Letterboxd, the pinnacle of Gen Z’s social media habbits. Thats right, not TikTok, but a forum designed specifically to catalogue and review the media you consume to a group of followers/ peers.
There’s something in this habit that feels especially Gen Z to me. The concept of congregating in groups to discuss media, or just talking to a group of friends about the last film you watched isn’t anything new – after all, bookclubs are still alive and well for people that genuinely care to be part of one whether that be a small intimate one where you meet in a café every month, or watching a livestream of booktubers/ booktokers discuss their specific “book of the month”.
These examples are still forms of community building. Of discourse that is alive and fueled by shared passion for whatever media is being discussed. But Letterboxd to me feels like a hyperspecific version of Twitter (or X now 🙄). It’s a person’s thought, followed by a bunch of replies that aren’t truly contributory.
If it’s not a forum for real discourse, then some people encourage you to use it as if its a journal. But, again, this is such a new habit where journalling of any form now must have an audience.
As a film student, a lot of people find it surprising that I don’t like the app. And honestly, I wish I could get behind it. In an age of people already not taking film students, and any other humanities student seriously by any degree, I wish people would stop making light of their own interests and skills.
We have been conditioned to think our “silly girly degrees” are useless to the point that so many people fail to be able to identify their own transferable skills. The ubiquity of film students flocking to an app that discourages active viewserhip by reducing engaging in media to try to write the “funniest” or most “unhinged” review is frustrating.
This blog takes a very extreme view. I am not saying that it can’t be a fun app, but the usage of it that I see as a university student where people that share my degree use it as a direct way to undermine their own interests/ perpetuate the common perception of their degree being a waste of time is something that I want no part of.