Very rarely, but I have a few times.
C'mon C'mon starring Joaquin Phoenix and a 12 year old kid made my ball my eyes out.
Very rarely, but I have a few times.
C'mon C'mon starring Joaquin Phoenix and a 12 year old kid made my ball my eyes out.
Yup, i do this too - my personal highlight was crying at ... Wall-e, when he thinks that Eve died.
I'm over 40, and this started 10 or 15 years ago, when i started to go to therapy a lot more.
But i think it's great to be able to live and feel with imaginary characters, and a sign of empathy.
Yep. I'm a reasonably masculine-presenting guy and most good movies or shows will make me tear up at some point, it's a standard occurrence if the story has grabbed me in any satisfying way and brought me on the resulting emotional highs and/or lows.
We joke around about it in my household because my wife is a mostly femme-presenting woman, but she generally doesn't tear up at films or shows while I'm next to her having what old stereotypes would say is the girly reaction. It's not that she isn't experiencing the story as fully or anything, she can be enjoying something just as much as I and the emotional reaction just affects us differently because (gasp!) we're two different people.
Yup, all the time. To give an example, yesterday I watched DC League of Super Pets with my child and cried quite a lot at one bit (if you've seen it, you probably know which bit). It's a solid movie overall too - great voice cast.
It's not unusual for me to cry when reading or listening to the news.
I'm 41 too, but a woman.
I rarely cried when watching shows of movies for most of my life.. then I started transitioning and taking estrogen. Now I cry so easily it feels like a joke. But I love it.
I cried reading about Opportunity. Not losing one or the lack thereof.
The Mars Rover.
Also the Wikipedia article on the Miracle on the Hudson. No I haven't seen the Tom Hanks movie nor do I plan to unless I really need an ugly cry.
I tear up at most movies. It's not a sad movie, but Everything Everywhere All at Once holds the current record for most cries.
Generally if a movie doesn't make me tear up at least once that's a bad sign. At the same time I don't gravitate towards tearjerkers, they can feel emotionally manipulative and heavy handed.
I almost never cry for TV shows or books.
i can cry on demand by recalling a certain moment in that movie
if i get triggered i will have a full body cry that lasts an hour and ill just be sitting there in the seat after the lights come on soaked in tears unable to move it's really embarrassing thanks pixar you fucking asshole
I don't usually cry during movies. But sometimes later when I'm thinking about it I let out a tear or two. Also I cried during a voyager documentary
The older I get, the more I don't give a fuck and just let go. Interstellar - when Cooper is watching messages from his son... Gets me every damn time.
Growing up, I'd occasionally tear up over a sad movie.
Now that I'm older, I seek out movies that tend to be depressing and tragic. Watching them alone let's me express a level of empathy or grief that is almost therapeutic. Most mainstream movies that are deemed sad may still only get me to slightly tear up like the past. But I've encountered enough indy or slightly lesser know films that fly under the radar and they make me ugly cry.
Being in a vulnerable mindset kind of helps because there are moments where I could probably fight it mentally and hold back my reaction. But if I allow myself to let go, then it's full on sobbing.
Recent movies that had that effect on me are Drawing Closer, and How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.
It's not always empathy, somethings its a personal element where I relate to someone on screen and I use them as a conduit to express the emotions I might normally suppress or stoicly ignore.
Anyone here watch K Dramas? Crash Landing on You emotionally broke me. I knew they couldn't keep portraying North Korea as good, but they didn't have to do all that....
works of fiction never made me cry in my previous gender, but ever since i started estrogen it's been neat going back and rewatching my faves and seeing how much harder they hit emotionally now
Makes one wonder what is hormones vs a shift of the mind to the other side.
Yeah.
Occasionally I'll come across scenes in an anime that are so out of place but hurt.
Yes it is normal, that scene in the animated movie up gets me. John Q too.
Hey fellow 41 year old dude, I also cry at this stuff. It seems especially pronounced when rewatching nostalgic productions with well written characters and conflict (I will not apologize for crying all the time during Avatar the last Airbender, as an adult man). No, I do not know what this means in regard to healthy emotional processing, it just is what it is. Mind you I also get unjustifiably angry or emotional in other contexts when I feel connected to the fate of a character and they experience injustice. So this might be a general marker for some level of empathy or maybe just emotional mimicry. Thanks for posting, I think this is something people should be okay talking about more.
Edit: I wanted to add this also occurs in other mediums, like video games. Cyberpunk 2077 was like a revolution in awareness for me, but largely because I experience DID to a degree in my life, and it really flipped the table of my understanding of myself seeing what I experience through the eyes of others.
And books.
If the story and characters are well written and/or acted well enough to pull you in to the story you can certainly feel empathy and other feelings vicariously.
There is plenty of entertainment that does not pull the viewer/reader in, and you don’t particularly get “involved” with them.
I’d be curious what the line is for most people, what draws them in to a story emotionally to make that investment in a fictional character.
Yeah buddy, it's normal to feel your feelings.
I wouldn't say it's normal but it definitifly should be.
I guess I grew up with people without feelings as when I raised with this my closest friends (5), none of them admitted to it. I know they could lie but I also don’t know how invested they get in to media.
They might be, they might not be. It's entirely possible that they don't interact with any media that contains emotions past shooting a gun. I've cried to music, movies, and books. Art (paintings, sculptures, etc) I've never had that reaction.
Very rarely.
I'm a dude in his 40s. If anything, I've gotten more empathetic and easily moved over the years. I have cried at movies and over books.
Same. For the longest time I was made to believe that crying in front of people was weak. Especially, when those tears came from entertainment. Then I watched Schindler's List and bawled like a fucking baby at the end when...
Tap for spoiler
Schindler starts pointing out all the possessions he still had, which he could have bartered to save more Jews and the overwhelming support from the ones he did save comforting him.
It fundamentally changed who I was and what I was willing to show emotion for, especially empathy. I found that any movie based on actual events, that ended tragically, would illicit a similar response.
It was only after years of therapy and the support of wonderful people in my life that I learned to feel that deeply for any media with resonating characters. Elon said empathy is a human weakness, but he's never been so wrong. It's the only thing that binds us together.
Me, and yes it’s normal to have an emotional reaction to media. You want a good cry? Watch Violet Evergarden. That shit’ll wreck you.
The film Click always makes me cry. You know, the comedy where Adam Sandler has a magic tv remote? I'm not gonna go into too much detail on which scene; spoiler tags don't seem to work on my Lemmy reader, so I won't know if I'm doing it right. I'm just going to say it's the scene where he has an important message to deliver to his son. Gets me every time.
The only movie that legit made me cry was Seven Pounds with Will Smith. I only saw it once, and I tried real goddamn hard to suppress the tears, but a few leaked out. Luckily, none of the people I watched it with noticed, so my masculinity remained in-tact.
I’m asking as I’m trying to understand empathy and whether it’s normal to get so invested in fake characters,
Fuck yeah it is. It's a beautiful thing to be so moved by something that it brings you to tears (especially art). It's what makes us human: we're not just mindless beasts trying to eat and fuck, we're experiencing life to its fullest.
My memory sucks so can't remember much, but:
The Hunger Games (1) when
Major Spoilers btw
Rue died and Katniss was honoring her, and did the District 12 salute and the scene cuts to District 11 start doing it, then the whole riot scene and it just reminds me of so much of the injustice and tyranny of the world... I just can't stop crying. I wished we have some of the District 12 - District 11 Solidarity IRL.
I actually remember when, as a kid, I rarely cried about fictional stories, or something even bad events IRL.
But once I go through the existential crisis at 18, I started to actually feel stories, like actually feeling it. I ser deaths, injustice, and tyranny. The "veil of innocence", as I call it, completely shattered. The world isn't beautiful, its hell, its horror.
Its actually when you get older, you understand the stories being told.
I feel like there's a term for it, but I can't recall it now - it seems like after you have kids, emotional impacts in media can also start to hit a lot harder. I'm not sure if there's some empathetic response that tends to get strengthened or what, but my wife and I both have things we either can't watch anymore or don't process the same way. Like, I decided to start rewatching Star Trek: DS9 a few years ago (a year or two into fatherhood) and got wrecked by the scenes in the first episode where the captain relives losing his wife.
Am 41 y/o dude not that it matters
It does matter because a 41 y/o dude is also allowed to have and express emotions.
I do. Not very often, but not super rare either.
It can help when I'm miserable, as a form of emotional release.
Mainly on anime for me, I guess, largely because that's what I watch most. I don't think I've felt that emotional on other film media.
The most recent anime that touched me was Ave Mujica: The Die Is Cast.
I cried like a baby watching Titanic and Interstellar. I also cried at the end of WALL*E
Watched Titanic at the cinema when it came out. I was still very tearful at school the next day and my friends were mocking me about being sad at how the romance ended (no spoilers!) But really it was thinking about how all those people lost their lives and it really happened. That mom and the kids in steerage...
TV shows and movies are art. Eliciting an emotional response is kind of art's thing. Maybe not all art, but that's neither here nor there.
I mean this really speaks to the power of the human mind. We can put ourselves into someone else's shoes and experience what they're feeling. No other animal can do that that we can 100% prove. Enjoy that you have the ability to care for someone from finding out their story. It's a good and proper skill to have.
I think also there can be a sense of loss when you're invested in some characters and they die off in a show or the series ends. It doesn't seem weird at all to get a bit emotional unless we're talking about something like Jersey Shore or other reality garbage, but even then that's just my personal taste so I shouldn't judge others who might get invested in stuff like that.
I cry watching space rockets launching.
I often tear up from scenes from movies and tv. Yet basically never do for anything in real life.
I was listening to an NPR story the other day about how a ton of people showed up to donate blood to save an infant, and only one was a match, but it was anonymous, now the kid is a healthy 20yr old and the mom can't thank the person who saved them. It had my eyes all mushy on my commute home.
Yet, I had a cousin, and an uncle pass within the last few months and while I was sad, and I miss them, not a tear generated.
Probably due to how I grew up, I don't often feel like it's... right? Reasonable? for me to cry for personal things. But I can cry for others, for whatever reason. Showed my kids Pixar's Up for the first time the other day, and we got to the scene near the end where Carl finds some of the messages his wife left him. My kids are still fairly young, and were trying to figure out what was going on in that scene. They also didn't understand at first why my voice sounded so weird...
Big Fish in particular got me because my dad is similar to the protagonist's.
I do. 25M. For movies, lyrics, stories... Can be most casual things for most people. But I detected some special meaning and I have tears in my eyes. I for some reason got more and more emotional since I was 18. Not sure why though. I hope anyone has some kind of ideas.
I find this strange since I do not consider myself very empatic. And I also consider word empathy cringe since it is often misused to demonize political opponents.
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