/cult/ - culture and media

Only seen episodes 1 and 4. Was so disappointed that I don't think I'll be watching the show anymore.

The episodes I watched seemed like an entirely different show. The first (and second/third) seasons seemed to be focused on representing a darker twist on our societies current relationship with technology (the show's name IS dark mirror after all); the two episodes from season 4 that I watched seemed to only speculate about digital consciousness. In no way did either of them really reflect any aspect of our society, good or bad. The first was a twilight-zone-esque speculative narrative about a single man who'd discovered the ability to clone someone's consciousness from their dna and the fourth was simply speculating the possibility that data from a simulation could be consciouss.

I actually liked the episodes I watched though, from a craftsmanship standpoint. And this is the opposite of me saying the episodes were boring. I loved the premise for both episodes, but I can find cool stories anywhere. After not seeing a trace of the quality that initially interested me in the show, the very thing that I feel separated black mirror from other shows, I am done with it.

I only watched the first 2 episodes of this season and gave up. It was so boring compared to the first 3 seasons and I especially hated the ending for episode 1. I came to this show because I didn't want stupid happy endings.
This used to be one of my favorite shows but I don't think I can finish season 4. 6 one hour long episodes, none of which have the same charm the original had.

Well, where the fuck are we at now ?
Are there more episodes this season ?

Father/daughter out of nowhere ? Seriously ?
Found the episode intense and pretty good, until the bloody mess of the ending.
Doll face & Leon should have killed everyone in the barn & just let the series end there

>>1537
I thought it was an ok twist, it explains why he seem to care for her.

the sudden kill each other at the barn was bs

>>1538
We all saw that part coming indeed.
So now what? Next season is taking down the DA? And what the fuck difference does it make if he reverts the hack? I fucking knew they were going to stretch it. At least I hope it's as good as this one.
Also what's with the drug dealer guy at the ending? what the fuck relevance does he have?

>>1554
Well
he did kill Elliots girlfriend.
Maybe they're gonna bring Elliot back into the consequences of his one more time. It was a theme this season and if writing was gonna get sloppy it'd just become Elliot getting soykaf on for all his actions forever.

>>1354
>soykaf and not at all aesthetic.
unironically, this is what hurts

Try something harder: no chans and no books

>>1559
I think it's a really good idea, OP, but IMHO you should try to stay away from chans, news sites and (if you have some) social network too.
The interesting thing for me is the idea to avoid everything that is volatile and gives you something new every two seconds. Youtube, imageboards, TV series, reddit and social medias can be an example, cause with those at your disposal everytime you are bored you'll probably open one of them and it really kills your thinking time. Movies or longforms, on the other hand, can be ok, because they force you to mantain your attention on a single thing for a big amount of time and to reflect about it (as long you're not watching "Transformers" or reading "The 100 best meems of our recent history xD uwu").
And if you are part of that superior kind of people who like to type random things in search engines and lose theirselves in the beautiful ocean of the Wired, well, dunno if you should let this happen or no. Sure it is more interesting than random youtube browsing and sure you can find really unique stuff, but i think it is still part of those "volatile" entertaiment methods that you're trying to avoid, so for this last point think carefully by yourself what you want to do about it.

I hope you succed to reach your goal, lain.
Good fortune!

I don't really watch videos other than the occasional anime or documentary. I've tried lowering the time spent on imageboards by not visiting them before 8 pm but I don't follow that strictly enough. I thought about just stopping altogether but I would be very lonely without them.

>>1561

Arisuchan is the only even-slightly-social website I ever use. My project last year was to cut ties with all social networks and all social media (even pseudonymous ones like reddit). It was a great success. Pick a non-arisuchan social site, and I can guarantee that I'm not on it, and haven't been for a year or more. It's been rather eyeopening; when family and friends have to actively text/email/call me instead of just tagging me on facebook, it really shows who actually cares about me.

And I mostly agree on the news front. I do plan on being more discriminating on what news sources I read. But I'm not doing a blanket personal ban on them. I do like to know what's going on in the world. One of my plans is to focus on long-form audio podcast documentaries from various public broadcasters around the world. For example, those in the style of CBC's "Ideas".

One type of news that I'm definitely cutting out entirely is Verge-style "tech news". I'm just plain done with that consumerism nonsense. Who the hell cares what Amazon or Apple or Google are doing or selling? I'm just done with that.

To me it is because of it's thematics.
It envisioned the role of technology in human relationships in a way that, as far as i know, wasn't discussed; how you are a different person when your identity is not connected to your physical body, how we can adore something we don't even know if it's really true -on the internet nobody knows you are a dog but everybody adores you as a meme cat- and the object of adoration might not even know it. Plus the atmosphere is very unique both visually and sonorously (the shadows being the most noticeable), it makes you try to decipher what is going on and reflect.

I feel like this text is very poorly written and shallow but it is the best i can do at the moment, hope it is helpful.

Apart from the mid-1960s condensed novels of J. G. Ballard, Serial Experiments Lain was the only work of 20th Century art that truly understood and predicted the 21st.

>>1551
*that you are aware of

well, what really means avant garde?

the sense I have had is that it is supposedly reffering to the start of some new wave, heralding a new genre or what naught. The advanced gaurd of an army is usually not followed by a whole lot of,…emptyness.

>The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm
~wikipedia

seems to relate to >>1511; sel has strong scifi aspects where the story grows from something pure and simple technologic and exploring it in a way that is new to many in the audience. I am not super well versed in all of the cyber* fiction of the last couple decades, but most scifi, and even most cyberpunk stuff seems to address things differently than this. sel questions reality and sort of looses itself in the wired, to the point where you arent sure what is real any more, and furthermore you arent sure if matters, anyway.

>>1551

Agreed. Much of SEL's world building stems from the question "What if everyone had pocket computers with 24/7 internet access? What would people do with it?" And lo and behold, the world that unfolded in reality is pretty much exactly the world as depicted on the show. The writers really understood people. They knew that the first thing people would use instant global pseudonymous communications for is gossip.

I think the real reason that cyberpunk (especially the highbrow SEL style) basically died off is because even the craziest fictional cyberpunk plotlines have become the domain of journalists, not novelists.

Why bother writing a spiritual sequel to Cryptonomicon, when cryptocurrency has gone from a Neal Stephenson plot device to daily news in business newspapers and topics of conversation among central bankers? Why bother writing about nefarious plots to steal personal data of hundreds of millions of people from corporate servers for financial gain, when the Equifax hack got a great big "meh" from the average US citizen? Why bother writing about big brotherish totalitarian surveillance in the UK when the GCHQ is actually spying on everyone, and there's surveillance cameras everywhere?

Industrial bands like Ministry. Electronic music such as early Acid House. Hardcore punk that was coming out of DC and NY. All the harder sounding music of the early to mid 80s when Neuromancer and all the other Cyberpunk novels were being written and heavily influencing the writers.

The least cyberpunk music in the world is weeaboo vocaloid soykaf.

If youy're on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/user/dondemon/playlist/3upJSeV6lAHhMTuraNg5J4

Classic cyberpunk album.

>Front Line Assembly
>Tactical Neural Implant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvoENpR9cCQ

Try Android Lust

https://youtu.be/5RZT3nwF-Qo

>>1516
Well there's two possible reasons

1) It actually is and the US government had to shut it down

2) Its a shill thread spreading dissent and the non-government mods shut it down

It had to go either way.

>>1516
>anime. fashion. film. games. lifestyle. literature. music.
Seems like offtopic thread. Besides it was spammed on different boards. The one that is in /x/ is still up, if you would like to participate.

>>1516

It isn't.

The archive he found is a snapshot of Arisuchan from august from what people on the thread is saying there isn't any information making people insecure or not respecting the privacy of user. Most of the content in this archive is able to be found on the internet anyway.

>>1477
There might be something in this, pedophile scandals around the rich and powerful resurfaces time and time again.

>>1477
Considering the prevalence of sexual assault perpetrated by women, I'm not convinced men ought to be included in your list.

>>1481
This to the point I thought >>1477 was talking about "Man" but I didn't read the name.

>humans do human things
>what could possibly go wrong
stop copulating, dummies

>>1473
>Not like they all abused each other, but they knew that the abuse was going on and purposely covered the abusers tracks or just chose to ignore it.

It happens all the time. An individual may not feel close enough to the situation to call judgement, they may think it's rumor, maybe they're afraid of getting blackmailed or fired, or they just think it's none of their business. A lot of complaints and gossip had already happened behind the scenes in Hollywood but people decided to band together and made it a public issue so that predators would be permanently removed. Making something a public issue or an open subject of conversation gives more power to the victim, but could really backfire if the victim is perceived fraudulent. So if someone is asks, "is so-and-so is a rapist?", someone who doesn't really know for sure or doesn't really think it's their business is likely to say, "Uhh, no."

Did these guys deserve to be exiled from Hollywood forever? Hard to say. I wouldn't want a rapist or predator to be part of my creative team, especially since I'm a mediator who likes to bridge people together for the sake of mutual compromise and peace. If a rumored creep or unsociable person is on the team it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, which can cause a myriad of problems: some will react by being avoidant, not wanting to acknowledge the creep unless they have to, some will react by being mean to the creep, often in a passive aggressive or otherwise indirect manner, and some will ignore it but their skin will quietly be crawling. I have a knack for making creepy, antisocial or otherwise unusual people fit in better. I can make everybody see how we're all alike and working as a team, so that even if Tom the autist has, to the average persons standards, absolutely terrible social skills, we can accept that he's in some way a valuable member of the team whom we can all respect and empathize with. There will always be discourse, and although I have an internal instinct to keep peace, I understand that discourse is necessary and helps the team grow. However one of the hardest types of people I've ever tried to make feel mutually accepted are the type of people who are sexual predators. I don't think there are "bad" or "wrong" people but they're usually antisocial manipulators. They are the type to charm people well and apPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>1450
M8 disliking something expressly because of its mainstream appeal is dumb as hell. Most of the critiques in this thread have been pretty nuanced. No one in here is drooling over corporate dick just because Paramount released a feature film with a neon/noir color scheme.

I didn't expect to enjoy it, but I did. More so than the original, even.
Literally had to get up and tell a dude in the cinema to turn his phone off though which kind of sucked. What is wrong with people?

Saw it just recently, the visuals and audio were amazing, worth it for that alone.

But I don't understand the praise of the story. It seems the original bladerunner benefited from having fewer characters, as each had clearer personalities, motivations and relevance to the plot. Leon was criticised for being a bland character in bladerunner, but most of 2049's characters fail to be more memorable than even him.

Seemed like there was going to be a significant waifu theme to the film, but said waifu was extremely shallow as a character and went nowhere.

>>1468
I had a 15 year old kid that took his girlfriend to see it. He would not shut up through the entire movie. I don't mind a bit of whispering here, but this kid made no efforts to quiet himself whatsoever. I shushed him myself 3 or 4 times and after a few minutes he'd just start up again.

>>1474
The only reason I got up and asked the dude to turn his phone off myself was because he was an adult. If it's kids chatting in the cinema I don't bother telling them myself because they usually just think they are funny or tough if they continue, or if I have in the past I get up and walk over to their seat to tell them.
It's best to just get a member of staff. I've had kids thrown out of a movie three or four times by doing this.

>>437
Once knew a guy on tumblr who was trying to make a complete grammar for the Matoran language from Bionicle. I'll have to see if I can find his page again.

>>382
>implying gangstalking isn't real

You must be naive or just some 3letter agency agent getting paid pennies.

>>385
Man, it's neat to see some actual documentation on the coupon fiasco. Chances are I still have some of those stored on an HDD somewhere.

http://www.lucidipedia.com/
Lucid dreaming community
I registered about ten years ago and the account is still there.

There's a community of 15 yr old kpop/kdrama fans, mostly on Instagram and Youtube that listen to "subliminals", you've probably heard of them, music with a quiet voice saying "affirmations" like "I am pretty, I have my 'ideal face', I am skinny" etc. A lot of them will advertise that listening to them while you sleep will "turn you korean" or japanese, or your desired ethnicity.