Bret Devereaux

Now, cards on the table: I was not a huge fan of the Disney Star Wars trilogy (also not news to blog readers). I thought it had flaws (R1, Clone Wars, Mandelorian are great though). But hey, if you loved Rise of Skywalker or Last Jedi - by all means, enjoy. 5/16

I'm not here to harsh anyone's jam except for the guys with bad Sparta takes. But I didn't like tLJ or RoS. I also am not fond of the dark, cynical tone of the new Star Trek. I find it off-putting. I still enjoy thoughtful discussions of it though... 6/16

...because sometimes the discussion about art can be enjoyable art all its own. There's positive value to analyzing even flawed or frustrating fiction. What I do not want are videos crowding out my recommended list loaded with angry yelling about fiction...7/16

...often combined with hate-conspiracy theories about the secret aims of this or that producer or writer to ruin the series in the name of this or that political agenda. That's not to say questions of author intentionality and worldview aren't interesting! They are! 8/16

But those questions require evidence, either from the author's other statements or from the text itself. But there's this whole ecosystem of angry screaming fans (is there a word for a 'hate-fan' of a franchise?) who attribute creative decisions to a vast plan...9/16

...in the complete absence of evidence and without anything like deliberate analysis of the framing, themes or even just storytelling failures of the projects themselves. And they just invade my recommended list with little warning. I do not sub, no many And yet! 11/16

By this point, I've been exposed to enough of these damn things that I could make a taxonomy of them. But I don't want to because - I wish I could shout to the algorithm here - I do not care to watch those videos. They have even less artistic merit than Rise of Skywalker! 12/16

Now I use science fiction as an example because it happens a lot. Obviously that's a pretty meaningless example. But it also happens with politics - the moment the algorithm thinks it knows your politics, it steers you towards the crazy! 13/16