The ONE thing everyone is chasing…

Every time a big legacy property drops, the conversation explodes, and the people defending it ask the same thing: why don’t the critics just disengage? Disengaging probably is healthier. But it misses what’s actually happening.

Most of us grew up in an era with far fewer places to get entertainment, which meant a shared experience by default. The internet brought people together and fragmented culture at the same time, because now you can find your subculture without leaving the house. What’s left of the monoculture lives in legacy IP, and that’s the last recognizable common ground a lot of people have.

So when someone engages negatively with something they don’t even like, they’re often not chasing the property. They’re chasing the conversation, and the familiarity that comes with it. I empathize with that completely.

I’ll also be transparent about the other side: a lot of people telling you to stop talking are hyper political themselves and knock plenty of things. They just don’t want you knocking the thing they enjoy. That’s not a principle, that’s a preference.

The honest answer is that you can still have shared culture. It just won’t look like the grocery store version anymore. Find your niche, curate your feed, and stop waiting for a high that isn’t coming back.