I was originally going to post this as a response to a different thread and realized it would make a better post by itself.
One of my favourte expressions:
When America sneezes, Canada gets a cold.
When I was growing up and American and Canadian media were still relatively separate, it was widespread Canadian opinion that America was a political shitshow at the best of times and we were grateful that we weren’t like it. I would even go as far as to say there was widespread cultural anti-Americanism.
Fast-forward to 2024 where most people are getting news/entertainment from almost exclusively American-dominated sources like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on, and increasingly our political culture has become blended in with theirs, and frankly, we have begun to inherit what I feel to be their distasteful way of doing politics.
An example: The sheer amount of hyperventilation I saw among my left-leaning Canadian friends over the Trump election victory in 2016 was unbelievable. I’m rarely shocked by things, but some of my friends were genuinely insisting that a second Holocaust was unironically about to unfold. I mean they were fully committed to the idea that minorities were actually going to be rounded up and put into death camps. Totally bonkers stuff. (Nevermind any of the economic or political context that lead to pre-WW2 Germany).
What’s more, this election had felt extremely personal to Canadians in a way American politics had rarely if ever been before. And there was a certain point where I stopped and said “Huh, this is weird. How did we get here?”
I felt for perhaps the first time that politically my fellow Canadians had completely lost their minds in ways that felt previously reserved for the Americans. And increasingly I see Canadians wrapped up in American political slogans and battles that largely don’t apply to the Canadian context.
Ex: People seem to think Canada’s got some similar lines to Democrats vs Republicans but in the past mock elections I’ve seen the Democrats would win in Canada with something crazy like 80% of the vote. Trying to impose those dichotomies onto the Canadian political context (Conservatives vs Liberals) just doesn’t make sense, but people still do it because it’s what they’re being shown.
I would say the government itself has been largely ineffective in ensuring that the Canadian voice doesn’t get completely drowned out by the American perspective. (Canadian content laws have largely not worked with the internet, and it’s been difficult to make tech giants like Facebook comply, as we’ve already seen).
So, am I the only person who’s seen this and feels this way? Americans, if you’re here, what’s it like from your angle? Interested to hear people’s thoughts.
The media landscape has been pared down to a handful of corporate interests. The loss of local news, media, and journalism with the series of low key consolidations (and scandals) over the past few decades has been devastating for Canadian sovereignty. Now pile on Americanized social media being the defacto cultural zeitgeist. It’s been a disaster. It used to be that Canada had cultural icons that everyone could name. Now what is there?
Not even the once sacred Hockey Night in Canada was spared. It seems not many people even know this but it isn’t a CBC production anymore. It’s made by Rogers Sportsnet. CBC merely gives the timeslot to air that bland corporatized production every Saturday.
The local paper in my area stopped a long time ago. I don’t even remember when. People don’t subscribe the newspapers anymore that once wrote about local and national issues first with global issues as subsections of the paper. People don’t have cable TV anymore even though there’s really no more local content. Everyone is streaming American media.
The current generation did not grow up with local TV stations as the main broadcasters. They did not get their news from local papers. They did not have MuchMusic being the window into pop culture. They did not grow up with the powerhouse that was once CBC kids programming. Their childhoods did not revolve around shows produced by Canadian media companies like Corus or CINAR. The young generation today were given iPads and consumed American media.
Right now you have to talk to people over 30 give or take who have memory of what the Canadian news and media era even was. What we’re seeing is the fading memory of all this.
God damn it, you’re correct. It didn’t really occur to me until reading this just how little Canadian content is left. I still get some music, but I have to look for it. When I was a teen, Big Shiny Tunes albums were mostly Canadian and sold like crazy. Ed the Sock, The Raccoons, Mr. Dressup, Cube, Nothing, Much Music, Trailer Park Boys… man the list was long, and even then it was considered to be not as plentiful as the American media.
Now I think the only thing I’ve seen that’s Canadian in recent years has been Letterkenny (which is now off the air) and Shoresy.
It’s the importing of flat-mass media. That bland “everything for everybody” garbage that takes no risks and checks every box there is. Christ, the tasteless corporate pablum of my youth was Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, and even they look decent compared to now.