The Academy Awards, once a cultural juggernaut drawing tens of millions of viewers, have seen a steady decline in relevance by March 2025, with viewership numbers dwindling as audiences tune out en masse. A major culprit is the perceived drop in film quality—blockbusters dominate with predictable CGI-laden spectacles or recycled franchises, while Oscar bait feels increasingly formulaic, pandering to niche tastes rather than broad appeal. Posts on X lament the lack of compelling storytelling, with users like @CinephileJoe tweeting, “Another year of movies no one saw winning awards no one cares about.” The 2024 slate, heavy on somber biopics and divisive arthouse fare, failed to ignite public excitement, leaving many feeling the Oscars celebrate films that lecture rather than entertain—a far cry from the days of Titanic or Forrest Gump uniting viewers in shared awe.
 

Compounding this disconnect is the tarnished aura of Hollywood itself, where the glitz of its stars has been overshadowed by the grim revelations tied to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, and Sean “P Diddy” Combs. The Epstein scandal, with its flight logs and court documents exposing ties to A-listers, has fueled a pervasive distrust; Weinstein’s downfall peeled back the industry’s predatory underbelly; and P Diddy’s 2024 legal troubles—allegations of coercion and trafficking—have cemented a view of Tinseltown as a creepy circus of privilege and perversion. On March 2, 2025, X user @RealTalkLA posted, “Why watch the Oscars when half the room partied with Epstein or worse? Creeps in tuxes don’t deserve my Sunday.” The once-adored stars now carry a whiff of scandal that no red-carpet gown can mask, turning the event into a cringe-inducing parade of hypocrisy for many.
 

This erosion of trust and excitement has shifted cultural attention elsewhere—streaming platforms, gaming, and even short-form X content now compete for eyeballs, offering instant gratification over Hollywood’s bloated self-congratulation. Nielsen ratings for the 2024 Oscars hit a new low of 11.2 million viewers, down from 18 million in 2020, a trend likely to worsen in 2025 as apathy grows. The ceremony’s sanctimonious speeches, once tolerated as earnest, now grate against a backdrop of exposed moral rot, with viewers like @MovieFanAnon quipping, “I’d rather scroll X for memes than hear another actor lecture me from Weinstein’s old playground.” The Academy Awards, stripped of their glamour and tethered to a fading era of cinema, struggle to reclaim an audience that finds better stories—and fewer creeps—outside Hollywood’s gilded bubble.