Where Next, 4D?

Movies! TVs! Video Games! Toys! Even flavor!? Society has always been infamous for grabbing the flashiest new fad and sucking every possible use and cliché out of it, and then continuing to beat the dead horse long after the fad has died. One of the latest and most abused of these recently has been 3D EVERYTHING! It started with a few movies using the old red and blue 3D glasses, fighting to have the most cheesy pop-out-of-the-screen moments. Thankfully, Hollywood understood quickly that very obviously adding in some moment where something flies at or into the screen for a unusually long time did not bode well. That did not kill 3D though. Some people somewhere decided, “hmm, the entire world is already in 3 dimensions, therefore, every movie that comes out must be in 3D or adapted to it because it’s such a revolutionary idea!” From then on, it has only expanded.

Somewhere along the line, technology focused on making newer and better 3D, and there are even some forms of 3D that require no glasses. A nice advance on technology’s part, but it still is, just a newer form of what already seems an old cliché. Now people can buy new, not to mention more expensive, 3D televisions with new, battery powered, 3D glasses. A great chance to let even battery companies cash in on the 3D movement. To match the 3D TVs, most markets that involve the TV followed. Video games, DVDs, Blu-rays, even some shows decided they need everything to have the option of 3D. Some things have not even adapted to it, but been made entirely because of it. Nintendo made a hand-held system with two screens called the DS before the worst of this fad. So, when the time came to make a “new” handheld system, they thought, “Let’s make the exact same thing, and focus it entirely around 3D this time, but make games for it not work on the system nearly just like it, so people think it’s different!” Now, 3D can even be found in supermarkets. On bags of chips, or other products, one might see, “3D flavor!” What exactly does that mean? Absolutely nothing. However, it has become one of those gimmicky words with no actual meaning, that consumers know must mean it is the best and latest thing they cannot wait to throw money at.. Like flashy, shiny, rad, and many other words before it, people just see it, and are drawn in. It makes products sell better, without actually doing anything to the product. Unfortunately for this 3rd dimension within the already 3 dimensional world, the fad is beginning to die.

Movies and businesses will just skip over the step where the word actually means something, and go straight to being the “flashiest, shiniest, most rad and now remastered in 3D” word.

After countless movies being “remade” and re-released in theaters with 3D in them. People are starting to think, “Wait, this is the exact same movie! It just looks slightly different if I close one eye. Why is it back up to the price of a brand new film?” So, while Hollywood will stick to 3D for a while after no one wants it, they will eventually need some new fad. Perhaps they will try to cash in on 4D, advertising a dimension that cannot be put into any movie or product. Movies and businesses will just skip over the step where the word actually means something, and go straight to being the “flashiest, shiniest, most rad and now remastered in 3D” word. If that were to happen, technology would waste its time trying to find what 4D could possibly mean, and eventually come up with some technology they can tag the name onto, which would have minimal differences from 3D technology. When will consumers learn, and make technology, Hollywood, and toy companies do something actually new, or helpful, instead of catering to fools that throw money at them for doing damn near nothing. If only pleasing fools weren’t so profitable…