What media caused you to develop critical thinking skills?

[PieCoNsUmEr]

Essentially media that made you think why it was good/bad. I’m approaching it from the angle of told it was good or had a message but was bad, but you don’t have to.

Ok, Elfin Lied, maybe most people didn’t actually think it was that good, I’m not exactly the greatest at researching, but I heard it was strong in some ways and was a classic. Spoilers I guess?

Spoiler: Elfin Lied end spoil also important plot twist.

Essentially the anime has a kind of non-ending, and I thought I must not have gotten it, so I read the manga till the end. To summarize, what happened was weird edgy crap kept happening, then the origins of the girls was explained as oni exist but they were forced on an island and lost their powers, so the last remaining ones created the psychic-horned-STD that cause the girls to, bring them to power? And at the end, Lucy gets so emotionally conflicted she she grows a million huge arms seeable from space, and is going to kill everyone? So her childhood friend has to kill her.

After I finished it I was just confused and moved on, but later on I thought back about it and was like “You, know what, I thinks it’s kinda trash.”.
Now I will explain in detail in a more spaced out and readable way:

• The psychic monster girls are often fully naked, even when imprisoned with a metal head restraint.
• Amnesia.
• Dumb split personality.
• Bad characters.
• Gratuitous pointless violence, the violence is cruel, not fun, and didn’t serve a purpose, other than being edgy.
• Stupid answers to major mysteries.
• Feels consistently miserable.
• Late stage dumb left fields.
• Bad ending.
• No point, the ending and later stage part of the story don’t give catharsis, or interesting stuff, wasn’t even a identifiable message.
• One of the characters that got amnesia (same one that has a split personality), was written as a little girl in a practically adult body, and they show her peeing herself.
• Tries to make you feel bad, and consistently goes: “There’s no good in the world, you pathetic bitch,”.
  

And probably more. So I just see Elfin Lied as miserable exploitation.

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

Don’t watch the mainstream media, they lie and are psychologically engineering you with the will to tie yourself up to their causes, which most of the time further reinforce themself, or come at your expense. I.E foreign wars, continuation of opioid crisis. The only dude I watch from there is Tucker because he’s good, and some dudes that messed badly. Lesson of the story is don’t become political

 

[Draconite]

JP isekai thought me about work place exploitation oh and also have a fucking spine

Xianxia thought me that you can only rely on yourself (most of the time) and how to scheme and recognize schemes

And the recent mental circus of US ploitics thought me that the masses are dumb, like seriously wtf

 

[BenJepheneT]

Weirdly enough, YouTube media analysis videos taught me critical thinking. Funnily enough, it was also YouTube media analysis that made me adverse to critical thinking.

When it comes down to it, critical thinking gives you great insight with the heavy baggage of despair. Especially with current cultural climates. Thinking deep about some superhero Cape shits or good ass manga? That's a hell yeah. But once you start making connections between current art and current happenings, you start to have realizations. And those realizations will sometimes take your appetite. I'm a hopeful man, but even I can tell when a train is heading towards a dead-end. We're all crying to stop, but no one's pulling the brakes.

So I decided to die in blissful ignorance instead

 

[CupcakeNinja]

Essentially media that made you think why it was good/bad. I’m approaching it from the angle of told it was good or had a message but was bad, but you don’t have to.

Ok, Elfin Lied, maybe most people didn’t actually think it was that good, I’m not exactly the greatest at researching, but I heard it was strong in some ways and was a classic. Spoilers I guess?

Spoiler: Elfin Lied end spoil also important plot twist.

Essentially the anime has a kind of non-ending, and I thought I must not have gotten it, so I read the manga till the end. To summarize, what happened was weird edgy crap kept happening, then the origins of the girls was explained as oni exist but they were forced on an island and lost their powers, so the last remaining ones created the psychic-horned-STD that cause the girls to, bring them to power? And at the end, Lucy gets so emotionally conflicted she she grows a million huge arms seeable from space, and is going to kill everyone? So her childhood friend has to kill her.

After I finished it I was just confused and moved on, but later on I thought back about it and was like “You, know what, I thinks it’s kinda trash.”.
Now I will explain in detail in a more spaced out and readable way:

• The psychic monster girls are often fully naked, even when imprisoned with a metal head restraint.
• Amnesia.
• Dumb split personality.
• Bad characters.
• Gratuitous pointless violence, the violence is cruel, not fun, and didn’t serve a purpose, other than being edgy.
• Stupid answers to major mysteries.
• Feels consistently miserable.
• Late stage dumb left fields.
• Bad ending.
• No point, the ending and later stage part of the story don’t give catharsis, or interesting stuff, wasn’t even a identifiable message.
• One of the characters that got amnesia (same one that has a split personality), was written as a little girl in a practically adult body, and they show her peeing herself.
• Tries to make you feel bad, and consistently goes: “There’s no good in the world, you pathetic bitch,”.

And probably more. So I just see Elfin Lied as miserable exploitation.

Elfen Lied is perfect for all those reasons, fanservice aside. There's no rhyme or reason for the violence. Thats how real life is, too, often times. Its cruel, gratuitous. But when you're mentally deranged with invisible arms that can kill people, thats how it goes.

Im not sure what that all has to do with critical thinking tho. Anyway, there was an anime that made me question what it is to be human, its significance, and it's hypocrisies. It was called Heaven's lost property, and sure it was fanservice as fuck... but disregard that and you have a masterpiece which makes you ask the big questions.

Lol joke answers aside, Psycho Pass was a trip. The main villain wasn't designated as a mentally ill person...he simply had very specific beliefs and a personality.

That made me question the definition of sanity. Who are any of us to say what is sane? Humans, by nature, are not sane. We are amalgamations of hypocrisies. And we must be! Its the only way we can survive.

 

[Cipiteca396]

My family was given a series of children's books by a friend of the author when I was a child. My parents read them to me, and I specifically remember being in love with them because of all the neat references to history and mythology... Looking back, I was a weird baby?

The other thing is after that, I grew up reading and watching a ton of science fiction. Figuring out what all the science bits meant was a big part of the entertainment for me.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagwa,_the_Chinese_Siamese_Cat_(book)

 

[PancakesWitch]

JP isekai thought me about work place exploitation oh and also have a fucking spine

Xianxia thought me that you can only rely on yourself (most of the time) and how to scheme and recognize schemes

And the recent mental circus of US ploitics thought me that the masses are dumb, like seriously wtf

I dont think you should take what you saw from xianxia as "learning" its just fantasy and 99% of all of these stories are terribly made. relying only in yourself is not good, most if not all people have families to rely on, it is also an important lesson to be able to understand and accept your family while relying on them or vice versa. humans are social creatures, even if you dont like it the entire society is being maintained by all of us relying in one another

 

[EternalSunset0]

Whatever anime or video game I ended up liking that has those 20,40-minute long analysis videos on YouTube. I oftentimes just put them on before going to bed or when trying to rest my eyes, and I actually learn a lot from those.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Also, "The Emperor's New Clothes" gives kids permission to think for themselves. At least, it does if you're a boy. I think Sagwa resonated with me more because the MC is female, the author is female, and so am I.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes

 

[Grandloaf]

Sword art online. It was the first time I realized that a media I was consuming was really fucking bad and I wanted to know why. Now I have a problem with over analyzing everything and I struggle to just sit down and enjoy something.

 

[Draconite]

I dont think you should take what you saw from xianxia as "learning" its just fantasy and 99% of all of these stories are terribly made. relying only in yourself is not good, most if not all people have families to rely on, it is also an important lesson to be able to understand and accept your family while relying on them or vice versa. humans are social creatures, even if you dont like it the entire society is being maintained by all of us relying in one another

that's why i said most of the time

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Essentially media that made you think why it was good/bad.

Almost anything even remotely political or religious or spiritual.
I'll start with politics. I have learned, to a small extent, to separate the small kernels of truth from the political messages that the media wanted me to buy, although I can't say I feel proficient in it.
You'd be surprised how much the news outright lie - by creating fake data, using photos and videos that are completely unrelated to the stories, by misinterpretation... It is actually scary. And the worst part is, the common man doesn't even bother to double check what he (or she) is fed, and they end up living in some kind of parallel world.
You'd think that in a democracy (and that word gets thrown around a lot, to the point that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. The US, EU are democracies, but so are Russia and China, the commonly thought of dictatorships, and so are even places in the Middle East. Despite the facts that they are all very different. So is North Korea. Even Ancient Greece was a democracy, and those people literally had slaves. Go figure). Anyway, even in a democracy - a place that supposedly values free speech and freedom of expression, you can easily find very casual violations of said free speech. You find common narratives, going against which is taboo.
And I am not taking any sides. I personally have a disdain equal more for everyone, regardless of their beliefs and values. Being human is a flaw in my eyes.
Everyone has those narratives. No one is free. Freedom of thought can only be obtained through hard individual work and much searching.
Now, this will allow me to segway into the spiritual and the religious.
Being doubtful on religion and the spiritual is a fad of sorts. All the cool kids are doing it. And I think it's okay. I myself don't believe in salvation of my sinful soul. But here again you find blind ignorance, and common narratives on both sides. "X is lying, they use Y and Z to get you to believe in this and that, they misinterprete this and that", you hear this kind of talk everywhere. And everyone is right. Everyone is trying to sell you something. Here again, you must think for yourself. Here again, lies and deceit are commonplace.
Even in science - not the actual science (though there too sometimes), but in places like pharmacology and sociology and other things-like-sciences.
Main stream media has it too, and in an abundance. But I'm sure there would be people who could describe them more eloquently than me, what with the abundance of gender bender and bl and GL here, surely there must be some people here who are aware of this.

 

[Jemini]

Well... All I have to say is that I sure am glad SOMEBODY actually sees the things I saw in Elfin Leid. I really do not understand why anyone considers that thing good.

 

[RepresentingSilence]

You'd think that in a democracy (and that word gets thrown around a lot, to the point that it doesn't really mean anything anymore. The US, EU are democracies, but so are Russia and China, the commonly thought of dictatorships,

The US isn't a democracy that's actual literal propaganda the US is a constitutional republic