 Alright, so originally I was planning a different video for this week. It was gonna be more of a visual hands-on thing about writing fight scenes, but I'm gonna have to push that to next week because I just... This has been gnawing at me for a while, and finally it just needs to break out. I need to rant. And basically, the internet has completely ruined horror. Like, just in general. Obviously there's still a couple of good horror things out there, but in general it's just ruined. And it's gone. It's done. And I hate you all for it. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So Jaws is an amazing movie. If you've never seen it, you need to watch it. Like, from the beginning scene, it is terrifying. And it's terrifying largely because the ocean is out there, and we don't know where the shark is. It's somewhere in the ocean, but the ocean is gigantic. It could be somewhere near us. It could be somewhere far away. We just don't know, but it's out there somewhere. And so that's part of what makes it terrifying. And you may also know that when they filmed this movie, they actually built a giant mechanical shark, but it didn't look that realistic is the thing. So Steven Spielberg had to be very careful where he made the cuts and how he shot it in order to make sure that people didn't catch a glimpse of the shark looking fake, and then it would take them out of the movie. Because we only see very few glimpses of the mechanical shark in the final cut, and the most of the glimpses we get, it looks fairly realistic. I can go slow ahead. Come on down and chump some of this shit. You know, for that reason, it's still scary. Like, he knew exactly what to leave out so that there'd be some mystery so that the audience would still be afraid. You know, Stephen King once said that horror is what happens before you open the door. You know, like, the anticipation of wondering what horrible thing could possibly happen, that's what's scary. Like, just a big monster coming out and going, I'm gonna get you. Like, sure, that can be shocking, and it can be kind of scary for a minute or two, and then you just have to like run away or something. But it's not that bad compared to the anticipation. You know, because the anticipation of something horrible happening is usually worse than the actual thing itself. Like, if you're somebody who doesn't like getting shots, then the anticipation of the needle going in is a lot worse than the actual shot itself. At least it is for me. So in other words, for proper fear to be there, there has to be, you know, not only build-up, but there has to be some mystery. Because once the thing has happened, it's no longer as scary. You know, it's kind of like telling a joke. It's very funny the first time, and then you hear it second, third, fourth times, after a while the humor wears off. Like, think of the opening scene of From, which is a great show by the way. I've only seen the first season, but it's great. The opening scene of that show, basically, I'll see if I can play clips of it here. Baby, please just- Come in. There he is! Something horrible is gonna happen, but we don't know exactly what, and we're sitting there thinking, little girl, do not open the window, don't do it. And then she opens it, monster comes in, both her and her mom are brutally killed. And by the end of the first season of From, we still don't know what exactly those monsters are, or what they want, or how the people wound up in this town in the first place. It's an interesting show. Seriously, go check it out if you get the chance, but we just don't know that much. All we know about these monsters is how to avoid them sometimes, and how to hide from them. But we cannot know- We don't know how to kill them, if that's even possible. We don't know what they want, we don't know where they're coming from. So even after hours, I think it's like 10 episodes, like 10 hours, those things are still scary. The problem is that the internet is just completely incapable of leaving any sort of gaps in knowledge. You know, it doesn't matter what mysteries are there, it doesn't matter if there's actually any answers to those mysteries, the internet will invent answers where there are none. And sometimes they will invent questions where there are none, just so that they can have answers pre-prepared to put into the blank spots that those answers- I don't know where I'm going with this. The point is, the internet cannot leave gaps in knowledge. It used to be that, you know, when we talked about television shows and stuff, like Lost, for instance, that's a show that had a lot of discussion and a lot of theories while it was still on, people would talk about it, people would come up with theories, people would wonder about mysteries, but in the end, we wouldn't really know, especially because, again, the show was still ongoing. At the end of it, there were some gaps still, but we all just kind of accepted, yeah, we don't know for sure. And there was stuff like fan fiction, but it was just that, it was fan fiction. People didn't pay much attention to it. And then we started getting into the era where things were being created online, like people were writing stories and stuff that were completely original online. And at that point, there's really no such thing as canon. You know, like, there's no such thing as, yes, this is the actual pure original story and any deviation from that is not true. It's not canon. Because, well, a lot of times, it's kind of vague or even unknown who wrote these things. Like, with a lot of famous fan fictions, like My Immortal, we don't know who wrote it. We don't know exactly who created Slenderman. You know, things like that. There's no church around to determine what counts as heresy, so we're all not only interpreting our own Bible, we're writing our own Bible, and then interpreting it. Like, whenever I think of how the Internet has ruined horror, I just think of the back rooms. Because the back rooms was literally just this one image. Like, it was a 4chan post, very short, like a couple of sentences, really. And it was just this idea of, hey, you might get stuck in this other dimension through no fault of your own, and then you'll just die and be forgotten and no one will know what happened to you. Like, the fear of that was fear of isolation, fear of being forgotten, fear of loneliness. And, yeah, it did vaguely hint at some sort of creature or entity that was there that wanted to kill you, but we didn't know what it was, so it was still kind of spooky. And personally, I think it would be worse if it was, you know, there was nothing there, if you truly were just alone, and then you died. But that's just me. People took that one freaking image, and now there are entire wikis about this shit. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds of floors and creatures and weird entities and, like, ways to get around them, ways to escape them, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Like, it's just lore, which is adding on to this. Like, at that point, the mystery is basically gone, and it's no longer scary. And, like, even without the mystery being gone, most of these creatures are more silly than anything. Like, again, it's just a monster jumping out and going, Hoogity Boogity, I'm a scary monster. Ooh. Oh, boy. Dear. Oh, okay. Dear. Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Neato. Like, it's like the big spider at the end of it, you know? Like, sure, I guess if it was real and you were there, that would be terrifying. But it's not really scary when you're watching it on screen. It just looks silly. And this isn't improving on the back rooms in any way. It's not even making the Lord deeper or anything. It's just making it wider. It's just throwing in more stuff without really exploring any of that stuff. I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, and it's very annoying in those genres when writers put lore above all else. You know, they put it above story. They put it above character. It's really, really annoying. Like, when there's random tangents about history or geography or random magical mechanics that don't tie into anything, like, that's annoying. And it goes on for a while. Like, right now I'm reading March to the Sea, which is a very good book, by the way, but there are a lot of random tangents like that. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just think of the trade talks from The Phantom Menace. The point is, when you prioritize lore over everything else, it gets really annoying really quickly. And this ties back to the Internet's incessant need. Not just to explain everything, but to over-explain everything. Literally, everything must be over-explained and over-explored and gone into way, way more detail than anyone gives a shit about. Like, it removes all wonder, it removes all mystery, and it removes all horror. You know? Like, we used to have really big, successful creepypastas. That's not really a thing anymore, but we used to. Like, again, I mentioned Slenderman. That was literally just a creepy image that people were inspired by, so they wrote stories about it and they made, like, YouTube short feature long, or I say short, Marble Hornets was really, really long. But, like, they made stuff based on that, because it was just a creepy image and it was like, hey, this weird creature wants to kill you. We don't know exactly who he is or what he is or anything like that, but he's out there and he's scary. And there were some other creepypastas like that that got fairly popular that were with similar entities. You know, these unfathomable, unknowable monsters, and people decided, you know what? That's not scary. Let's give it a backstory and we'll give it some weaknesses and then we'll have characters fight against it and win. Like, not even just escape. They're gonna kill it and it's gonna be awesome and we're gonna save the day. Like, at that point, it's just an action-adventure story. And I, like, I swear to God, you people, if HP Lovecraft wrote his stuff today, you people would just make a whole bunch of fan fiction where you rewrote it and made it so that the old ones were not these unknowable entities that were so far beyond human comprehension. We can't even really describe them or comprehend them. No, no, no. You would make it so that there was an old cult a couple thousand years ago that did some sort of crazy ritual and sacrificed a couple people and that created the old ones. And some people might still go like, Oh, no, no. You see, like, they're still really powerful, eldritch beings. They were just created by humans. Like, that's not what an eldritch being is. Like, that's missing the point of cosmic horror. The point of cosmic horror is that the beings out there are so unfathomable, we can barely even make out their outlines in the dark. You would also take three fucking novels to explain everything because I don't know why or at what point exactly internet horror decided it all needed to be 30,000 plus fucking words long, but it's really annoying. And this has created a broader trend across all of culture, not just in horror, but a broader trend of how everything needs a spin-off and everything needs prequels. Like, to again, to over-explain literally everything. Like, this is just this is just what the Star Wars franchise is now, which is kind of why I've lost interest in it and why some other people probably have as well. Like, it is nothing but pointless spin-offs which only tie into the same couple of characters and the same couple of story beats that we already know of. You know, it's not like the old EU which, while it was flawed, it did go thousands of years in the past and hundreds of years into the future and explored this entire freaking galaxy. Like, now we have stuff like Star Wars, The Clone Wars, or The Book of Boba Fett, or Rogue One, or Solo. Like, I liked Rogue One, but it doesn't really add anything. You know, it's literally in a new hope we hear hey, some spies stole these plans for the Death Star and that's all we need to know, really. Like, again, I liked Rogue One, but like, it doesn't add anything. Or Solo, which is far worse in this regard because again, it's literally just hey, Han Solo is a smuggler, he has this ship, he's friends with Lando Calrissian, he's friends with Chewbacca. Here we go, let's go on adventures with him. But then in Solo, they're like, oh no, no. See, actually, we need to explain every single detail and it's actually kind of funny to think about because all of this happens over the course of a couple of days. So like, every important event in his life that he's known for happened over the course of a couple of days. Isn't that kind of strange? And then look at all these crappy prequels that Hollywood is pumping out for no reason other than name recognition, like Wonka with Timothy Chalamet. Why? I'm making chocolate, of course. How do you like dark, white, nutty, absolutely insane? Why is that a thing? Again, Willy Wonka is just a weird dude with a magical chocolate factory. We don't need to know anything else other than that. Like it's a Rowled Doll novel or rather it's based on a Rowled Doll novel and those have this weird fairy tale whimsy to them. You know, they don't run on real world logic or Oz the Great and Powerful which was that crappy movie with James Franco a while ago. Same thing, like Oz runs on fairy tale logic. We don't need this whole prequel. Cruella or Prometheus, like it... These are creating questions that no one was asking and then creating answers for those questions. Like again, Prometheus, we don't need to know how the aliens were created. We just need to know, yep, there's dangerous aliens out there. Watch out for them. Not only is everything milked forever, like anytime a franchise has any recognition it has to be milked continuously forever and ever and ever. Like we can never just leave it alone and let it simmer and let it just be this thing that we liked. Like we have to keep adding more and more to it. It's not only that, but everything has to be made palatable for mass consumption. Like nothing can ever be truly subversive or edgy in this kind of environment, you know? Like a good example of this is again the Slenderman movie. It's PG-13. And because of that, nothing is allowed to be truly scary or disturbing. So other than occasional forays into like actual good horror, we just get corporate approved edginess. You know, it's like if Disney made every horror movie, that's kind of what it feels like. Like a big popular one was Mathregan a couple of months ago, but I mean that wasn't the worst movie ever, but it wasn't scary. And I know some people are really only going to blame this on like mainstream stuff and Hollywood and such, but the thing is they're all doing that for money. That's pretty straightforward. But people on the internet have fallen into these same traps as well. Like even people who are supposedly just doing it for the love of the game and they aren't getting paid for it, they may not be getting money, but they're getting paid in something much more valuable. Attention! And by milking these same things over and over and over again, they get a lot of attention. And sometimes that's just all they're looking for. I don't know. I don't have a strong closure for this, but like this obnoxious culture exists now where horror is ruined and I don't know if it'll ever be fixed. And all of you are contributors and I hate you for it. Have a lovely day. Goodbye. This video is over and that these are just the end credits, but we have a sniper nearby. He's aiming directly at your head. If you click away, you're going to die. All these names here are my patrons. These are the people that send me money once a month over on Patreon. If you want to get stuff like early access to videos, then consider, you know, doing that, becoming one of these guys. And a special thanks to my $10 note patrons who are Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotis, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Chib Zahoy, Dan Anseljevic, Dark King, Dio, Echo, Flax, James M, Karkat Kitsune, Lexi DeLorm, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Microphone, Mistboy, Mitsimona, Peep the Toad, RobiReviews, SadMartigan, PsycheXess, Silyr the Vixen, Stone Stairs, TeslaShark, Vaivictus, and Wesley. I truly could not do this without all of you and, you know, you're great. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching. After this, once the video is over, you can click away. The sniper will not kill you. Have a lovely day. Goodbye.