Social media is the death of love: a GoT introspective
So, in a nutshell, the writing quality and character development declined a lot in the last season ... except I mostly didn't notice (or mind), until I started reading online about how much - and why - everyone else hated the last season.
I got as far as S08 Ep03 (the White Walker battle) without reading any online commentary, critiques, etc. On my own, I did feel some characters' activities/behaviors were a bit 'off', but I still loved the episode overall (except literally too dark, hard to see some scenes).
Then a friend commented on some disappointing thing in the episode, and how 'everyone' was bitching about it. I started reading online ... and that's when I started seeing the flaws in the last season.
Granted, even if I had stayed offline, just watched it myself, there probably still would have been things that pissed me off ... Euron's magical dragon ambush, the whole Missandei capture/murder thing, and Dany embracing the Dark Side. I can't imagine I would have overlooked those.
But, by reading everyone else's gripes online, watching bitter youtube reviews, etc., the last 3 episodes sucked a lot more for me, because I saw all the flaws, many of which I would have missed.
So, to sum up, I blame all y'all for ruining GoT for me.
Thoughts?
I think this is a really interesting aspect of media right now. It affects everything—tv, movies, games, books, etc. Almost everything has an extremely devoted fanbase online that gets hyped up (often much too hyped up) about various things, as well as a separate group of fans that don't look at anything outside of the actual material. It's very difficult to balance trying to appeal to both of those groups, and often the creators don't even know that they need to try to do this.
So you end up with situations like a completely accepted "this is what's going to happen next" theory arising online, but then the source material does something else entirely, which makes the online community upset. This isn't necessarily even a deliberate choice—sometimes the next section has already been written/filmed/whatever, and the creators just had a different plan than the fans thought they would.
And then you end up with the opposite cases, where there are people officially involved that end up extremely involved with the online communities, and they integrate those online theories into the source material in a way that doesn't necessarily make much sense to people that aren't as plugged into the supplementary communities around the content. Then you end up with a different group of people that aren't happy, but they're likely to be less noisy about it because they aren't involved with the established online groups to amplify their feelings.
I don't know, I don't have a particular point here. I just think it's interesting and it's absolutely had an effect on how entertainment gets created and built.
I missed many of the flaws as well - I'm willing to overlook rather a lot and forgive even more, up to a point. After that, though, the fun changes from celebrating a property to destroying it with memes.
I've seen this exact phenomenon before, too. Last time we called it gamergate. Plenty of A-list studios put out a mountain of shitty games, with the Assasin's Creed debacle being a kind of trigger/tipping point just like Thrones is now. That bugfest of a game got glowing reviews from all the major gaming websites, and people started to suspect there was shit going on - payola for reviews being the big issue. That meant indie games were getting unfairly panned and major studio games were being unfairly praised, so the very websites that were supposed to be providing us all with good information and reviews were all exposed as being frauds - and most of them are out of business now, the ones that remain have changed their tune after the boycotts.
That gamergate thing would have blown over, except that one special day something like nine of the websites (that were supposed to be independent) all ran the same spin on a 'gamers are dead' article. That was the spark that set it all off. It was blatantly obvious to everyone what was going on at that point. Then the claws came out and gamers ate themselves and their favorite websites.
When the dust cleared, gaming websites were basically dead, and twitch/youtube reviewers were the new critics, and fiercely anti-industry. That war is still going on, but it's pretty clear who won at this point. Gaming companies have lost control of their review channels and it doesn't look like they can get it back despite paying some twitch streamers upwards of $50,000 per hour to play their games and sell them to the normies.
This time, Thrones is getting praise from all the critics, and being panned by a large majority of the fans. The reaction videos have been brutal this season. Thrones isn't the only one, with Orville being universally panned by critics and praised by fans while Discovery and Captain Marvel are universally reviled by fans and praised by critics. Rotten Tomatoes even changed their review system to 'verified reviews' recently just to try and stem the tide - and this will of course result in the death of their website.
Now we see HBO, actors, and tons of professional critics blaming the fans for this mess, as if that could possibly end in any other way than gamergate did. The youtube numbers for real critics are skyrocketing by 100k to 1m this week, entire networks of critics are now talking and forming ranks and dividing up the space of what they will cover, with whom, and how. It's a new gold rush. When the smoke clears, professional critics will be unemployed and youtubers will have replaced them. The entire industry will shift towards being anti-studio and pro-indie film.
This is what happens in a market segment when you try to capture it and end up pissing off your consumers. They revolt, and a new paradigm replaces the old one. For all the flack we throw at capitalism, it does eventually get the job done in the end, in its own horrible, meandering way.
Kick back and enjoy the popcorn. This will drive quality up in film and television. It's a good thing. :)
I checked, and you're right, Thrones is no longer critic-fresh, so that's good to see, and that is a change from earlier in the week. I was however referring to this trend of which this Thrones issue is just the latest part. As for every Marvel movie doing well with critics, they don't all do well with the fans and that break between fans and critics is the phenomenon I'm referring to.
Hardly looks like a bubble to me. What I see is a lot of consumers complaining about faulty products and questionable review practices. The SJW bullshit surrounding gamergate is the smokestreen to me, meant to distract people from legit complaints and keep them in some alt-right vs neo-left nonsense flamewar rather than contacting the FCC and getting the rules for web advertising updated. I couldn't care less about the politics it's devolved into, only the desire for honest game reviews and discussion, and full disclosure when payola is involved.
Look harder. I was referring to both Sophie Turner and Kit Harrington, though I'll admit calling Kit's responses 'blaming' is pushing it a bit, he was much more diplomatic. However, both of these events were widely reported online and spun up into plenty of thrones vs fans articles. That's now the narrative.
See, this is what bothers me. It is now impossible to discuss gamergate without being painted as alt-right or neo-left, depending on the knee-jerk responses of who you are talking to. That's a wonderful job polluting and diffusing a movement. I don't know if that happened on its own, or if the alt-right that seeped into KiA on reddit poisoned the well, nor do I care. I'm in it for honest reviews, and that's all. If that means you call me alt-right, that's on you.
Yes, I'm sure all those glowing reviews for mediocre films (such as this) were honest, objective... no pandering, no payoffs, no collusion. It's possible I'm overreaching, however it still smells fishy to me. Time will tell how this plays out.
Edit: Fixed 2nd to last link, got my videos confused. :P
Oh, I disagree, I think it's the poster child example since RT has 'lost' the reviews, conveniently resetting them to a higher number. I'd also point to The Last Jedi as another. As I said above, time will tell. RT seems to think this is 'review bombing' and coordinated downvote campaigns. That smells of bullshit to me, as does their plan for 'verified reviews' which looks to be just another attempt to suppress unhappy movie goers warning each other about wasting their time. If RT shuns that conversation, the site that eventually supports it will take over for them.
Linking to Thor doesn't convince me, since that's from 2014, and this phenomenon is very recent, the last couple years, and seems to be going into overdrive right now. This is current events more than it is past trends. It may not develop the same way, but the parallels are crystal clear. Thrones is potentially the same in this film/tv sea change as the 'gamers are dead' articles were to gamergate - the start of the fire. Let's recap.
I think they did it to prove a point. The conclusion of the series was objectively terrible. Consumers have a right to complain about a bad product, and they also have the right to tell the people who want them to shut up about it and swallow the shitburger to fuck off. If that's disrespectful, then I'm fine with a world that's more disrespectful. Let's bring that back.
HBO has gone from five prequel properties based on thrones in the works down to one single pilot for one prequel series that is unlikely to get made now. That is an unprecedented level of backpedaling. I'd say that petition got the point across just fine, combined with what was surely a record setting subscriber loss (even if most people re-up next month just proving a point, and I think many will). I'd call it highly effective. I support that petition and any other events which call out disappointing products, and I'd like to see a hell of a lot more of them.
As I said, I don't care about that, know if it was true, or see any difference between gg's meddling in people's lives and general internet doxxing/meddling in people's lives. This is a sideshow, an omnipresent distraction, and not worth anyone's time or energy.
What got me into gamergate was the response from the major gaming sites which made accusations of collusion and review fixing appear completely justified.
Gamergate was a nothingburger until the week those articles landed. That was the spark that started the wildfire. I think any kind of 'blaming the fans' activity over the negative reactions to star wars, star trek, certain recent marvel films, and now thrones, is likely to precipitate the exact same effect. We'll see #thronesgate explode and burn hollywood media sites in the exact same way. That's where we sit at this very moment, waiting to see how the press handles this. The start of this blaming is already there, but nothing so coordinated, mostly scattered opinion pieces and as you pointed out, quotes taken slightly out of context in many cases. Still, is that not enough to risk starting the fire? This is thin ice.
Gamergate resulted in massive boycotts, the resulting collapse of many sites including Gawker, major reforms and reshuffling staff for the surviving sites, multiple FTC lawsuits against gaming sites (some in progress at the time and some new), updated rules from the FTC that make affiliate disclosure necessary. A short list of the fallout is here. You'll note this has little or nothing to do with the debacle around who was sleeping with who and why. It's a consumer crusade, and the most successful one in recent memory. The consumers won, easily and handily, and got everything they wanted, and more. They usually do, if they can stick together long enough.
I will say this - what remains of gg now is a pale shadow of what it once was. KiA is infested with alt-right (just like much of reddit), and the people who were in this for the reforms have moved on after getting what they wanted. It's over, and it's been over for years, as a serious reform movement. Seems like all that's left is the sniping, and I'm sure that will pile on with the media shitstorm thrones has created. There's nothing stopping everyone still involved in that fracas from changing their hashtags and posting the same bile.
If you still think all of this is a bunch of trolls, we'll just have to agree to disagree. I've been a troll, and I've fought trolls, and they aren't that clever, and there aren't that many of them. Writing off any bad reviews of 'woke' films and media as trolls and brigading seems, to me, like an excuse to avoid acknowledging the problem - a precipitous drop in franchise quality across the board. It's the exact same phenomena all over again.
These films are being panned because they suck and come across as overly preachy with poor story elements. The 'woke' bullshit is just another silly diversion. It's really easy to use the dogwhistles (on either side) as a distraction, and since that sort of thing drives up the rage-click traffic, it's all too common. I can't see any reason it'll ever go away, either. Perhaps, if we ever get to a place where clicks don't matter for the bottom line, the conversation could improve. It certainly has here.
Anyway, I do appreciate you taking the time to have this discussion. If this were a thread on reddit, we'd already be well past the point of civility and talking in the middle of a flamewar. At this point I'm just glad to be able to have rational discussions somewhere. It's hell out there.
hi, person who was also in gamergate (8chan and KiA for almost 3 years + that general sphere for a year before then and a year after it): this is really an exercise in cognitive dissonance at best, and actively disingenuous at worst. to call gamergate a "successful" movement would be to greatly oversell its importance or significance beyond the first call of the reactionary right, the alt-right, and the rise of anti-SJWs in mainstream society. nobody got anything out of gamergate except reactionaries, and as someone who was there i think the literal most you can grant gamergate is the FTC form which might be one of the smallest concessions imaginable given that it was supposed to be about "ethics in games journalism".
nearly everything gamergate takes credit for is bullshit. gamergate didn't kill gawker--peter thiel's crusade against it and gawker's unwillingness to take down an article did. gamergate didn't lead to widespread reform in the gaming journalism industry, it expedited a few small changes but ensured that future changes in the industry will probably never happen through consumer reform because capital-G Gamers poisoned the well for everybody else. gamergate made more careers from the people it sought to get rid of--even sam biddle, spited as he is by gamergaters, has a cushy job writing for publications like the intercept--than it smashed, and empowered more far-right, alt-right, and anti-SJW reactionaries--milo, sargon, christina hoff sommers, allum bokhari, mundane matt, armoured skeptic, and so on--than genuine reformist consumers when all was said and done.
it would be disingenuous to say that gamergate was never truly a "consumer movement"--there were genuine people in it who did want reform and saw it as a mean to those ends--but for every genuine reformist there were an increasing number of opportunists and by 2015 "consumer movement" was mostly just a proxy for anti-SJWism and increasingly right-wing and far-right beliefs over actual consumer reform. there's a reason KiA is the way it is now, and it's not because gamergate has accomplished what it set out to do--it's because for four years, all the moderate reformist elements have been increasingly pushed out by reactionary conservatism, culture war bullshit far beyond what gamergate was supposed to be, and far-right politics. but honestly, as someone who was there in the zeitgeist? the KiA and 8chan of 2016 were only marginally less reactionary than their modern counterparts anyways. the moderates and genuine reformists lost control basically from the beginning.
I'd agree that it slid fast, and that's why I increasingly lost interest in it after the #notyourshield events. Do you really think it had no impact in shifting the activity of game reviews away from major publications and towards twitch and youtube reviews and livestreams? It seemed to me like that was a colossal sea change spurred into high gear by those events.
did it impact that? sure. was it the main reason, though? i very much doubt it. like i said, it expedited things, but the wind was already shifting toward a new status quo with game reviews, game reviewers, and how disclosure is done, so gamergate probably was not the decisive factor in why those are basically regulated now, it just helped to grease the wheels of things. without gamergate, i imagine we'd be in the same position we are right now, it'd have just taken longer.
The shift away from "traditional media" towards Youtube/twitch was already an ongoing thing and most people who work on Youtube/twitch will tell you so. This had nothing to do with Gamergate, which truly did nothing other than helping a smattering of savy people further their careers.
Mainly the reason this argument doesn't work is thay the movie towards Influencer culture has been present in all of media, not just video games. Makeup reviews, music discussion, cooking etc. all of it has been pivoting this way for a long time.
I feel like channels with a few hundred subscribers before the first year of gg had several hundred thousand after that year because of it. The amount of link sharing and commenting was insane, much like talking thrones is now putting a lot of new critics on the map.
See, I find I still disagree fundamentally with this position. I feel like everyone is trying to sweep gg under the rug and forget it happened because of the cloud of bullshit around it. That cloud is hardly unique to gamergate, it seems to me like it's around everything now, and will remain there, so saying it 'bumped' a bunch of bad apple's careers is a good enough reason to discount it falls laughably flat to me. The bad apples would be there with or without it, and the ones gamergate put on the map are a tiny handful of what's to be found now. The alt right funk is omnipresent, and only youtube's takedowns are making a dent.
It has reached the point where I'll probably refrain from talking about it in the future, though, because defending it as a consumer movement goes nowhere, everyone has already made up their minds. I'll just have to content myself with a different picture of those events that wasn't influenced by the politics.
It doesn't seem like sweeping things under the rug is all that much of an issue in this current conversation. I don't know why you are this monomaniacal about rewriting GG's history as some kind of misunderstood accomplishment when the truth of it has been very plain to everyone for years now. But if it's this important to you have fun with it on your own I suppose.
Hey man, inappropriate. I don't even see how these things are related.
It really didn't seem to me like the actors were against the revolting fans to be honest... Now I haven't seen what the rest of the crew had to say but both Emilia Clarke and Kitt Harrington admitted how this last season was very much flawed.
What i'm trying to say is that imho the reaction was a bit more unanimous than it's generally played off to be.
Edit: repetition
See my reply here. It's not nearly as bad as certain media outlets are clamoring it is, but some fan-blaming did happen.
Comparing Lost and GoT is a little unfair. GoT had an endpoint from the start. GRRM just didn't know how to get to that ending without compromising character integrity, and he's all about his characters doing the things his characters would do. He may or may not ever figure it out but I gave up reading his books a long time ago so I'll never know. D&D probably could have done a passable job of it if they'd taken 20 episodes rather than 6. I do not know why they did that.
Lost's writers were literally just making it up as they went along (as an aside, I can't wait to see what a mess Damon Lindlof makes of Watchmen because it's going to be epicly terrible, he's an awful writer), throwing out ideas and seeing if they stuck, then working those that did into a plot which had no idea where it was going. Which is why when it ended it made absolutely no sense. It has since been made private but there was an excellent essay called Calvinball Mythology and the Void of Meaning about this style of writing and why it's so bad.
Last night I finished a rewatch of House MD and that ends so, so well. Nobody acts out of character to make the plot move forward, the story ends by itself and while it leaves things unanswered, it does so in a satisfying way. Because life doesn't tie things up neatly so why should fiction?
Lost has what I thought was one of the most amazing pilots ever made. I seem to remember the people involved in writing that were let go due to the cost, and the writing team shuffled more than once after that too. It's rather hard to build a consistent narrative when the writers are seen as expendable. :/
House did end well. It had some off moments and slow seasons, but was overall a good show. I feel like we should do a thread on Tildes in praise of good television. We spend a lot of time lately focusing on the negative because so many franchises are in a tailspin right now. It might be nice to remind ourselves why we care, and who has done it right.
Oooh, nice idea. Here you go
I haven't seen Captain Marvel, I'd be interested to know what they retconned. As far as I know Captain Marvel is brand new in the MCU. Did they change already established points in the story?
I found the opposite, that the criticism helped me enjoy this season a lot more. What I originally liked about Game of Thrones was mostly gone and what the show still did well I didn't care about all that much, but I could at least enjoy the episodes in a meta sort of way by using them to think about how story and writing work. What makes a good story? What changed about GoT such that I didn't like it anymore? How could it have been done better? These are interesting questions to me and the online discussions about plot holes, why people didn't like certain decisions, etc. are fun to read and take part in.
Some of the pure bitterness and hatred is annoying but I feel the same way about the people who are against any criticism to the point of making personal attacks against anyone with a negative opinion. I don't care about social media telling me how I "should" feel but I love that I can find thoughtful analysis, both positive and negative, of things that I care about. I think that's why groups like RedLetterMedia are so popular. Their Star Wars prequel reviews are probably the most famous example of a "negative" take on something that is also thoughtful and incisive, but they also go deep on why some things they love are good too (e.g. their review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Being able to find content like that for Season 8 has helped me enjoy what was otherwise a pretty disappointing experience.
I'd say I feel the same way. I've immensely enjoyed the post-thrones apocalypse. I've had great conversations, laughed my ass off many times at the memes, found plenty of new review channels and interesting sites to read, and generally feel like it was a net positive experience. I'd still have rather seen a legendary final season, but this will do in its place, and serve as a good model for enjoying bad media in the future.
For GoT, I was perfectly happy to read all the flaws, but that's because even before going online I already determined that the quality had declined. Reading what other people had to say made me enjoy the show more even though the quality had dropped. And in some cases, people still see positive points which I can agree with.
There are other shows where when I think that a specific episode was great, I go online, hoping that other people are also praising it. When I don't find the same level of positivity, I just turn the internet off and forget I even bothered.
(There's also the case where everyone is happy so everything is great.)
I feel like in all cases, it heightens my general enjoyment and entertainment values.
Edit: What I don't like is when people circle jerk so much that it has real life negative effect for some people. For example all the direct insults towards D&D asking to get them fired. It's like people forget they are real human beings.
Okay, I can't condone insults and the fanbase definitely takes it too far (and I've even seen a couple of instances of that on tildes), but let's not forget that yes they may be real human beings, but they're also not doing this as a free hobby on youtube. They're professionals hired for the job and paid a lot of money to do so. It's not crazy to make a case that butchering one of the (the?) highest budget tv shows in history just because they wanted to get it over with is a fireable offence.
As far as I know, we don't have proof of that. It's all speculation. I'd rather give them the time to explain themselves.
Anyway, I sure love me a good redemption story.
It's also like people forget they didn't just obliterate the legacy of work of tens of thousands of creatives, and tarnish the reputation of a fairly good network in the process, and abdicate all responsibility afterwards, and make asses out of themselves trying to be clever in the after-the-episode videos, often contradicting their own words from the same segments of prior episodes.
That said, I am willing to hear them out. It's possible they walked away from some mess that was not of their own making. This could be an institutional failure, or some consequence of the AT&T buyout, or have something to do with George - we just don't know.
I'm miffed, and I'd like some real answers, and right now the ball is in their court. They seem to be on a six month sabbatical without internet access (or something like that) so running away from the problem doesn't help them look any less culpable. Still, if I were the face of that kind of massive fuckup, I'd probably wait for the storm to pass before talking about it, so I understand. I'll be waiting whenever they get back.
Yeah exactly. That's how I feel too.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
I've been watching season 8 this past week after reading all of the criticism online and I've definitely been affected by this.
On one hand, I'm certain that its worse than all the other seasons. Season 7 itself was the worst one for me up to that point, while seasons 5 and 6 i thoroughly enjoyed. One big problem I've had with seasons 7 & 8 is characters making bad decisions that don't match their characterization up to that point. A perfect example of this is Tyrion trusting Cersei at the end of season 7, even though he knew very well the sort of sociopathic manipulative cunt that she is/was. Then this bad decision is compounded by all of Dany's other advisors going along with the decision to defeat the Night King first then deal with the Iron Throne next, when the reverse is a much better strategic decision for a bunch of reasons.
Watching season 8 now, I can't decide if I hate it because I've already read most of the criticism and spoilers. I'm definitely affected by the fact that I know how it ends and I'm fully aware of how unsatisfying the ending is. But I still can't tell if I would have found it to be as bad if I had not read about it before.
On the other other end of this, Avengers Endgame seems to have delivered the sort of satisfying and conclusive ending that GoT fans would have hoped for on their show. I'm sure not all of the fans are happy with how it ended, but it doesn't seem to have suffered the same fate as GoT in the form of a fan revolt. I would say the main reason for this is that the quality, the value, and the direction remained the same from the moment that they decided they would create the interwoven universe up until the moment they finished the story.
GoT on the other hand made 2 incredible and unforgivable mistakes by my view.
It seems after season 6, the show stopped being an intense political drama focusing on intrigue, betrayal and turned into a bare bones epic based in the middle ages.
I still can't believe that the threat of the winter, a threat that writers started building up from Season 1 episode 1, was discarded so casually in one single episode.
I didn't mind season 7 or season 8 episodes 1-3 so much. The drop in quality was apparent, plot holes were emerging and characters were becoming less organic - slaves to the plot. But this was all on the basis that there was a grander scheme in mind, that all the foreshadowing, prophecies and character development was leading somewhere. I didn't care whether the ending was happy or sad, just that it made sense, and that it was all organic - the way the show began.
But season 8 episodes 4-6 showed that all that mattered was a mad dash to GRRM's end notes. And subverting expectations.
Looking back on the last 2 seasons, the drop in quality is no longer forgivable. They gave themselves an arbitrary 13 episodes to wrap up the series, and shoehorned in a weak, sloppy ending. They've retroactively tarnished the show. I no longer feel any motivation to rewatch the series in it's entirety. Or really care too much about future adaptations of the GoT universe.
I'll read the books eventually though. Hopefully GRRM does the story justice with an organic conclusion.
Funny, I really wanted to make the same post as well after seeing the finale. I had to delay seeing it and a bunch of "Oh i hated it" opinions leaked through despite my best efforts to immediately close anything GoT-related.
But as you said, it's very difficult not to see the drop in quality in the last season. I've not read the books and I felt the drop in quality as of season 5, without actively trying. In fact, I actively try the opposite: to enjoy shows, overlook their flaws and imagine more context. I've had to do that a lot in the last season. Knowing that 6 episodes wasn't enough to finish it, I had to make a conscious effort to imagine tons and tons of missing context, as if we were just reading every 20th page in a book.
It's honestly ridiculous to have to do that with such a big-budget and high-quality-production show like GoT, but hey. I still enjoyed the finale. I can definitely understand the urge to see a … different one, given how many possibilities the writers had to just do things better. But realistically, this won't happen, so we just have to wait for the books.
I have to agree that Season 8 wasn't great. There were a lot of moments that felt off, like Sam swiming in walkers and then being perfectly fine. Even with all the things I noticed, I still enjoyed every episode. Then, I would go read some comments and watch people rant about something; some I agreed with, the dumb battle plans at Winterfell, some I disagreed with, suprise Euro, but overall, it made me remember the episode as worse than it was. I noticed this after the 4th episode, so I decided to mostly ignore the comments. I really enjoy episode 5, and I still think it was solid, except for Jaime's arc because that was bullshit. Qyburn being thrown onto that pile of rubble was hilarious. Cersei just noping out of Cleganbowl was funny. No, season 8 wasn't great, but it still had a lot of good moments that I felt were drowned out by obnoxious fans.
In the long run, I'm glad to hear criticism even if it highlights unforgettable flaws. Yes, seeing poor critical reactions to a favorite franchise hurts. I'm still upset with how Disney has treated Star Wars. Yes, it might mean that I'll struggle to enjoy lower quality content.
But that's a good thing. Like Bob Ross says, you have to have darkness to show the light. The existence and recognition of poor quality writing, movie-making, storytelling, acting, etc. makes the good stuff shine better. You gain a deeper appreciation for the highlights of art. I can look at Interstellar and remember how much I loved it, about how I eventually realized that there's some weaker points in the later parts of the movie, and use that personal growth to appreciate another sci-fi movie, like Arrival, all the more. I can watch The Empire Strikes Back and appreciate it even more because of the failings of the Disney films. The original Lost in Space TV series is better because of how badly the film remake turned out to be. (Of course, 'better' is in the artistic sense, not the make-more-money-and-more-sequels sense. But in the long run, 30 years from now, you as a consumer aren't going to care about how much money a film made; you'll just be deciding which film to add to your library and which one to only rent from the library for a night and which one to sell in a garage sale. Does that mean that DC and Star Wars and Eragon might never get a cohesive, multi-film franchise that blows existing media out of the water? Yeah. But here’s the secret: on planet Earth, in the context of all of mankind’s history, those stories don’t matter; just because you and I want them to be on the big screen in a positive light doesn’t mean there isn’t another better, slightly different franchise just waiting to step over their mistakes and blow us away.)
I'll always treasure the emotions I experienced watching Thrones for the first time. The Red Wedding. The Purple Wedding. Dany rising from the ashes. Just like I'll always love the Dr. Mann scene in Interstellar or the trenches scene in Wonder Woman, despite the weaker endings of both films. It's better to be a well-rounded viewer that appreciates many works, instead of clinging to a few and missing out on the rest.
I had a similar experience with Jimmy Fallon. I was watching it every few nights and enjoyed it enough to passively watch it. Then someone pointed out how he cuts everybody off, overreacts / over-laughs, etc... and suddenly it all shifted. He went from being the host of an alright show to one of the more annoying people on television.
This shift in focus is like when you share your favorite music with a friend who doesn't listen to the genre. Suddenly you notice the flaws and the song just doesn't sound right... and so with online communities, multiply this by a thousand, and suddenly everything that isn't near-perfect is garbage.
I can understand people's frustration with the decline in quality of GOT. It's very apparent, but I will stand my ground when I say the last episode was actually pretty darn good.