Thread by @KrisAtLarge

now here's where I have to admit something—something that divides me somewhat from my friend @KaylinEvergreen, who frankly got exposed to a lot more culture than we ever did and therefore has always had better tastes.

we *started* as an "ironic", "bad movie" nerd fan.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/KrisAtLarge/status/1631875241671811077

it's not that we were totally ignorant of cinema, but we learned (largely thanks to @Caltech, with its abysmally toxic male nerd culture) to be like the right-wing nerds, dividing up films (and everything else) into Good™ and Bad™, and laughing and jeering at the Bad™.

(2/x)

we learned about #MST3K at Caltech; for a long while afterwards "Mystery Science Theater 3000" was among our most reliable "comfort watches", especially when we were very lonely and miserable in Seattle. it took us a long while to realize we were traumatizing ourselves.

(3/x)

that sounds overdramatic but that's just what repeated exposure to *abusive* entertainments is doing: you're retraumatizing yourself. you're locked in a pain-conditioned loop of stimulus response. you feel bad, so you watch something "funny"—but it's a *painful* "fun".

(4/x)

the very thing you're watching to "cheer yourself up" is hurting you a bit more, and you don't notice at the time, but you feel it later—so you feel bad again, and so you go back to the painful hurtful entertainment again, because it's *what you know*. it's "comfort".

(5/x)

and that's what #MST3K can be like, especially in its later Michael J. Nelson days (he seems no longer to be on Twitter—probably wise, because Nelson is a Republican.) most especially in the @SYFY Channel days, MST3K's "riffing" got mean-spirited, cheap, and bigoted.

(6/x)

these tendencies were minimal during the friendler @JoelGHodgson days of #MST3K (though one could still get blindsided by a sour joke or racist innuendo, more generally acceptable in that decade) and so I still rewatch early MST3K from time to time. but I admit...

(7/x)

...these days, I just like watching movies. MST3K had been a *crutch* of sorts, permitting me to see a certain selection of movies that I might otherwise have never touched. and luckily, I developed (over time) a strong interest in seeing the movies by themselves.

(8/x)

"Manos: The Hands of Fate" was the turning point, because my partner Daria helped crowdfund the restoration of that movie and thus we got to see it, as a reward, in a Seattle movie theater. and I was blown away—it was still *bad*, but it looked so much more alive, too.

(9/x)

and it was fun! I enjoyed watching the movie, for what it was. I can both thank #MST3K for having led me to that moment, but also realize that I'd had to fight off the miasma of the show—the tendency to respond to media in this "irony-poisoned" way, jeering at everything.

(10/x)

and if I could stop watching movies that way, then maybe Doug Walker could get there eventually. (is he on Twitter? it doesn't seem that he is. okay, I'll tag @cinemasins instead. maybe you'll grow up some day, CinemaSins!)

~Chara of Pnictogen