“Ah— ahh— ahh—” said multiple videos the film bros scrolled past.”
Photo by Lilia Sanchez
After the discovery of the new invasive media species Shortfernicus slopicus (common name short-fern content), a UC San Diego study revealed that these mediaforms have significantly threatened the Quentinius nolanicus — more commonly known as the “film bro”. This finding urged urban ecologists to reclassify the species from a conserva- tion status of “threatened” to “endangered”.
According to Primary In- vestigator and lead expert in the field of cinema-ecology Holly Filmburg, “The Quentinius nolanicus has an innate hunger for cinema and prefers consuming films such as ‘Interstellar’, ‘The Dark Knight’, and… not much else. This diet has done a great service to the ecosystem by consuming these otherwise indigestible pieces of media, however it does leave the film bros susceptible to bottleneck events.”
“These creatures used to roam the tacky movie theater carpeted plains, living in harmony among the stalem florem popcornis and the sodarium cheapacus, and now this noble species is almost gone,” lamented Filmburg.
The study found that large media conglomerates poisoning the film bros’ natural habitat led to their inability to reproduce, significantly decreasing populations across the North American and European continents. With the destabilization of the habitat, short-fern content has been able to flourish.
In the absence of their natural diet, the film bro has been observed to gravitate towards these “highly-consumable” and “addictive” foods such as short-fern sub-species tiktokius and instagrammacus. According to the study, this diet change is detrimental to the juvenile development of the film bro. The chemicals produced in their brain after short-fern content consumption pre- vents growth past the adolescent stage. As a result, the young film bro is left in a vulnerable state where it is never able to develop the ability to hunt for its own food, as “tiktokius provides a steady supply of calorically rich but nutritionally incomplete media sustenance.” “
Early life exposure to short-fern content severely limits the film bro’s ability to consume their regular intake of Nolan, Tarantino, and Gunn films, which leads to significant malnutrition,” continued Filmburg. This forces the film bro to completely rely on short-fern content as its primary food source. Without an AI voice reading out a summary of the movie’s plot, the film bro loses interest in any traditional film that it may incidentally come across while prowling through the streaming-service region of the mediasphere.
Because of this, their media analyses and critical thinking centers begin to deteriorate, forcing even more dependence on short-fern content. While the film bros’ adolescent stage is characterised by a under-developed memory center, new results show a “concerningly low attention span.”
“We must encourage the public to support their local movie theater,” urged Filmburg. “The preservation of the Quentinius nolanicus relies on it.”
