The way you're engaging with media and your motivations for doing so are what's wrong, not the media itself.

Apply sturgeon's law as a highpass filter. There's no point consuming everything, consume only the things that you will resonate with and think about.

I haven't watched currently airing shows in a year now due to personal health reasons, but I think I've developed a good intuition for shows that I'd like, to the point that even the "3 episode" test is overkill, just a minute or two of characters interacting tells me enough to make a decision. There's no shame in being picky, and in fact someone "watching everything" (that's airing, or is popular) usually tells me that he isn't actually engage in the shows with any depth.

i used to try really hard to become a person i wanted to be. i would spend 8-10 hours a day reading scientific books and solving problems from textbooks. i was alone in that, did not participate in any clubs or competitions. and i was content. then i realized i was too stupid, got burned out. it took me two years roughly to get over it and i vented so much if you took it together you probably would have three good sized volumes. so you'll get over it too. you can wish all you want to meet your own expectations and "overcome troubles", but unfortunately it's just fairytale. if life doesn't want you to have something you won't have it. if life needs to crush you first, it will. so make peace with it and move on or you will be moved. shift your priorities or they will be shifted. you're just going through a stage. the less you oppose the inevitable the less pain you'll have. so as other t-cs said stop consuming it and do something else, or consume differently.

Post edited on 11th Mar 2025, 1:13am

"Watching/reading everything" is a total fool's errand, and the desire to do so has always mystified me. I know everybody wants to be the OTAKIIIIIIIIIING, but unless you're some kind of animanga savant, you're not going to remember 80% of the shows you've seen anyway.

Like those guys on MAL who make it their mission to watch "every anime ever" (people have been debating where that starts and ends since the dawn of time, and it's safe to say a consensus will never be reached) and end up with like a 3/10 average rating. Really? You've spent thousands of hours - sometimes tens of thousands - watching things you know you won't like and definitely won't ever think about again? For what reason? That's entirely antithetical to the definition of "otaku", in my humble opinion.

...yeah, it's not really viable to keep up with everything now. It hasn't been for a couple years now. I mean, you can do it, but it has to be literally the only thing you do, no imageboards, no fap breaks. no nothin'. Studios have quadrupled their output to keep up with the apparent demand for more fucking stories about an unassuming high-school-age boy in a Dragon Quest setting who's an F-rank shit-kicker but secretly has access to the S-rank skillbook. And you can guarantee AI will exacerbate the problem tenfold. Ara ara.

>>43618
I fear not the man who has watched 10,000 anime once, but I fear the man who has watched one anime 10,000 times

I don't fear the man who seeks to be one with anime, but fear the man who rises his eyebrows at the question and replies
– Watashi wa Ningen Ja Nai

Post edited on 13th Mar 2025, 8:48am