Movie talk isn’t just dying—it’s rotting. The smell’s been in the air for a while, and it’s not coming from the movies themselves. It’s coming from the way we talk about them. Somewhere along the way, the excitement we used to have for sharing opinions, swapping recommendations, or arguing over who got snubbed at the Oscars got replaced with something… ugly. Now every conversation feels like it’s been hijacked by people running a side hustle in outrage farming.
You can see it all over Twitter—fine, “X” if we’re pretending that’s sticking. The monetization system basically threw open the gates and said, “Hey, if you’re willing to be loud, mean, and a little bit dishonest, you can make rent off this place.” So people leaned in. They post takes they don’t even believe, as long as it’ll stir the pot. They bait both sides of an argument so they can rake in views from the fight. It’s not opinion anymore—it’s fishing with dynamite.
YouTube isn’t any better. The algorithm rewards you for turning every movie into a scandal. If your thumbnail looks like you’re mid-sneeze and the title screams about someone being “DESTROYED,” congratulations, you’re probably getting recommended right now. It’s not because the video’s good—it’s because the machine knows drama keeps people glued to the screen.
And the people making the most off this? They know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve figured out how to weaponize emotion like it’s a studio prop. They’ll build you up, tear you down, or dangle some fake insider info just to keep you in their orbit. The movies themselves barely matter. They’re just the excuse for the content treadmill to keep moving.
Weirdly enough, the healthiest movie talk I’ve seen lately is on TikTok. Yeah, TikTok. It’s still got plenty of clout chasing, but it’s also got real fans making videos about stuff they genuinely love. You can scroll past a dozen cynical posts on Twitter, hop over to TikTok, and suddenly there’s someone breaking down why a scene works or sharing a film that changed their life. And people respond to it—positively. No one’s calling them idiots for liking something. That’s depressingly rare now.
The sad truth is the big platforms—Twitter, YouTube—have turned movie talk into a game where cruelty pays better than curiosity. They don’t care what you’re saying about a film. They care that you’re saying it in a way that keeps people scrolling, commenting, and fighting. If that means the conversation gets nastier, more divisive, or flat-out dishonest, that’s a feature, not a bug.
This didn’t happen overnight. First it was clickbait headlines. Then it was overblown thumbnails. Now it’s a fully monetized ecosystem where the most “valuable” voices are the ones keeping everyone agitated. The more you’re worked up, the better the numbers look. And yeah, we’ve always argued about movies—but we used to be able to walk away from the table without feeling like we’d just been used as a pawn in someone else’s engagement strategy.
That’s what makes movie talk feel dead to me. It’s not that the movies aren’t worth discussing. It’s that the people steering the conversation are in it for the payouts, not the passion. And if that’s the game now, the only winning move might be to stop playing.
Hollywood After Dark 