As I sit here, letting Netflix cycle through it's save-screen click bait, it strikes me that I am completely uninspired by any of the overly moody faces that are presented. Neither so do other pretentious faces of joy on others move me. Single people, or groups of people all doing various variations on what Joey from Friends would term "smell the fart acting". And so, I leave the images cycling, and still don't explore further.

Perhaps it's my age. I think that when you hit middle age you start to lose touch with pop culture, making new and supposedly exciting things seem like vacuous noise.

This has never been more so, in these modern times of everything as a service. Media is constantly to hand, always on, effortlessly reached, with no emotional investment required on the part of the consumer.

No longer do you have to go out of your front door and walk to the bus stop, hop on a bus into the nearest town, walk from the bus stop in town to the cinema, whereupon you buy a ticket and sit. You're already greatly invested in the film you've chosen, by virtue of the physical effort simply required to get to a location where you view it.

Nowadays, you just open Netflix on your nearest device - never more than a pocket away, and start watching. If you remotely dislike the film, you just kill it and move on.

Moreover, you have a cinema with 500 films and shows at your fingertips.

If value is a function of scarcity, what does that say about utter saturation?

I watched, (what I thought) was an interesting video a few days ago regarding the technical specifics of why it could be that movies are less engaging now. Of course, nowadays, for every person that thinks one think, there are a lot of trolls who default to thinking the opposite! The link below contains the video and the trolling.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vfx/comments/1oyy7h1/why_movies_just_dont_feel_real_anymore/

"To haptic or not to haptic", is only part of the question. I think a bigger problem is simply that the medium is utterly saturated. And this may or may not be a knock on effect of the relative ease at which films can now be made - possibly a function of the CG availability and the reduced need for location filming.

An interesting trend is how not only are films themselves becoming a homogenous noise of sameness (case in point, the Marvel Universe...), but also the actors. Black or white, they all look like they're made of the same plastic and mass produced in the same factory.

The poster graphic for the video above illustrates what I mean perfectly. On the left, Roy Scheider - a grizzled and sweaty bloke with wonky off balance features; on the other, Scarlett Johansson looking pristine and androgenous.

Maybe androgenousness is the fate of humanity thanks to increased globalisation. Are the uber-lefties merely prepping us for a society where not only is biological gender a taboo subject, but any physical uniqueness is also seen as abhorrent? I'm not sure that I want to live in a world of white noise where everyone is so bent on being different that everyone ends up being the same. I live in New Zealand, and sometimes I feel like I'm the only one here that has no tattoos or piercings.