We all know the feeling, all our friends have seen a movie and won’t shut up about how bloody good it is. When it is finally time for you to see it, you find yourself with a feeling of “that was not as good as promised”. Or maybe there is a new game being released and all the critics are giving it 10/10. When you play it, you feel the critics have a totally different standard for quality than you.
These are both classic examples of being over-hyped for something. The problem is that we live in a connected world where everyone is connected via the internet and social media. It is not only your friends alone that HYPE you for something, but everyone else too.
When you experience something you deem to be good or a good experience like watching a good movie or TV show, you instinctively want your friends to hear about it.
However, if you are being told by one friend that something is good, you keep it in mind and remember it for later. If the same friend keeps going on and on and ON about how freaking amazing something is, well, then you get tired or annoyed so you watch more to shut him up more than the desire to enjoy the film. Now, is that the right mindset to experience anything? not really.
Now imagine the same annoying friend, but multiply him with the people on the internet and you have a recipe for a bad experience. Your feed is getting clocked up with memes and praise for a new movie, thus your expectations are being raised without you doing anything.
The problem with HYPE culture is that the time it takes from experiencing something to voicing your opinion on something is so short. You can pretty much tweet your impression right after watching the movie has ended, or as some heathens do, tweet doing the film (By the way, if you are the kind of person to use your phone in the theater you are a bad person and deserve community services for your crimes!).
You have a group of people voicing their opinion everywhere online, this creates this giant death ball of HYPE that just roles through everything before a counter group is established, this group is the people who feel the work is being over-hyped and they are pissed!
Humans are inherently social creatures the need for being part of the HYPE train is a simple need for validation. When Game of Thrones was first airing everyone and their mother saw it, this is partly because people thought it was good, but I would argue that people have a fear of missing out.
Being in a group that talks about a TV show with passion and joy while you haven’t seen it can be very difficult. Thus some people tend to simply follow the trend for fear of missing out, but also for the fear of being left out. Again humans are social animals, and being rejected by the group can be psychologically very difficult for us.
What can you do?
The Hype Break
A practice I use is what I call “The Hype Break”. The idea is that you wait to cast judgment on a film till after a day has passed. Giving yourself a break before committing to whether something is good or bad has done wonders for me. Now, you will instinctively know if you like a film or not.
The idea is not to avoid negative or positive feelings regarding a film but to temper your expectations. Time gives you perspective and giving yourself this one-day break before proclaiming your love to the world can be really helpful.
We have all had the experience of seeing a movie again that we use to love when we were younger only to find that it wasn’t as good as remembered. Time has given you a new perspective along with a broader array of tastes since you have consumed more things in that time.
The Hype Break works kind of the same, but on a micro-scale where you have time to reflect. If I have to write a post on a movie I will always write the post the day after I have seen it.
“hype leads to unhappiness and poor criticism”
That statement might sound hyperbolical and in some sense, it is, however, HYPE can and will most often lead to unhappiness. The reason for this is obvious, at some point while the HYPE is spreading (like a virus) it will reach a point where positive talk is going to tip toward being over-hyped. When this happens a large number of people will have their expectations raised to an unreachable height and will thus be disappointed no matter how good the film is.
The more HYPE going around the more disappointment and with the internet and social media the HYPE is going around fast.
HYPE can also negatively affect a whole audience and sometimes the same audience that hypes a thing. Let’s look at the aforementioned tv show Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon, everyone watched it and everyone talked about it. Everyone loved it and the people who had read the books kept saying how the books are EVEN BETTER!
Now, I have not seen Game of Thrones so I can’t really comment on the quality of the ending of the show, but it is no secret that everyone hated the ending. It was hated by the people who loved it. The people who hyped the show were also the ones being disappointed by the ending. Thus a large amount of HYPE leads to disappointment. The thing about a tv show is that it builds HYPE as it is airing picking up more and more HYPE for every season.
When the show keeps picking up HYPE the ending will inevitably disappoint regardless of quality. Another example was the tv show lost, which also had a less than satisfying ending. It seems to me people are complaining more and more about endings to tv shows.
I think this trend regarding disappointment in endings is here to stay. I believe it is a product of over-hype and thus HYPE once again leads to unhappiness.
Over-hype also leads to poor criticism. When the HYPE has reached its tipping point and is starting to be over-hype people will no longer receive the film positively despite how good it is.
This leads to statements such as:
“it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be”
“it wasn’t as good as people say”
Both of these statements are infuriating when it comes to film criticism, or criticism in general. The second statement is not talking about the work, but instead on other people’s perception of the work which is a useless, pointless, and stupid statement that doesn’t mean anything or reflect the person’s own opinion at all. Thus over-hype leads to people talking about the HYPE itself in some sort of meta-narrative instead of the work itself. The first statement leads me to my final point
Why it is your fault
Yes, HYPE and over-hype are actually your fault and not everyone else. This would be a great twist if I did not title the post “HYPE is actually your fault” anyway let us continue.
The statement “it wasn’t as good as I thought it would be” doesn’t comment on anything other than your perception of the film going in. This statement also relates to other statements such as “I just didn’t like it” and “it just wasn’t for me” these statements are vacuous. The reason I call them statements and not criticism or points is because they offer nothing concrete about the work itself (like before). All discourse is being brought to a halt when one of these statements is uttered. You can try and follow up with a simple why do you think/say that? Only to be met with the same statement again.
When it comes to expressing an opinion, the bare minimum is to be able to express why you hold it. You have to reflect and find elements that you either liked or disliked and you need to be able to articulate why you feel that way in order to build a good, healthy discourse around art.
People do talk a lot about something on the internet it seems impossible to avoid hype, so what does one do in those situations? Well, I think people should limit their social media use in general (unless you read my blog)
Don’t worry I am not going to preach about digital minimalism (at least not in this post) But I feel people should be more mindful about their social media use. Endless scrolling doesn’t seem to benefit anyone, maybe take a break from social media every now and again, or at least limit it till after you yourself have seen the movie being hyped.
Dealing with HYPE is on your shoulders not everyone else, Afterall you can’t control how other people behave. Limit your contact with people who HYPE stuff, check your expectations beforehand, and have a hype-break before talking about it.
Remember if you find yourself being over-hyped for something.
It is actually your fault.