TikTok, declining attention spans, and media literacy: what makes a film fan pretentious?
Following the death of the popular apps Vine and Musical.ly, both of which promoted short-form content, TikTok quickly rose to become one of the most-used apps in the world. Like its predecessors, it’s a platform designed for fast and easy video creation and consumption, giving anyone who posts onto the app the chance to appear on another user’s ‘For You Page’.
Thus, TikTok uses its algorithm to show users videos they might be interested in, but you never know what you’re going to stumble across. That’s partly the appeal of the app; it’s addictive to keep scrolling in the hopes that the next video features a handy life hack you’ve always needed or simply something funny. The popularity of TikTok for users of all ages was bolstered by the pandemic, resulting in many creators being able to establish themselves as regular posters, even monetizing their videos, working with brands, and becoming full-time TikTokers.
Paired with Instagram’s TikTok-esque Reels feature, the influx of short-form content being served to users, particularly young people, signals a worrying decline in attention spans. In turn, this affects our consumption of art, like watching films. The problem with TikTok and similar social media apps is that they don’t challenge users, and if you’re feeling impatient, you can just scroll to the next or speed up a lengthy video with the ‘2x’ feature. However, young people are now getting used to consuming media in this way, with the average time spent on the app sitting at around 90 minutes per user a day. That’s also the average length of a film.
Yet, film discourse found on TikTok seems to suggest that young people are increasingly straying from watching challenging movies – especially ones considered avant-garde, experimental, or more than two hours long. Of course, these kinds of films aren’t for everyone, and you might not develop an interest in certain genres of cinema until later in life, but there seems to be an increase in young people online who are reluctant to find new art, immerse themselves in difficult pieces of media, and actually discover films that weren’t merely released in their lifetime. Is this something people generally grow out of, or are social media apps like TikTok leading to a declining interest in dedicating time to stimulating – and sometimes demanding – pieces of art that require patience and undivided attention?
Moreover, there seems to be an increase in videos on these apps (and their subsequent comment sections) becoming mind-numbing, brain-rotting platforms for uninformed discourse. “This movie promotes paedophilia,” someone comments about a film that almost definitely doesn’t. “The Substance was bad because it made me feel uncomfortable,” writes another. The lack of critical thinking found online is truly disheartening at times, making you wonder what will become of cinema in the coming years.
The popular film logging app Letterboxd offers a TikTok series called ‘Four Favourites’, in which actors, filmmakers, and sometimes musicians, from Ridley Scott to Olivia Rodrigo, share their top four favourite movies of all time. The comment sections attached to these videos are often depressing places, full of users calling Jenna Ortega pretentious because of picks like Paris, Texas, La Haine, Barry Lyndon, and The Passion of Joan of Arc – all of which are incredibly acclaimed and popular movies.
You might be thinking, ‘Well, maybe the people writing these comments are just really young,’ and perhaps some of them are. Yet, many commenters also admit to being film students or longtime movie lovers – they’re just not interested in watching a John Cassavetes or an Agnes Varda. Instead, many Tik-Tok users in these comment sections appear to frown upon movies considered ‘high-brow’ as pretentious and boring, sneering upon actors like Mikey Madison for picking up The Piano Teacher in her Criterion Closet video rather than films like La La Land, Whiplash, Interstellar, or even Ratatouille.
While these are all good films in their own right, of course, Madison is going to be interested in a challenging and masterfully acted movie like The Piano Teacher – she likely wouldn’t be an actor otherwise. How is it pretentious to express a genuine interest in art from different countries and genres? Official Letterboxd statistics show that the 250 movies found most often in users’ ‘top four’ lists are predominantly from the 21st century, with just 95 of these titles released before 2000 and only 24 before 1980. There isn’t much variation either, with most of the films being in the English language, mainly American.
It seems as though many young people are not searching for personal cinematic experiences, despite the fact that being a teenager or young adult is the perfect time to experiment with discovering your tastes and finding what it is that really interests and excites you. Perhaps this will be obscure 1990s rom-coms or 1970s-era exploitation movies – whatever it is, it’s fun to explore the wide array of films out there which can open up your mind to new ideas and perspectives, inspire you and maybe even change your life.
It’s not pretentious to take an interest in something; a film fan is only pretentious when they close their minds. Of course, it’s valid to have strong opinions on Marvel and other soulless, capitalistic blockbusters, but acting as though you can’t love Bridget Jones’s Diary as much as Blow-Up is what makes someone pretentious. You can think one is, technically, better than the other – but to limit yourself completely, whether you’re a stuck-up arthouse advocate or a superhero-movie-loving Tik-Tok addict – is to deprive yourself of a vast expanse of art.
