We Used to Make Things That Mattered

I’m sure you’ve noticed.
Hell, maybe you haven’t —
not because you’re blind, but because you’ve gotten used to the emptiness.

Most of what we consume now?

It doesn’t say anything.
It doesn’t move the needle.
It doesn’t risk.
It just fills space.
A placeholder for meaning.

I’ve felt it for years.

My favorite TV shows —
the ones that used to hit me like a gut punch —
they’ve gone glossy.
Over-lit. Over-edited. Over-tested.
Every rough edge filed down until it’s smooth enough to offend no one and move nothing.

They’ve become carbon copies of themselves —
safe, clean, palatable.
Streaming content.
Not television.
Content.

Even the stuff I enjoy?
I enjoy it like I used to eat Lucky Charms.
I pick out the marshmallows.
Leave the rest.
Eat the nostalgia.
Spit out the filler.

I can count on one hand the number of films or series I’ve watched since 2018 that actually stayed with me.
That dug into my ribcage and refused to leave.
That haunted me in the shower or forced me to go take a walk just to process what I’d seen.

Sure, I remember some lines.
Sure, a track or two makes it into my playlist.
But I used to watch movies and feel something.
Now I just watch them.

And you wonder why TikTok and YouTube keep rising while film and television sink?

It’s not just attention spans.
It’s emotional starvation.

We stopped making meals.
We make popcorn.
Light. Salty. Fast. Gone.
Popcorn isn’t meant to fill you —
it’s meant to make you thirsty so you buy soda.

And modern media?

It’s soda.
Sweet. Addictive.
And utterly fucking empty.

And when something does have a message?
It’s delivered like a note in a Happy Meal.
Handed to you.
No mystery. No poetry. No doubt.
Just a thesis statement wrapped in an algorithm.

But here’s the thing:

Inception was right.
An idea only sticks if you come to it yourself.
It has to sneak past your defenses.
Take root in your gut.
It has to feel like it was your discovery, not someone else's lecture.

That's what great art does.
That’s what it used to do.

It didn’t just tell you something.
It unlocked something.
It let you see — not what the artist wanted you to believe,
but what you’d been trying not to admit to yourself.

We don’t get that anymore.

Because we don’t make that anymore.

We make noise.
We make sugar.
We make popcorn.

We fill the space where the silence used to teach us.

And the worst part?

We’re learning to be okay with it.
We’re forgetting what it was like to ache over a piece of art.
To see your own reflection somewhere unexpected.
To be ruined by a monologue.
To be undone by a cut to black.

We’re not tired of movies.
We’re tired of the way they’ve stopped trying.

So if you’re making something?

Don’t make popcorn.
Make a scar.
Make a mirror.
Make something that matters, even if no one claps.

That’s the only way it ever mattered in the first place.