The first books are tame and suitable for young children. By the time the last books came out I was an adolescent and I appreciated the more mature themes. Then a second slightly later generation had the same experience but with the movies instead of the books.
- zem 3y ago
  as an adult, the magical aspect was that this was a series where the books were coming out on a regular cadence, and millions of people were invested in the series while it was still being written. I can think of very few other recent examples of that - the game of thrones books, but they basically stopped coming out, and everything else was either not an ongoing series or had a much more limited audience.

hinkley 3y ago

I hope they figure out in their twenties what they've missed and try to fix it. Could see a renaissance in hobby clubs.