Reels

This post is still about my media consumption, though it was not as planned out as my reading lists or daily songs. 

Speaking of Facebook's attempts to maintain engagement, no matter how consciously I try to spend my time, I do periodically fall for the attempts.  

I guess it was a few months ago where there started being these short video clips presenting dramatic morality tales. A racist would unwittingly offended the person who could most impact their career because they didn't think there was any way a Black person could have power, or someone would be late meeting the new boss to help a stranded elderly person who just happened to be the mother of said new boss.  

I have a strong compulsion to know full stories and was generally only getting a segment, so that tempted me to watch more. There was also a kind of morbid fascination with how cartoonish the portrayals were. 

Then there started being longer stories with long-lost relations and more fabulously wealthy people, slowly turning into romance stories, a few with werewolves and mafia, though I haven't seen any with a werewolf mafia.

Also, I have not seen many of the werewolf ones, but I have never seen a wolf in them. They talk about wolves, but they don't seem to have any costumes or effects to show the wolf phase. I'm not saying wolves would make me watch more, but the quality and stupidity is leading to me giving up on them, which is probably the best outcome for my brain and my time management.

I may have watched more because I was trying to figure out the point. Obviously the main point was to keep you watching, combining over the top drama with dreams of fantasy and wealth, though not with a lot of budget for scripts or talent.

Actually, I would have expected the morality plays and the romance stories to come from different producers since they seemed to be going down different tracks. The same faces keep showing up. I might just think that meant these were really cheap actors, but there are other similarities.

Still, there were other things psychologically that seemed off and I was trying to figure them out. 

Part of what seemed weird is that there were a lot of ex-husbands who had been really disrespectful. Then they were still jerks, but they really did love the heroine and they just had not known that she was secretly rich or brilliant or had a baby (lots of secret identities), with everything made worse by another scheming woman or perhaps a snobby family member.

I didn't think I would want a jerk like that back, but I could see how a woman scorned could get a sense of vindication to finally get that recognition. She would certainly want him to stop being a jerk, though if all it takes is one dramatic revelation, I would question that conversion into truly kind person.

I started putting it together when they started getting violent. They weren't extremely violent, but there was a lot of slapping and shoving, and also kind of a weird fetish where there is always talk about people kneeling down and kissing feet, though it rarely seems to happen.

The bad people -- again, just cartoonishly evil -- would always be slapping or attempting to slap or throwing drinks or or what have you with the heroine, but then their comeuppance would also often involve slapping and spilled drinks and the same kind of humiliation. You were supposed to like it then, because they had it coming.

Apparently, abuse is only wrong if you direct it at the wrong person.

I often write about concern with this team mindset, where the people you like can never be wrong, and the people you hate can never be write.

I found entertainment made for that. 

I guess it suddenly makes sense that the best people were always the true billionaires, while the abusing people were social climbers with access to some luxury but hunger for more. 

If you can believe in ethical billionaires, it makes sense that everything else is corrupt.