Its usually that you’ve experienced the gold standard of something before and now you can’t achieve it again, so everything in comparison looks boring.

Not to be confused with nostalgia, but movies for example had a peak period of production and entertainment value that is long gone. Modern hollywood almost looks like slop compared to even decent film hits 30+ years ago, but anyone who hasn’t experienced that era wouldn’t know. You just never know when you’re in a golden era until its over because it’s all relative to your perspective. And it’s always possible another golden era appears, its just very unlikely.

Aside from that, I heavily critique everything because I used to be a big fiction reader and now I can’t help but notice every plot hole, character development flaw, trope, and archetype in literally any media.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but its gotten to the point where I can reasonably deduce most of the story of a movie from its quick description, which is not a good thing.

Example mega spoiler for Fantastic 4: