Cinema falls victim to digital noise and the bobfluencers

Cinema is dying amid the noise of TikTok and the bobfluencers

A blunt claim: cinema as a collective experience is dead, and the culprits are the algorithms and the microinfluencers who turn every release into a viral, disposable product. But one concrete fact undermines part of that narrative: the blame lies not only with the platforms, but with an audience that consumes noise while demanding silence at the same time.

The algorithm as casting director
The entertainment industry has handed over to TikTok and microtargeting the decision of which films become box-office hits. A paradigmatic case is "Obsession" (2024), a Universal Pictures production designed to generate 15 minutes of glory on TikTok. It is a movie made to be turned into GIFs, not to be watched: short, viral scenes, empty of content. By contrast, "Coherence" — shot in the director's mother's house, with actors paid in pizza — represents the guerrilla filmmaking that the algorithm has buried. Today, everything is either marketing noise or absolute silence.

The moviegoer's contradiction
Those who accuse "bobfluencers" of ruining cinema are the same people who, once seated in the theater, demand absolute silence. The uncomfortable question is: does going to the movies and staying quiet amount to collaborating with the zombie matrix? The analysis suggests that audiences have become passive consumers of hype, while cinema as a shared experience fades away. The cost of a ticket versus a streaming subscription doesn't justify going, but nostalgia does.

A closing with reservations: if the algorithm keeps calling the shots, guerrilla filmmaking will die out. But as long as there are people who seek out "Coherence" instead of "Obsession", the experience can still be saved. Or maybe not.