| ▲ | echelon 2 hours ago | |||||||
There is infinite demand for content (to the limit that human attention can absorb it). Most content sucks ass. What may appear to be bountiful content is actually a lot of okay and meh content. Very little of it fits to your actual taste preference. It's a whole lot of mediocre. We as humans do not know what plentiful content looks like. We've never lived in it. Most movies suck. You doomscroll and are dissatisfied. You refresh your media recommendations and sigh. You are excited to see a new fantasy or sci-fi film that scratches that itch, yet often left disappointed. We are still in a desert. Anyone who says otherwise is settling for the status quo that our childen will call primitive and beastly. Jobs are disappearing because cheap/free ad subsidized content attracts more eyeball hours than produced and prestige content. It's the optimal pareto frontier of content and does the most bang for buck, most in aggregate eyeball hours. When the tools enable more creation at scale by tasteful creators, we'll start to get closer to content abundance. We're not there yet. | ||||||||
| ▲ | Avicebron 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||
> There is infinite demand for content (to the limit that human attention can absorb it). That limit is called time, which people struggling to get by rarely have. And the "most bang for buck, most in aggregate eyeball hours" is an extraordinarily mono-dimensional take on media and film. | ||||||||
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| ▲ | giovannibonetti 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
> When the tools enable more creation at scale by tasteful creators, we'll start to get closer to content abundance. We're not there yet. This reminds me of the comparison between Japanese manga and American comics/graphic novels. Some people say the former offer a much wider variety of content and ideas because it is often started by a single (often quirky) author, whereas the latter is usually designed by a committee, which ends up favoring more bland ideas. Anime usually starts of as manga, and that's why anime is so creative as well. Perhaps AI will help single authors create more work by themselves, and we'll have a renaissance of comic books and other forms of (mostly digital) entertainment in the west. And we'll spend less time watching those TV shows on streaming platforms that follow the same few recipes. | ||||||||
| ▲ | dualvariable 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
> We are still in a desert. It isn't exactly a desert? It is more like a full buffet, but nothing but cheap, mass-produced sugar literally everywhere. All the 2-star donuts and chocolate cupcakes you can eat, and nothing but that. | ||||||||
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| ▲ | PaulHoule 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |||||||
I would look to the culture industry in Japan as an alternative to the gatekeeping-industrial complex we call Hollywood. Hollywood's cost structure makes it impossible to try anything new. I'd contrast that to Japan where creators can write a "web novel", get a contract for a light novel, have a manga made, and then an anime, and maybe even some video games. And these all reinforce each other: last year I discovered an atrociously drawn anime that had got me curious about the source material -- that blew me away and I bought all of the printed materials that have come out so far and expect to buy all the rest. Not least, Japan still gets new 4-panel comics like Bocci the Rock and The Demon Girl Next Door, something almost unthinkable of in the Land of the Nepo Baby where we haven't had a new one since Dilbert. | ||||||||
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| ▲ | xp84 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||
> Most movies suck Most new ones do, but they've been making like a dozen great ones each year for for like 80 years. Honestly TV (including the back catalogs) are where most of the truly good video content is. > cheap/free ad subsidized content attracts more eyeball hours than produced and prestige content This part I really agree with. It's the reason shitty Netflix reality shows are among the most popular 'watercooler discussion' shows today. | ||||||||