Have you ever been on social media and found yourself looking at a meme criticizing a bad movie? Have you ever felt as though that’s been happening every other week in more recent years? 

When it comes down to it, modern media is becoming more and more lazy. At the very least, it is a lazy feeling. 

Think about kid’s cartoons. Take “Cocomelon,” for instance. It’s brainless content, and some even argue it’s making kids actively lower their attention spans. The reason it feels so brainless is likely because there is fundamentally less effort put into it. 

Another example is the “Mean Girls” musical that is trending on TikTok. The soundtrack lacks the soul the Broadway version had, and many say that the scenes feel like they were done in one take. Ergo, less effort feels like it was put into it.

Why? Well, in my opinion, I feel as though it is because the companies behind these films only care about the money they make from them, not the content. 

Another prime example is “Morbius,” which was released a few years ago and was memed on due to its absolute failure for what genre it was. When Marvel saw the memes, it tried to capitalize on them and push forwards more marketing and more theater showings. This, of course, did not work.

In fact, I’d argue sometimes that making a movie badly is part of the money making for these companies. Have you ever seen a meme talking about how good a movie is? If you have, you probably have ten bad movie memes to go with it, and I’m sure a lot of us have heard the phrase “bad publicity is still publicity.” (Of course, I wouldn’t argue that that’s the case with all, even most, bad pieces of media.)

All in all, I think that the decline in quality of media in recent years is not that dire of a situation considering “Barbie.” It is something worth discussing, however.