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> The supply of content has exploded by several orders of magnitude. Much of it is totally free. Heck, some evenings I pause a show and find myself having spen

by volkk 5y ago

> The supply of content has exploded by several orders of magnitude. Much of it is totally free. Heck, some evenings I pause a show and find myself having spent 2 hours scrolling tiktok. i'm of the opinion that a big reason for this is while quantity has gone up, quality has plummeted. if you were watching something interesting/worthwhile, you would have been less likely to find tiktok more interesting than the crap on netflix.

ethbr0 5y ago
IMHO, a little of column A and a little of column B. It's happening from both sides. As quantity goes up, cultural relevance of any particular single show goes down. Thus it becomes harder to run a platform on "one" hit, thus everyone turns to the Netflix model of a billion micro-targeted shows, thus demand for content becomes a series of niche requirements, and anything actually creative has to percolate through them (a la Joker's "Sure, I'm a superhero movie" or La Casa de Papel's "Sure, I'm a Spanish Ocean's Eleven" or Dark's "Sure, I'm a German Stranger Things"). That's hard, and so what you actually get for the majority of content is the media equivalent of a box of Crayola crayons -- 256 different colors, with zero depth under the surface.
- toyg 4y ago
  I disagree on the quality thing - TV shows are markedly better than ever. Even the crappiest sitcom produced today is a zillion light-years better than 99% of the 80s/90s production. Yeah, some of it is formulaic, but it always was. The problem really is the interface. There is so much stuff and you have to manually select what you want, so the best items are actually harder to find - whereas before you could just sit at your telly on a given time.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>i'm of the opinion that a big reason for this is while quantity has gone up, quality has plummeted. Two dudes with a couple middling cameras and a tripod can shoot stuff that passes for professional. Look at the big YouTube channels. They're as good or better than reality TV ever was.
cwkoss 5y ago
My takeaway is that with so many different alternatives, its becoming decreasingly economically rational to produce series/film. The budget of the series I was watching was almost certainly 100x+ the budget of the random people on tiktok I was scrolling past, collectively.

by volkk 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago

IMHO, a little of column A and a little of column B. It's happening from both sides. As quantity goes up, cultural relevance of any particular single show goes down. Thus it becomes harder to run a platform on "one" hit, thus everyone turns to the Netflix model of a billion micro-targeted shows, thus demand for content becomes a series of niche requirements, and anything actually creative has to percolate through them (a la Joker's "Sure, I'm a superhero movie" or La Casa de Papel's "Sure, I'm a Spanish Ocean's Eleven" or Dark's "Sure, I'm a German Stranger Things"). That's hard, and so what you actually get for the majority of content is the media equivalent of a box of Crayola crayons -- 256 different colors, with zero depth under the surface.

toyg 4y ago
I disagree on the quality thing - TV shows are markedly better than ever. Even the crappiest sitcom produced today is a zillion light-years better than 99% of the 80s/90s production. Yeah, some of it is formulaic, but it always was. The problem really is the interface. There is so much stuff and you have to manually select what you want, so the best items are actually harder to find - whereas before you could just sit at your telly on a given time.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>i'm of the opinion that a big reason for this is while quantity has gone up, quality has plummeted. Two dudes with a couple middling cameras and a tripod can shoot stuff that passes for professional. Look at the big YouTube channels. They're as good or better than reality TV ever was.

cwkoss 5y ago

My takeaway is that with so many different alternatives, its becoming decreasingly economically rational to produce series/film. The budget of the series I was watching was almost certainly 100x+ the budget of the random people on tiktok I was scrolling past, collectively.