Why do we see, or rather not go to see, so many weirdly cringe movies with plots and dialogue that seem designed to be “so bad it’s good”? How come goofy sidekicks, obvious political agendas, and other strange stories get their own corporate attention, while newer and more earnest stories get passed by the wayside? There’s one big possible reason hiding in plain sight, and it’s the mind-blowing answer that They don’t want you to know.
Episode sponsors
- Enclave Publishing: Lady of Basilikas by Ronie Kendig
- Realm Makers 2024 writers’ conference
- Lorehaven Guild: The Visitation
Mission update
- Lorehaven reviews: Lumen and The Visitation
- Subscribe free to get updates and join the Lorehaven Guild
Concession stand
- We don’t hate memes. We like memes. We quote memes way too much. Like Disaster Girl.
- “Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins to mean “contagious ideas.”
- That meaning continues to be part of how we understand the term.
- Yet “meme” now also means funny pictures, tropes, quotes, references.
- People might use the term overlapping with the definition of “tropes.”
Actor Max McLean portrays Screwtape in a stage version of The Screwtape Letters.
1. Memes can make us feel more casual and flippant.
- Stephen would compare memes like seasoning for culture and life.
- A little salt, a little pepper, maybe some hot sauce (for political memes).
- But if we tried to life on “meme culture” as a main course, we’d starve.
- We would also be poisoned, our tastes literally coarsened, by all this.
- That’s why we try to discipline ourselves not to get too much into these.
- Related to this, Scripture cautions against mockers and scoffers.
- Stephen cites Lewis’s view of the word flippancy in The Screwtape Letters.
- In letter 11, Undersecretary Screwtape expounds on human humor.
- He classifies humor as (a) joy, (b) fun, (c) The Joke Proper, (d) flippancy.
But flippancy is the best [devilish use of humor] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subjec
Why do we see, or rather not go to see, so many weirdly cringe movies with plots and dialogue that seem designed to be “so bad it’s good”? How come goofy sidekicks, obvious political agendas, and other strange stories get their own corporate attention, while newer and more earnest stories get passed by the wayside? There’s one big possible reason hiding in plain sight, and it’s the mind-blowing answer that They don’t want you to know.
Episode sponsors
- Enclave Publishing: Lady of Basilikas by Ronie Kendig
- Realm Makers 2024 writers’ conference
- Lorehaven Guild: The Visitation
Mission update
- Lorehaven reviews: Lumen and The Visitation
- Subscribe free to get updates and join the Lorehaven Guild
Concession stand
- We don’t hate memes. We like memes. We quote memes way too much. Like Disaster Girl.
- “Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins to mean “contagious ideas.”
- That meaning continues to be part of how we understand the term.
- Yet “meme” now also means funny pictures, tropes, quotes, references.
- People might use the term overlapping with the definition of “tropes.”
Actor Max McLean portrays Screwtape in a stage version of The Screwtape Letters.
1. Memes can make us feel more casual and flippant.
- Stephen would compare memes like seasoning for culture and life.
- A little salt, a little pepper, maybe some hot sauce (for political memes).
- But if we tried to life on “meme culture” as a main course, we’d starve.
- We would also be poisoned, our tastes literally coarsened, by all this.
- That’s why we try to discipline ourselves not to get too much into these.
- Related to this, Scripture cautions against mockers and scoffers.
- Stephen cites Lewis’s view of the word flippancy in The Screwtape Letters.
- In letter 11, Undersecretary Screwtape expounds on human humor.
- He classifies humor as (a) joy, (b) fun, (c) The Joke Proper, (d) flippancy.
But flippancy is the best [devilish use of humor] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subjec
