“It's easier and more convenient and, in a way, less effort and more entertaining, to just kind of siphon all of your information through people that you know,” says Shannon Strucci, a YouTuber who specializes in film analysis and internet culture. “You like their sense of humor, and you like their opinions, and you look up to them. Agreeing with them feels validating.”

The result can be a sort of feedback loop, where our opinions are influenced by critics we admire, which then drives us to seek out that same kind of affirmation from them when something new comes out. (Helloooo filter bubble.) Normally, being able to bounce thoughts off other people should balance you out. Discussion, even about trivial things like the latest superhero show on Netflix, is important. We can often best clarify ideas by talking about them with other people, workshopping them into an actual opinion. But when you only experience a conversation from the sidelines, you aren't really processing things for yourself.

Me Without You

As we outsource our memory to search engines and augment our mating rituals with algorithms, it stands to reason that flooding ourselves with other people’s conversations might affect the way we formulate opinions. If YouTube can cause viewers to seesaw across the political spectrum, then surely it can sway how they feel about the latest Star Wars spinoff.

“I'm not saying, ‘Wake up, sheeple’ or whatever,” Strucci says. “But I think some [people] will watch a movie review just to kind of know how they should feel about that movie. And the more that they feel close to or respect the person talking about it, the more they might feel like that.”

Basically, the pressure to have a stance on every single cultural entity whirling around you means it's so much simpler to just co-opt someone else's video essay than to devote the significant time and energy required to properly analyze each thing. The trouble is when we start to substitute those opinions for our own.

“There is a big difference between parroting what someone says, and someone being able to articulate something you're not,” Packard says. “And so hopefully, you watch these things and a reviewer is able to just articulate that one thing that was bothering you that you weren't quite able to form into a thought and you go, ‘Yep, that's it. This is my problem.’”

It's good to be cognizant of where our opinions come from and who shapes them. Entertainment moves at such volume, so fast, that trying to analyze it in the background doesn’t really work. Sure, I’ll keep listening to people talk about movies. Nothing is going to take the fun out of that. It will just have to be more of a conscious process, one where I can recognize the difference between watching something for fun and watching it just to catch up with the zeitgeist.

Because keeping up with every pop culture installment can start to feel like flossing teeth. You’re supposed to do it every day, and only rarely should you outsource it to someone else.

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