Take and Hold

How to Advance

If you were in charge of an army, and every time you got a report from the front line, it was about all the territory the enemy had seized from you, that’s probably a bad thing. If those reports were full of criticism of how poorly set up the enemy advance was, how their uniforms were shabby, their weapons ineptly designed, their formations slipshod, you probably wouldn’t care. They’re taking your land.

The analogy is a bit loose, but if all we ever do is dunk on legacy media and their associated clown show, we keep losing ground. I understand the draw, though. Rage sells, almost as much as sex. It can be addictive, too, and it’s really easy to fancy yourself the next guest on EFAP, waxing eloquent on how bad whatever Disney threw up this week happens to be. But you have to take ground and hold it, fill the gap.

I’m not saying there’s no place for coverage of the landfill conflagration that makes up most legacy media, but I think it’s a trap. So much of what comes out is so bad, it just has to be bait, right? Maybe not intentional, but every hour someone spends scripting and editing their next epic Youtube takedown of the Mouse Mafia, they’ve been drawn away from making something new. And we’re up against an empire. Millions upon millions of books and videos, and if all we do is comment on the rest, we won’t move forward.

The furor surrounding ‘Velma’ brought this to a head in my mind, seeing how on edge everyone was waiting to watch all the bad reviews. We all knew it would be bad, and we don’t really gain anything from a deep dive on how bad. But my recommendations were flooded with takedowns of the series, many from channels I’ve never heard of. If I watched all of them, I’d know what I already know (it’s garbage) and would be no closer to finishing a new poem, short story, or novel. And it would be so easy.

So! Don’t fall for the bad media bait. Don’t fall into the maelstrom of endlessly reviewing awful material. I’m not innocent of this, either. This very article is a victory. I could be watching another new video on how bad the writing was in The Last Jedi, God knows I’ve watched enough of them, but I sat down to finally put together this article that’s been bouncing around my head.

Everyone always says, “If it’s so bad why don’t you make something better?” And honestly, with what we’re presented nowadays, almost anyone can and should make something better. And keep doing it until we have at least a shred of culture we can coalesce around.