The "modern audience" was always a joke that was told to us by corporate entities. The lead-up to the punchline that never came was that younger audiences were always more into the idea of leftist values and agendas, and as such, corporations had to cater to them to get their business. The real joke was that the business never came. Billions and billions of dollars have been lost by corporations over this very concept.
Disney can tell you all about that.
A perfect example has cropped up in the gaming industry. A game called 1348 Ex Voto was released that, according to leftists, was the epitome of fine gaming. Funny enough, that didn't actually seem to be the case until another game came on the scene called Knight's Path.
See, the left had a problem with Knight's Path because it wasn't following the rules laid down by the leftists. Its first sin was introducing a woman into the game who was objectively beautiful. This was strike one.
Strike two came when a random member of the leftist morality police declared their expectation to see LGBTQ+ representation in the game, to which the developers directly replied with the equivalent of "Get lost." This didn't go over well with the left, but for the rest of the gaming community, we were about ready to throw a parade. Someone standing up to the left kind of coincided with focusing on making a good game, and as such, Knight's Path became a focus on Steam's wishlist.
But, funny enough, so did Ex Voto for the left. It, too, garnered thousands on the Steam wishlist.
But then Ex Voto released and, as YouTuber Vara Dark notes... no one showed up to play it.
As Dark notes, the game's concurrent players are half its peak upon release, there is news of returns, and the product reviews on Steam are currently "mixed."
The thing is, I was pretty sure Ex Voto was going to be a massive flop, even before its release date. Not just because all the pre-release footage made it look like a lazily developed game that was there to propagandize more than it was to please players, but because the people who want you to think they're a massive army deserving of having corporations bend to their will aren't actually rolling as deep as they pretend.
You can see this happening again and again with the "modern audience." Whether it's a movie or a video game, the modern audience is all bark and no bite.
I think the "modern audience" is a misleading descriptor of what we're actually seeing. Namely, the "audience" part.
"Audience" suggests that these people are there to enjoy the art, but they clearly aren't. Their whole purpose of being there is to make sure the message is supported. The only thing that matters is the "virtue" said thing is espousing or representing. It doesn't matter what the art is behind it. It doesn't matter if the art is even good. All that matters is the message. So long as it's on the stage, that's all that matters.
It's an activist's way of thinking, but as is the case quite often, what's good for the activist isn't good for the business.
If something is made for a "modern audience," then what's really happening is that something is being made for the activists. The audience, the people who are really there to enjoy the art, are effectively being shafted, and so they don't show up. This results in a loss of business, a huge chunk of your bank account missing, and your future products looking a bit less likely to get picked up, too.
In other words, making content for the sake of promoting or displaying a virtue is not going to sell. It never has. Propaganda and art might be related, but they're far-distant cousins.
To be clear, much of art is a point being made subtly, so I don't begrudge anyone trying to put a message into what they're creating. The issue is that the left very often is trying to get the baby without the birthing pains. They want to just push what they want you to see in your face and expect you to like it, accept it, and parade it around.
But that's not how we as humans work. Being forced to do something always results in the yoke, no matter what form that takes, getting thrown off. Sometimes it's slow, and sometimes it's quick, but it's always inevitable. You have to work through the heart and mind to get a message accepted, not just the eyes and ears, and I think the left forgot that a while back.
I think they forgot how to speak to people's hearts and minds, and maybe that's a good thing. Their message sucked anyway.
