Is Movie Forums DYING?

I don't think movies are slowly dying, I think TV is just getting so much better. And people barely talk about television shows here unless it's an HBO show.

You are vile.

No, but it's been in a coma ever since cinemaaficonado got banned.

I believe this akin to someone saying all Muslims are terrorists.

I think it's less that it's "easy" and more that literally everyone is nuanced and complicated, and the only time we can't conveniently forget this is when we know them.

This is my general position. There was a big ol' fight wayyyyy back in the first year or two of the site's existence about the prominence of Intermission over movie-talk threads, and there was even a major exodus of members who resented it when I suggested they maybe focus on movies, since that's the idea here. But that's what's sustainable: the thing that brought people here in the first place. The thing they have in common.

Things are definitely less pleasant here in many threads, but that's true in every corner of the Internet right now. This is a big problem with the discourse (and, I think, inherent to the very nature of mass communication, which people are not actually built for at all), but it's much bigger than this site, and I tend to think we've been hit with it a lot less than most other places.

Anyway, the answer is talking more about movies. I bring up the live-and-let-live stuff because that's an inevitable part of it. If you despise people in one thread, it's pretty hard to go good-naturedly fight about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie in another.

Die Hard is DEFINITELY a Christmas movie.

And yes, the bickering and name-calling is *everywhere* these days. Twitter explodes with it daily. And don't get me started on how ugly so much of my Facebook newsfeed has been the past year and a half. There are too many people on both ends of the political spectrum who just can't seem to get on with their lives after the political issues of 2016. It astounds and scares me how little some people want to get on with their lives, how much they can hang on to bitterness over political beliefs.

It's FAR worse elsewhere than it is here.

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.

There doesn't seem to be many new posters sticking around lately. Even the ex IMDB posters have all but disappeared.

Nah, that's the norm. But this is different. People replaced them. We don't really have any popular members that just joined a year or two ago.

People are just too damn dramatic.

They will all tell you how pretty damn Awesome I am...

IIs this even a forum about movies - is often my question.

You guys probably don't remember me.

There are definitely cliques around here. Most of the newbies don't care to speak to me.

I read the entire thing. Didn’t consider it to be “gibberish”.

Perhaps "getting on with their lives" isn't really an option in some cases. That obviously affects people in ways where the bitterness goes beyond performative arguing.

...It's the ugly side to "social media," and it's liable to be its downfall.

I am the oldest of all the grandchildren from both sides of my parents' families. Growing up, I spent most of my time with my dad's parents as they lived only 40 minutes or so away. My mother's mother lived a good 7 hours, so visits to her were limited to once a year at best. My father's parents lived on a farm. I would visit for a week or two at a time during summer breaks. At that time, I only had two other cousins: two sisters that most times would visit during the same time that I was there. I suppose it was to entertain us while our parents worked. Usually Papa would spend the day farming fields while these three of us children stayed behind with our grandmother, in the house. I believe were were each maybe 1-2 years apart from the other.

We passed our days building bed sheet forts in the front bedroom that was adjacent to the living room area. There were three bedrooms with one holding two full-sized beds. Needless to say there was a surplus of bed sheets to make use of tucking edges, tying corners to door knobs, and even using towels draped as privacy walls between our individual "rooms" within. One afternoon our tent community spilled over into roughly 2/3rds of the living room. Papa was not happy when he came home as his recliner was 10' deep into a tent kingdom. We had 5 minutes to take it all down, else the belt would be used.

Other days were spent fighting over who would check the mail down the long dirt and gravel driveway. We would argue over and literally push each other over who would collect eggs that morning from the chicken coop. We explored the surrounding woods, crawling through wet ditches collecting minnows and tadpoles that found their way into the stream from nearby ponds and wash ways. We chased butterflies.

One afternoon I convinced my two cousins that if you spin until dizzy, you could undo the effect by spinning the opposite direction. I truly believed it. We were sick for an hour, but mostly I was sick due to my injured pride. I had absolute faith that the mechanics were sound. We found broken egg shells near the road that crows had stolen from the chicken coop. After their morning raids, they apparently drop the eggs to the dirt road below to break apart and eat from.

We fed cows handfuls of hay, and chewed on sour red weeds as we sat under oak trees in the yard.

Come weekends, our parents would return to claim us. My grandmother, the consummate southern cook, would spend all Saturday cooking ham, dumplings, dressing, cornbread, and a variety of other southern standards. She had an old pecan wood dining table that sat six---enough for her, her husband, and both sets of our parents but, unfortunately, there was no room for us, the young grandchildren. Instead, our mothers prepared our plates for us, then sat us on bent knee at the old wooden piano bench just past the door frame between the dining and living rooms. There we knelt eating our meals, grateful for our time together and for the food that we were given; but ever resentful that we were forever ostracized from the big table for having not been older to have laid claim to a chair.

I am the oldest of all the grandchildren from both sides of my parents' families. Growing up, I spent most of my time with my dad's parents as they lived only 40 minutes or so away. My mother's mother lived a good 7 hours, so visits to her were limited to once a year at best. My father's parents lived on a farm. I would visit for a week or two at a time during summer breaks. At that time, I only had two other cousins: two sisters that most times would visit during the same time that I was there. I suppose it was to entertain us while our parents worked. Usually Papa would spend the day farming fields while these three of us children stayed behind with our grandmother, in the house. I believe were were each maybe 1-2 years apart from the other.

We passed our days building bed sheet forts in the front bedroom that was adjacent to the living room area. There were three bedrooms with one holding two full-sized beds. Needless to say there was a surplus of bed sheets to make use of tucking edges, tying corners to door knobs, and even using towels draped as privacy walls between our individual "rooms" within. One afternoon our tent community spilled over into roughly 2/3rds of the living room. Papa was not happy when he came home as his recliner was 10' deep into a tent kingdom. We had 5 minutes to take it all down, else the belt would be used.

Other days were spent fighting over who would check the mail down the long dirt and gravel driveway. We would argue over and literally push each other over who would collect eggs that morning from the chicken coop. We explored the surrounding woods, crawling through wet ditches collecting minnows and tadpoles that found their way into the stream from nearby ponds and wash ways. We chased butterflies.

One afternoon I convinced my two cousins that if you spin until dizzy, you could undo the effect by spinning the opposite direction. I truly believed it. We were sick for an hour, but mostly I was sick due to my injured pride. I had absolute faith that the mechanics were sound. We found broken egg shells near the road that crows had stolen from the chicken coop. After their morning raids, they apparently drop the eggs to the dirt road below to break apart and eat from.

We fed cows handfuls of hay, and chewed on sour red weeds as we sat under oak trees in the yard.

Come weekends, our parents would return to claim us. My grandmother, the consummate southern cook, would spend all Saturday cooking ham, dumplings, dressing, cornbread, and a variety of other southern standards. She had an old pecan wood dining table that sat six---enough for her, her husband, and both sets of our parents but, unfortunately, there was no room for us, the young grandchildren. Instead, our mothers prepared our plates for us, then sat us on bent knee at the old wooden piano bench just past the door frame between the dining and living rooms. There we knelt eating our meals, grateful for our time together and for the food that we were given; but ever resentful that we were forever ostracized from the big table for having not been older to have laid claim to a chair.

Is anybody other than @Yoda and @Iroquois reading all their gibberish?