Why are there so many shows promoting nihilism?

Why are there so many shows promoting nihilism?

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Modern creators are nihilistic.

I suspect the secularism of the first world, media attention on the incompetence/shadiness of government combined with the rapidly approaching technological singularity has left many people with a pervasive sense of purposelessness in a world that, while providing more answers than it ever has before, provides no sense of comfort or meaning. It destroys those things through over-analyzation if anything.

>I think that depiction of a thing automatically equates to endorsement of a thing

You fucking idiot.

>So many
>Bojack
>Rick & Morty

What else?

It is, 50s conservative soccer moms and SJWs are right.

Goddman, how Sup Forums ended up populated by 50s conservative stereotypes?

>Will and Grace wasn't used to promote fags and fag behaviour

There is nothing nihilistic in Bojack you memelord

Are you implying individuals should apply critical thought when engaging with media on their own, rather than adopting and regurgitating memes? Heresy.

This guy gets it. With pre-packaged, meaningless platitudes like this you don't even have to waste time watching the show itself.

>automatically

Holy shit, you’re actually this dumb. Will and grace depicts homosexuality and portrays it as positive or neutral. Bojack portrays nihilism and existential angst as being horrible, destructive things to deal with. How are you missing shit this basic?

Just because a shitty sitcom turned you into a cocksucker doesn't mean it was pushing an agenda. It just means you wanted an excuse to suck cocks.

Agreed, modern world seems to focus on trying to know the whole world and please everyone but it just drains people to take the nihilism route.
You've gotta be delusional to not realise at this point the creators are venting their mental issues.
youtube.com/watch?v=f6F_CF7Yvo0

because nihilism is the only belief that's real and true and people are finally starting to realize that

It's only "true" to relativists.

>n-no but the thing they’re depicting is something they have real-life experience with! So that means they’re endorsing having mental issues


Ho Lee fuck.

there's an objective truth to everything, otherwise nothing would exist

I think we've gotten to the point where we've realized the human mind was never set up to desire or even acknowledge truth.

Congrats.
Yeah, it's actually pretty natural to want to live in the dark and be filthy, isn't it. Kind of sad.

Define nihilism, because I see shows showing existentialism ( Bojack), advocating nihilism (R&M), and so on, but none of them unanimously advocate nihilism like a hivemind.

Did you just learn that buzzword yesterday or something?

How is showing nihilism to be fatally flawed and ultimately self-destructive in numerous ways "endorsing" it? Did you watch BJ at all?

Nihilism helped kick off the modern era and we're in the postmodern age.

If you think they're promoting it you're missing the point.

>so many shows promoting nihilism
Are there? Because to me it seems there are rather more shows promoting irony and nostalgia.

The human mind seems to be wired to worship something, anything. Whether you're worshiping a religion, a sports team, an ideology, a celebrity, a piece of media or even a fictional relationship in a piece of media, it seems to gravitate towards this fanatical devotion.

The word venting is key, and it's not so much endorsement since this is only a cartoon. But it is all about being in a circlejerk about how sad everything is and the show is doing a terrible job at highlighting anything else because it doesn't have an episodic format. Older Simpsons managed to get the same basic message across in 4 minutes.
youtube.com/watch?v=9oRhcrkE9pA

Yeah. Humanism overestimated mankind for too long and even now we're paying the madness-price of that delusion. For better or worse, the "Rationalism" will go down in history as one of many of those "people used to believe in this thing, but know we know better", like the phlogiston theory or humor fluids.

Camp Camp is literally about this.

Humans are social creatures by default. Tribal creatures, more precisely. We can never be contented with just the Self; we will always need to know that something else outside us exists.

Nihilism would fit asocial animals better, like a crocodile or a spider. Those who have zero loyalty for anything except their own selves and so can grasp a universe empty of everything except themselves

>nihilistic characters portrayed as unhappy, unfulfilled, unlikable, and suicidal
>"promoting" nihilism

unironically truth

the first step doesn't even have to be positive, just keep showing it over and unver until it's normalized in the back of someones minds

Probably got it from the same YouTube video these kids started mumbling “post modern” from.

So cop shows normalize rape and murder and serve the purpose of endorsing those two things? You’re on that kind of Reverend Lovejoy shit?

shot yourself in the foot, kid. you reaalize we live in a modern rape culture, right?

No to that extent but I think user have a point. Media in general now has very little contempt for what they show on TV. Specially news, I'm not saying we shouldn't be informed but it seemed the focus in showing screwed up stuff on TV has increased exponentially in the last two decades to the point people starts to grow desensitized in the face of several acts of crime, violence and corruption. Thus reducing the way society reacts to such horrors.

I wonder if sapient crocs would invent religion.

Bojack Horseman portrays nihilism as true, but not as desirable or laudable.

You realize that several modern school shooters have unironically said they were going for a "high score"? You know how the media still worships Columbine and other mass shooters with all the lavish attention they could ever want?

Clearly we need to ban video games and television.

Except we don’t.

>violence was invented in 1995

How did we get to the point where Sup Forums is unironically parroting Tipper Gore? Who let you little faggots in?

Or just moderating the content. The "close the well after the kid drowns" logic is pretty obsolete.

>2018
>still misunderstanding the point of nihilism

With the death of "God", humans have a void within them created by the fact that religion is no longer satisfactory for a great deal of people, this state is what nihilism is. What so many people don't seem to get is that nihilism is a journey and not a destination; nihilism is meant to be overcome, it's not a stopping point.

"Nothing matters!" Well, make it matter, don't wait on someone else to do it for you. That's the whole point behind Bojack.

That's right, we don't need to close the well, we just need to put fluoride in the water.

Except that in the end, Camp Camp was all about overcoming nihilism and ultimately finding happiness in life

More like it started to become mainstream. And actually a bit earlier than the 90's. There are pros and cons like in everything. Awareness is good. For example a rape victims while still facing social shaming it has much better chances now to be heard and assisted than in the 50's. I don't say we should go back track to tell people everything is great and to wear their rose tinted glasses but to find a middle ground between keeping people informed while at the same time upholding positive values. Just saying "the world sucks" over and over just makes people anxious and likely won't end well.

they are most likely an American
only a gas chamber can help those

Yea, sounds about right.
I used to be one of the most autistically happy kids on earth, until I really started thinking about the world.

I think you finally got what rubs me the wrong way about this show, it presents a philosophical idea as fact.

>we live in a modern rape culture
Not all of us are Muslims like yourself

>Just saying "the world sucks" over and over just makes people anxious and likely won't end well.
So? It's the truth. What's the point in prettying it up?

Bojack is set around one of the most degenerate and nihilistic industries in the real world. Would be dishonest to depict it as anything else.

Wanna start slitting the throats of newborn babies?

Just about every piece of narrative media does that. Every time you simplify the myriad causes of events in real life down to a few key points for the purposes of storytelling, you're doing so from some philosophical perspective. For example, focusing on the particular choices of specific individuals or focusing on a greater social trend. Or something like the underlying morality, like "the guilty are punished" versus "the guilty are to atone."

except that "make it matter" is existentialism

nihilism is the fact that death and entropy make any actions we take irrelevant and ultimately meaningless.

yes, most people step beyond nihilism because most humans require meaning. but that doesn't mean you can't stay there if you want to

That sounds like it would require effort on my part.

All truths we know are relative to us, and on the scale of nations it is the relative truths of large groups being forced to reconcile with each other. If there is an objective truth, it is by its nature unknowable to us.

Humans are creatures of meaning. A few ones will strive to face be meaning in face of that but let's face it the large majority is affected negatively by this and it's showing. Besides the only thing that sucks is human behavior, the world is and will be fine after us.

Convincing yourself that everything is bad is pretty selfish. There are good things out there but most of us are too lazy to reach for them. It's easy to just blame it on "reality". And yes I acknowledge the reality is pretty Grimm for some people and they have very valid reasons to feel hopeless but I don't think that applies to the average middle class citizen watching TV and eating Doritos with a roof over his head and a couch under his ass.

If the average middle class citizen thinks about how his TV and Doritos actually got to him, it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that the world is both hilariously awful and unfair but also there is not much he can do about it besides distract himself with said TV and Doritos.

Yeah, but instead of getting depressed it also makes me angry and want to eradicate or punish those ruining the world, something thats strangely absent from these shows.

Start with yourself kid.

It doesn't matter what someone sells if everyone was smart enough to not buy it

concern =/= hopelessness

Or at least shouldn't be. Worrying about something is alright, it's how we identify problems and think about what to do about them. But it shouldn't get to the point where one says "eh, the world sucks anyways so whatevs".

Nah man, that'd be a blessing for them
Let those fuckers live life and go through the same trials as me. They'll wish they were dead.

I hate you faggots, whenever soemone says something remotely controversial you idiots say “lol do it to yourself fag”. Also, what doesnt give me the write to critique a flaw that i see in many of these cartoons? Its oddly suspicious they promote nihilism but dont have any concepts such as getting back at the governments and certain populaces that made the world this bad in the first place.

Well kids stupid enough to get light up shoes probably deserve to be shot anyways, natural selection at its finest

I'm with you, if anything, making a critique already counts as a starting step of sorts.

user a lot of the shows are satirical. And Satire by definition and nature is a negative art

The problem is the audience is too dumb to realize the satire, and then said audience becomes writers and soon you have shit like “youre not evil youre smart” said competly straight and with no irony involved.

>promotes nihilism
>shows characters as depressed wrecks with awful lives
>promotes

They also live exciting lives full of adventure and pleasures away from the reach of the average viewer. A classic case of "Don't be like this really cool character cuz he's depressed and shit".

>They also live exciting lives full of adventure and pleasures
this is true for all characters ever

Hopelessness is just concern in its proper context. What is any individual going to do about the borderline slave labour that goes into their clothes and electronics? Go to work naked and without a work computer?

>fact

If the universe was eternal and everything within was deathless, would that somehow make your actions “matter” and imbue them with meaning?

I wasn't a nihilist before reading this thread, but now I am. If so many people can be this stupid and miss the point so hard then nothing really mattress.

>he doesnt want light up shoes
It's like you dont want to run faster.

It reminds me of all action flicks of the 80's. Everyone wanted to be Rambo even though Rambo (and nearly all action hero characters of the time) had horrible lives and suffered from many traumatic conditions, drugs, broken families, etc... People don't care about consequences as long as it's cool.

Hopelessness is going to an extreme and extremes are unhealthy. Your very example is showing it. Said worker can look up alternatives to better his personal life, sure he can't change what he has to work with but life isn't just work (at least not over here, not yet). He can exercise, do sports, engage in social activities or acquire a hobby (that doesn't involve shooting people). The ideal would be to seek improvement but at the very least some way to be fine with himself instead of becoming a drama queen shouting that god hates him.

it looks edgy to talentless artschool students. this always happens. and those finding nihilism/cynicism edgy are really good at doing cronyism and forming a circlejerk. all in all they arent really either nihilistic or cynic. they just pretend like that to share something cool with others even though it all comes from a garbage dump of the 90s sub-culture.

some days i wish bait and mindless responses to bait didn't drive 70-80% of the traffic on this board

>nothing really mattress
That explains why I've been having uncomfortable sleep these years.

Redditor pseudo-intellectuals

Adult Swim shows used to be nihilist wihtout getting up on the soapbox and pandering to le deep redditors who just read Nietzche or whatever

>He can exercise, do sports, engage in social activities or acquire a hobby
I mean, that's nice, but that doesn't change for example the borderline slave labor that will go into the sports clothes he will purchase for the purposes of said hobby. Everything you do exists within the context of the world as it exists, unless you somehow manage to change it. Even billionaires have trouble actually changing it, what chance does a random middle class schlubb have of doing it?

Aqua Teen Hunger Force they just live in the ghetto and die repeatedly

holy shit lad you must be the biggest fag of all

Meaningless in the sense, yes, in some billion and billion years from now, nothing will exist. But honestly, why does that matter? You won't be alive in a billion years anyway, so try to find something to with which to occupy yourself in the meantime.

How does self improvement solve the problems going on caused by the oppression going on in the 3rd world?

That just sounds like the way to live is to completely not give a fuck or not give too many fucks about the world around you. That you should only concern yourself with whatever happens to you personally,except for some reason its not called narcissism. Iunno that just seems like those "one 'like' can save a starving child in africa" type posts.

But then again, maybe that is the way to live. Everyone being so concerned with themselves, it just works. worrying about everything else, more than i worry about myself pretty much made me the shitty person I am today. so, what the fuck do I know?

So what do you propose? That they went the opposite, tumblr way and pepper their shows with insipid Posivity and quirky, non-threatening pastel colors so that no one in the audience will feel triggered?

>get back at certain populace that made this world shit

Sooo..... you're basically a nazi then? Quelle surprise.

The rage filled autist blames the rest of the planet for not doing what he wants. If you had a properly functioning personality, you might find something to actually do with your life.

Kid, let go of your anger. Try some zen meditation, really, seriously. Find inner peace, cultures have been doing it for millennia. You sound like a fucking Linkin Park record, and we all know what happened to that dude. You sound like that faggot kid that just shot up a school in FL.

tl;dr - Just die already

Maybe get laid or something? Some pussy often helps.

>But it is all about being in a circlejerk about how sad everything is and the show is doing a terrible job at highlighting anything else because it doesn't have an episodic format.

It's not a disjointed story meant to have a variety of themes in it. Tragedies and dramas are actual things just like comedies.

I thing you guys are missing the point here. A single person no matter how poor or rich can change the world on it's own (not positively at least, doing harm is way easier). But each person can do things to change it's own reality, you can't change facts that's a given but you can perceive them in a different way. We all fear death (and those who say they don't are either suicidal or delusional) but we don't live conquered by that fear do we? We do stuff, enjoy stuff and think about other thinks instead of hammering ourselves that we're going to die 24/7. The same applies here.

I think the main flaw of pseudo-Nihilistic reasoning is blaming the inability to change the world on the individual and feeling despair for it. As I commented before, there are people out there facing stuff way harder than us and some of them actually manage to make their way through that. Cruelty, pain and violence are truths indeed but those shouldn't govern our lives. There are lines between being careful, being paranoid and being hopeless.

It... it isn't strange.

Except Bojack doesnt present this as fact, it just shows us awful people who come from broken households and living in decadent environments that sabotage and undermine their own happiness with a number of manias and addictions.

It's the world of "Hollywoo", Broadway and the rich and famous as animals and freaks put in contrast with the normal peoples' world, not of all of society.

If all truth is relative, how can you say something universal like that?

>I think the main flaw of pseudo-Nihilistic reasoning is blaming the inability to change the world on the individual and feeling despair for it.

I agree with this in the sense that burning yourself out doesn't help anyone, but just dishing out platitudes also doesn't help anyone.

>There are lines between being careful, being paranoid and being hopeless.
Again, these are just words so I will ask you again: What can a person do to help stop the oppression going on in the 3rd world?

>Cruelty, pain and violence are truths indeed but those shouldn't govern our lives.
When no one does anything to help, some lives will be governed by such things. No one person can do everything, but everyone ought to do something.

Except that even people outside the system feel exactly the same way. Penny, Eddie, etc.

>What can a person do to help stop the oppression going on in the 3rd world?
To be completely honest I wouldn't know where to start but that's the think about change. It takes time and most heroes of history don't even live to see the changes their efforts were aimed to, they literally died trying.

That being said it completely depends on the personal on itself. Some risk their lives in hopes of making a better world for everyone. Other value their role in protecting and supporting the lives of those close to them and avoid such risks in order to keep being able to do so. I think both are equally valid approaches.

the next generation does the same shit and some of them and left-over old millennials will get triggered again. thats it.
this shit is basically endless for nothing. its just become a mediocre "edgy sub-culture material" among artschool students. and when they get old and grow out of the youth culture or tumblr most of them will forget anything nihilistic.

the 90s sub culture normalized every kind of "meta" crap in entertainment/indie/underground art with some melancholic tone. basically, modern nihilism and cynicism is merely either being meta in the 90s way or doing the boring nihilistic-looking simulacre trash.

tho im not being nihilistic such a way here. i think this shitty rotten loop should be cut off. otherwise the whole youth sub-culture consisted of artschool students or the internet nomads like tumblrinas wouldnt ever go to the next level. one of the ways is to learn other culture to death and go beyond some binary cultural opposition but this shit is off topic so maybe another time.

Bojack Horseman doesn't teach nihilism. It has characters who are nihilists themselves but doesn't take their side either.

That's one of the many reasons Bojack>>>>Reddit&Morty

Well of course the people in charge want you to give up hope on humanity so you'll turn to them for pleasures, not so you'll start an uprising against them. Notice how as wealth inequality grows, the presence of media and other distracting trinkets increases so the proles don't start whining.

actually he just have mental disorders, all the problems in that show could be resolved by therapy and psychiatrist help.