The Death of the Shared Experience

“A shared experience, Mr. Carter.”

That’s what got killed.
Not movies. Not anime. Not games.
The shared experience.

On October 9, 1987, the cyberpunk series Max Headroom aired an episode titled “Dream Thieves.” The episode itself focused on a company stealing people’s dreams to sell them.

But the line that always stuck with me came from Paddy Ashton when he was asked about movie theatres:

“A shared experience, Mr. Carter. People who gathered together in communal escapism to share adventure, excitement, laughter, romance. That was before they choked the talent out of this business. Gave us game shows and chat shows and news. Before the world became ratings and people became demographics and everything became the product.”

That line stuck with me for years. Now more than ever, I keep coming back to it.

What happened to shared moviegoing?
What happened to midnight launches?
When did all of this disappear?

Recently I was looking at upcoming releases in local cinemas and realized something that should be obvious by now. With digital games, there’s no need for midnight launches.

From 2013 to 2026, I watched “communal escapism” die. A bit of personal history will make this make sense.

My first event screening was on April 25, 2013, when I got the chance to see the iconic 86-minute edit of the 1990 sci-fi classic 2-parter “The Best of Both Worlds,” written by Michael Piller.

I still remember getting shivers seeing Patrick Stewart on the big screen, cold and monotone, declaring:

“I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service… us.”

I was also there for one of the last major shared video game launches, the launch of Halo 4 on November 6, 2012.

While Halo 4 wasn’t the best game in the franchise, it was one of those moments where you had to be there. It was what the king of gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, would have called a “high-water mark,” but for nerds.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “high-water mark” comes from a passage Thompson wrote about the 1960s:

“No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.”

That’s what it felt like. We were all there, sharing in the last Halo of the Xbox 360 era. the night prior, the community had just seen the ending of the Project Freelancer saga in Red vs. Blue.

We also had Halo: The Thursday War, the second book in the Kilo-Five trilogy, and the Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn series dropping around the same time.

It was one of the last times there was a shared culture strong enough to pull people into the same place, at the same time.

Fast forward a few years. COVID hits, and everything shuts down.

But before that, in 2018, I got one last moment that felt magical. I experienced one of the first “Anti-Recitals,” a small, intimate dark cabaret performance. Nothing else really compares.

For those who’ve never heard of it, an “Anti-Recital” is an intimate, unconventional musical performance held in small, unique venues, built around creating a direct connection between the performer and the audience.

Below is an example of that kind of performance, though not the exact one I attended.

After COVID, something was gone.

The steady stream of one-night events, niche screenings, older content getting a second life. All of it just disappeared, and it’s honestly tragic to think about.

What used to feel like a regular occurrence, something you could count on every few weeks, turned into almost nothing. In the last three years, I can count on one hand the number of sci-fi, anime, or niche screenings that even showed up.

Seriously. In that time, I can only name a few things like RiffTrax Live: Timecop and RiffTrax Live: Point Break. And yes, I know they also did “RAD,” but we didn’t even get that here, which says a lot on its own.

And don’t even get me started on anime. In three years, we’ve gotten almost nothing aimed at smaller or more focused fandoms.

Before COVID, Canada was getting releases through Fathom Events and VIZ Media like the 1990s Sailor Moon films, fully remastered, with the pre-film shorts finally dubbed and shown properly.

Now? Everything is streamlined through companies like Sony Pictures handling Crunchyroll releases.

What’s left?

Spy x Family: Code White.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to be Loved.
Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc.

And what do they all have in common? They all run through the same Crunchyroll and Funimation pipeline.

What about something outside that system?

Sure, there was a screening of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children...Not Sony, right? Wrong. Distributed by Sony Pictures.

Maybe Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom is different? Handled by Bandai Namco Filmworks, with investors like TOHO, Nintendo, and Sony, along with… JPMorgan Chase. Yes, a bank.

At that point, it starts to feel like everything traces back to the same handful of pipelines anyway.

Meanwhile, the United States still gets more alternative and niche releases. But in Canada, with Cineplex holding a near-monopoly on theatres, we just don’t get that same range of content.

Maybe someday this turns around. I was talking about this with someone recently, and they brought up how many people are starting to drift back toward older media styles.

Older social media. Older culture in general. A desire for something that actually feels human again.

I hope that’s where we’re heading.

I could rant more, but I think the point’s been made.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be rewatching Serenity for another article in the works.