Is it OK to watch mainstream entertainment?

Commenter Hermes doesn’t think so:

Yeah, I haven’t watched Star Trek: Picard yet, but given Lion’s appreciation of other contemporary TV shows, I wouldn’t trust his opinion on this. Every TV show these days, unless its creators make an explicit attempt for it to be otherwise, is dark, brooding, nihilistic, morally ambiguous, intentionally eschewing any sense of absolute right and wrong, and lacking any true “good guys.” Not to mention portraying white men as losers, and NAMs and women as winners. I wouldn’t expect Star Trek: Picard to be any different. Lion is like those people Lawrence Auster used to criticize, people who consider themselves “conservatives” but are so immersed in the decadent surround culture that they don’t realize it.

Unless your only want to consume entertainment from before the 1970s or something like that, I don’t see how you can avoid it.

For the record, the other things that I have been watching lately are:

Terrace House:

This is a Japanese reality show where they put 3 “boys” and 3 girls, between the ages of 18 and 29, into a nice house, and film their lives. As time goes by, some participants leave and are replaced by new participants. It’s a lot different than American reality shows. There’s a lot less of the bad kind of drama. No loud arguments or fights. And it’s far more traditional and PG rated. No gays or lesbians. If there’s any sex happening, they keep it very hidden or very implicit. Apparently in Japan, even holding hands isn’t considered acceptable until they’ve gone on a few dates and then declared their love for each other.

Every so often, they cut to a panel of celebrities and comedians who discuss the action. This weirdness took some getting used to, but now I can see the superiority of it. Too bad I don’t understand any of the Japanese except for a few commonly used words like itadakimasu (note that normally the “u” at the end isn’t pronounced), etc. I’m probably missing out on a lot of the nuances by reading the subtitles.

For Japan, it’s pretty multicultural. Four of the participants from the first series (Boys and Girls in the City) are half-Japanese, and in the second series (Aloha State) most of the participants are half Japanese, and there’s even one girl who is zero percent Japanese. She’s half white and half Chinese, and she’s also the most beautiful girl to appear on the show up to that point. The message from the show seems to be that the half-Japanese people are cooler, less passive aggressive, better looking, more fun, more emotionally stable compared to full Japanese participants.

Critical Role:

This is a web series where “nerdy-ass” voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons, with Matt Mercer as the dungeon master. I enjoy the show, but I am vaguely aware that off the set, I am sure the cast are extreme left-wing types. One member of the cast, Taliesin Jaffe, tries to give of a bisexual vibe. Matt Mercer’s fantasy world has women in the army and basically serving in all functions that men do, totally unlike real medieval times. There’s also lesbian marriage. My take on all of that is that, given that Dungeons and Dragons takes place in a totally fake world anyway, might as well make it a fake world that makes everyone playing the game happy, right?

If you’re going to watch this, watch the second campaign. The early episodes of the first campaign have horrible audio quality and other technical deficiencies. The second campaign has professional quality production values from the start.