All ages stuff is for all ages regardless of vaguely defined marketing terms, debt shaming for probably one of the few things they truly enjoy in life is gross
I’d like someone to call out for once how most media “for adults” nowadays is, by default, extremely violent and sexually explicit… call it the GoT phenomenon.
To be clear, I’m glad that media is no longer bound by the puritanical and often hypocritical FCC standards, and that subscription cable like HBO and streaming networks like Netflix have freedom of expression. But now everything aimed at adults, it seems, is also rated for adults. Where are the emotionally/intellectually mature stories that are also fun and joyous? That there are adults singing along to KPop DH in theaters as the article mentions shows that there’s clearly an untapped market here (imagine a similarly bright and flashy movie with catchy music but also a decent plot? How popular could that become!). The article also calls out cozy games and other “childish” things… How much of this is because of arrested development vs a desire to engage with entertainment that isn’t a deluge of blood, sex, and misery?
I’m sure some of these people genuinely enjoy their childish media because it’s childish, but many are just trying to engage with something bright, cheery, fun, and not reminiscent of the nightmare that is reality.
If an adult can get some escapism out of a trip to Disney, more power to them. But Disney is making money off of its customers, you say? What a weird article.
Let’s stop getting butthurt about the preferences of others. There are real problems right now. Lots of them.
I don’t see the connection between the “Disney adults” described by this article and the wider “kidult culture” that’s supposedly characterized by playing Stardew Valley and watching K-Pop Demon Hunters.
On the one hand, this article points to people spending huge sums of money to permanently live in a constructed escapist fantasy, and on the other hand you have (relatively) cheap media where someone might spend a few hours engaging with in their free time each day.
Calling out “cozy games” where you “tend vegetable gardens” is especially odd: The clearest connection to escapism in those games is about living in a community where everyone is connected on a personal level. You know, the very thing capitalist society abolishes for profit every day. I don’t see where enjoyment of that media connects to living a Disney-themed life, basically the complete opposite.
I am upset the dragged Stardew into this.
Can’t get any more wholesome than Stardew Valley.
Yeah if anything it’s a very adult fantasy, closer to what my grandma would play than a more violent game
why can’t i play star dew and call of duty though?
Call of Dewty
Well thought out. This is Disney trying to maintain its stranglehold on culture. With the rising cost of everything, it certainly won’t last for long…
Who cares? Look around, the world is shit. Is it really surprising that there are people who try to escape this reality for a few days by spending their money to visit a place specifically built to provide joy and wonder?
Like damn, don’t y’all have better things to do than shit on people’s coping mechanisms?
You have that wrong. The people who can afford Disney are the one who are living it up because they have all the money.
A Disney vacation for 4 now requires you to have an income in the 200K range. It’s for upper middle-class and richer people now. Everything in the park now has premium optional pricing, like the lightning passes to skip ride lines, etc.
The people who need the escapism, can’t afford Disney parks anymore.
My sister is the target customer. She’s in her 50s, her income is about 700K a year, and she goes to Disney parks twice a year and drops about 10-20K on each trip. But even she is getting pissed off at the massive price increases the last few years, she now only goes once a year instead of twice.
She has gone to Disney parks her entire adult life she since was like 25.
The people who can afford Disney are the one who are living it up because they have all the money.
Couldn’t be that they have money because they made the (right) choice not to raise kids in 2026, eh?
It’s also weird to say they have all the money. You’re conflating regular-ass, often childless consumers with the billionaire class. They are two very, very different things.
You’re conflating regular-ass, often childless consumers with the billionaire class.
Right? If anyone is complaining about how the people making 700k a year are spending their money, they have lost the plot and have failed to realize that they’re essentially in the same boat. Maybe a nicer part of the boat, but when the billionaire class decides “fuck the poor”, it doesn’t really matter what level of the boat you’re on, it will sink just the same.
We must be better than crabs in a bucket.
Urgh. Was really hoping the vocally child-free evangelists from Reddit would stay there.
Some people just like Disney world. It’s not some in depth cultural phenomenon. Disney is an escape. Some people like it.
Others play video games, jerk off to anime feet, or argue about which Linux distribution is best for jerking off to anime feet on a chrome fork.
Me attempting to escape the reality of life for a short while:
That’s how to escape for a long while
You leave my anime feet out your damn mouth!
Damn, using a Chrome fork is some filthy shit.
Stainless steel is the superior option, anyway smh
Oh boy do I have some news for you about what makes stainless steel be stainless.
It’s chrome
That’s why it’s best for jerking off to filthy fetish porn.
Pfff chrome fork 🙄
I for one use WolfCum a fork of LibreWolf (which is Firefox without AI bullshit), that’s optimized for jerking it to anime feet
Some people have multiple personalities, debilitating gambling compulsions or think that the third Godfather movie was the best in the series. We draw different lines for what is crazy all the time.
Going deep in debt to, willfully, be in an exploitative relationship with a predatory mega corporation that regurgitates your childhood memories over and over, strikes me as clinically bat shit.
Disney adults don’t even have to leave the house to fully commune with their favorite corporation in the flesh because they can live full-time in a branded city. For a million dollars or two, you can buy a sprawling house at Cotino, a 618-acre gated community in Rancho Mirage, California — the first in Disney’s Storyliving venture, which is developing master-planned suburban developments throughout the United States.
But yeah, different strokes, I guess.
I prefer crimes about Vatican finances that cliched mob hits.
lots of people are also just mentally ill to a greater or less degree and most companies are happy to exploit your illness to take your money.
I especially like the ‘yoga retreat’ camp things that cost like 10-20K to basally sit around in silence for 2-3 days in some semi-rural estate to become spiritually awoken. super popular with the workaholic stress addict crowds, you know, the type who have no spirituality or belief in anything other than personal greed, who think spirituality and personal growth can are only for those who can afford a 5-6 figure paywall to achieve it.
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Sounds fun!
American culture is stuck in adolescence because culture has shifted towards the complete annihilation of any and all significant rites of passage into adulthood.
A child is someone that needs to be told what they can and can’t do.
An adolescent is someone who tests the limits of what they can and can’t do.
An adult is someone who enforces socially responsible limits of what they themselves and others can and can’t do.Never telling people “these are now your responsibilities towards others and we all expect you to take them seriously” in an in-equivocal ceremonial way is how you destroy a society.
I don’t think you can say that no rites of passage means not becoming an adult. Rituals smooth or explain transitions, they’re not a requirement for the transition to happen.
And besides their are plenty of rites of passage into adulthood in the US - first car is huge, moving out of home, first job, etc.
those rites of passage are disappearing?
people can’t afford cars, they don’t move out of homes, and they struggle to get jobs outside of menial labor.
the only people who achieve those things regularity anymore are the rich. because their parents buy everything for them. they buy them that first car, they buy them a college education from a rich school to get them that first real job, and they give them money to pay for rent so they can move out, and eventually give them a downpayment for a house so they can become a home owner.
very few people are able to achieve those things on their own personal merits and efforts anymore, like they used to be able to 20-40 years ago. kids these days aren’t buying their first car that’s 10 years old for 2K w/ money from working pizza delivery all summer. 10yr used cars now go for closer to 8-10K, and people with college degrees w/ full time jobs struggle to afford them. gas is also not 1 dollar a gallon like it was 20 years ago.
Telling people they don’t have no responsibilities to others is the thing
Yes, i have noticed a huge uptick of selfishness the past decade. People don’t give a fuck about anyone else but themselves. The lack of basic respect and courtesy towards others is insane.
And further they feel they have the right to assault you if they don’t like you. Rather than just leave you be.
There’s nuance and nothing is absolute, sure.
I don’t think they reached adolescents. They are still just wasting time escaping like when mum hands em the iPad so she can do the dishes.
Nothing wrong with escaping here and there if responsibilities are fulfilled.
The problem is when escapism becomes the purpose of living.
The great lie of western culture is that we are first and foremost, individuals and we should strive for maximum freedom i.e. our purpose is to be free. Let’s take a look at the people in the world that can afford maximum freedom and have no practical accountability and see how/what they’re doing… yeah…
Purpose is important. If purpose strays too far away from “the best for others”, bad things start happening really fast.
Nah read a real book watch a real movie. Sure like play your cod but follow it up with some disco Elysium cruelty squad specopstheline something read your ya fiction but then read some fucking literature have a meiville or a leguinn or something if you only ever escape you never engage or grow
youcantreadthis
Barely.
Thats not describing “kidults” , but basically your regular basic normie consumer; just with “disney” tints, or a “geeky” millenial. People trained and raised to believe someone else always has the answer and the responsibility, and that the only thing they can do to somehow change their situation in life is to buy/consume something different.
No families can afford theme parks in this economy.
Rich families can, and the number of rich families is growing.
It’s just that the middle-class can’t, and is disappearing.
Poor people never could afford Disney.
This is more or less the reason.
Disney has limited space in the parks. You can only have so many line skipping and spot reserve schemes before people spend the entire day in line for attractions. So they’ve been increasing prices. This combined with the glorious "k shaped’ economy means that childless millenials are one of the largest demographics that have the money and nostalgia to attend them.
Charly you haven’t been.
Arrested development/immaturity, hedonism and consumerism are often comorbid. 🤷
The symptoms are not as important as the sources, though.
Comorbid, you say! Definitely adding that to my lexicon.
Really didn’t expect that reference…
In Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard once wrote that Disneyland is “presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”
Baudrillard now says he was off base with that book, but it’s hard to write it off after the last decade.
In Simulacra and Simulation, French theorist Jean Baudrillard once wrote that Disneyland is “presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.”
If you want to experience a worked example of this…
Disney adults are the most cringe shit ever.
I worked at big CA-based drug company, granted it was largely a phone-room but it was still a fairly serious job, with serious pay.
Most staff came up from CA and loved disney so hard. Disney movies were a topic at meetings, they expected everyone would know the characters, used disney references in presentations, characters as test patients, etc. Managers too.
Finding others who hated disney was like finding stoners at work before it was legal - all euphamisms and inuendo until you work out who to trust: “No i don’t really have a favourite character”, “I’m not familiar with that”, “No, I ugh… haven’t seen… i’m not super into… Oh thank god, yes, of course i fucking hate disney, who could possibly like the least interesting version of a fairytale marketed by a billion dollar empire founded by a nazi and evil enough to copyright happy birthday?!”
I love this.
Capitalism exploits compulsions to extract resources causing markets to neglect investing in themselves.
