5 ms·

Once you see a detective show, you basically seen 80% of all detective shows. That's why it seems that there can be nothing to watch, because 80% is basically a

by kiba 3y ago

Once you see a detective show, you basically seen 80% of all detective shows. That's why it seems that there can be nothing to watch, because 80% is basically a rehash, just with different characters and slightly different plots.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Yeah, you're right, I watched one season of Law and Order and thought "Great, I've seen 80% of all detective shows, no need to watch any more." /s
- codetrotter 3y ago
  I think it comes down to personal taste. I could likewise see someone say that 80% of all soccer matches are the same. That once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And then on the opposite end you have people enjoying soccer who will be happy to tell you about the nuances between different matches, different players, different teams, etc.
  - gpspake 3y ago
    That's actually a pretty good analogy.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? I would put myself in that camp - watching soccer just doesn't appeal to me that much, so it all kind of seems the same. But I can very much appreciate the differences to people that enjoy watching the sport, and I think this could be said about nearly any endeavor.
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      > Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? Yep, hence the first sentence of my comment: “I think it comes down to personal taste.” :D
    - harimau777 3y ago
      I think that soccer has a problem where the goalies are so effective that the game often comes down to attempting to shoot on the goal as many times as possible in the hope that eventually the goalie makes a mistake. Things are made worse by the fact that when the goalie gets the ball they generally throw it most of the way down the field; effectively resetting the state of the gameplay. As a result, any given segment of the game is not particularly relevant to the outcome; what's relevant is basically the overall time of possession/goal attempts across the various segments of the game. Compare that to something like football where the outcome of a given play depends much more overtly on the play the QB decides to run, the skills of the players, how the strengths & weaknesses of the two teams match up, etc. In addition, there's a greater degree to which the plays in a possession build upon each other in order to contribute or take away from a team's ability to score during that possession.
      - cool_dude85 3y ago
        I dont have stats on hand but I promise you a relatively small proportion of goals are scored on keeper errors, even if you expand the category to "shouldn't be beaten from that angle" type stuff instead of an explicit error. I suspect you do not watch much soccer.
        harimau777 3y ago
        The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people who are more invested in a given sport are going to be able to see more of the nuance in it, and that as someone who's not invested in soccer there's certainly a lot that I'm missing. However, I don't think that it completely comes down to personal taste. There can still be areas where the flow of a soccer match can be more samey or less intrinsically exciting than in certain other sports. For example, soccer doesn't have the same moment to moment, head to head, back and forth of something like tennis or boxing. That's not to say that it completely lacks those moments of conflict; say when a defender is staring down an oncoming striker. However, as far as I am able to tell, they are less dense compared to something like a tennis match where they take up the whole of the playtime.
  - hiccuphippo 3y ago
    Ah yes, https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/
    - codetrotter 3y ago
      There are only two certainties in life: 1. There’s an xkcd for that 2. Simpsons did it https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_It https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_I...
    - harimau777 3y ago
      I kind of dislike XKCD strips like that because they seem to encourage people not to think. In actuality the issue may be much more nuanced: - Perhaps different things do have a greater or lesser degree to which they lend themselves to deep analysis & enjoyment - Perhaps engaging in meditative analysis of some interest such as wine is valuable in itself even if it is mostly arbitrary what people choose to analyze. - Perhaps the decision that wine is worth studying was mostly just an accident of history, but now that it's become part of culture failing to engage with it represents a failure to engage with valuable cultural traditions. Any of those ideas and others might be worth agreeing or disagreeing with. However, it sometimes feels like people just read the XKCD comic and don't think beyond "wine snobs dumb". Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to say that the parent post is doing that. Just that I'm not a fan of how XKCD engages (or more specifically doesn't engage) with some issues.
- coryrc 3y ago
  If you've seen one episode of Law & Order or House you've seen every episode in the series.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Animats 3y ago
And at some point, you'll feed all that stuff into GPT-(N+1) and get as many new shows as you want.
- wddkcs 3y ago
  That will be too much work, most will subscribe to a few curators with matching taste that fulfill all your content needs. Can we eventually do away with other people entirely? Idk
  - gumby 3y ago
    to make streaming economically viable there will need to be Gpt-x that watches the content too.
r00fus 3y ago
You don't understand how people (especially kids) work.
labster 3y ago
Honestly detective fiction is perhaps the worst format you could give for your example, because the structure of the story allows you to essentially tell a different short story with different characters every time. Moody Twin Peaks has almost nothing in common with the goofball Psych (except the one tribute episode). Inspector Lewis plots are complex and intellectual, while Castle is fluffy and predictable. Recipes for Love and Murder, Brokenwood, Midsomer Murders, and Murdoch Mysteries are more about life among the varied settings than the murders; the murders give us an excuse to explore the characters around them. Though maybe the most important point of that is that watching TV from different countries will make your viewing more interesting.
- the_af 3y ago
  Agreed. Police fiction is a good format. You can vary it by focusing on a realistic procedural, or the mystery, or ditch the mystery and just focus on characters. And police shows vary a lot by country; shows from the US, the UK or Norway will be wildly different.
- salad-tycoon 3y ago
  So you must like detective fiction, eh? You’ve won me over and to your point you can have a Fr. Brown (1950s Catholic priest detective) and a Dexter (blood splatter analysis turned serial killer). Now of course the basic premise is always the same good (but conflicted) guy sees bad thing done, investigates, finds bad guys and reconciles one small aspect of world and maybe one small aspect of self discovery. Heck, most shows have this arc now that I think about it from Sherlock to dr house to those criminal lawyer/police shows.
  - jprete 3y ago
    Nit: Basically all stories have a form like that. (I _think_ detective stories specifically choose for the protagonist to want societally-sanctioned retribution. The protagonist then has to publicly demonstrate that the antagonist deserves retribution, rather than take retribution on their own. And the stories also assume that society can and will inflict retribution on the antagonist once the society's rules are satisfied.)
gumby 3y ago
There was a show I watched every episode of, not because I particularly liked it but it starred one particular actor that I really wanted to watch. I'm rather embarrassed to admit this, but there it is.
- the_af 3y ago
  Why embarrassing? I also do this on occasion. Sometimes I acknowledge the show isn't very good but I really like the actor or actress.
- LTL_FTC 3y ago
  Was the show Gumby? Haha sorry, I had to!
  - gumby 3y ago
    No need to apologise! TTTT I have never seen that show though I know what the character looks like. Nowadays I suppose it's on youtube but I don't even care.
nl 3y ago
Once you've read one HN comment you've basically read 80% of all comments.
- labster 3y ago
  Does your comment scale? And is it written in a memory-safe language?

by kiba 3y ago

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Yeah, you're right, I watched one season of Law and Order and thought "Great, I've seen 80% of all detective shows, no need to watch any more." /s

codetrotter 3y ago
I think it comes down to personal taste. I could likewise see someone say that 80% of all soccer matches are the same. That once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. And then on the opposite end you have people enjoying soccer who will be happy to tell you about the nuances between different matches, different players, different teams, etc.
- gpspake 3y ago
  That's actually a pretty good analogy.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? I would put myself in that camp - watching soccer just doesn't appeal to me that much, so it all kind of seems the same. But I can very much appreciate the differences to people that enjoy watching the sport, and I think this could be said about nearly any endeavor.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > Isn't the issue there that some people basically just don't like soccer so they can't appreciate the differences? Yep, hence the first sentence of my comment: “I think it comes down to personal taste.” :D
  - harimau777 3y ago
    I think that soccer has a problem where the goalies are so effective that the game often comes down to attempting to shoot on the goal as many times as possible in the hope that eventually the goalie makes a mistake. Things are made worse by the fact that when the goalie gets the ball they generally throw it most of the way down the field; effectively resetting the state of the gameplay. As a result, any given segment of the game is not particularly relevant to the outcome; what's relevant is basically the overall time of possession/goal attempts across the various segments of the game. Compare that to something like football where the outcome of a given play depends much more overtly on the play the QB decides to run, the skills of the players, how the strengths & weaknesses of the two teams match up, etc. In addition, there's a greater degree to which the plays in a possession build upon each other in order to contribute or take away from a team's ability to score during that possession.
    - cool_dude85 3y ago
      I dont have stats on hand but I promise you a relatively small proportion of goals are scored on keeper errors, even if you expand the category to "shouldn't be beaten from that angle" type stuff instead of an explicit error. I suspect you do not watch much soccer.
      - harimau777 3y ago
        The point that I'm trying to get at is that, I agree with you that there's a sense in which different people are going to prefer different things, that people who are more invested in a given sport are going to be able to see more of the nuance in it, and that as someone who's not invested in soccer there's certainly a lot that I'm missing. However, I don't think that it completely comes down to personal taste. There can still be areas where the flow of a soccer match can be more samey or less intrinsically exciting than in certain other sports. For example, soccer doesn't have the same moment to moment, head to head, back and forth of something like tennis or boxing. That's not to say that it completely lacks those moments of conflict; say when a defender is staring down an oncoming striker. However, as far as I am able to tell, they are less dense compared to something like a tennis match where they take up the whole of the playtime.
- hiccuphippo 3y ago
  Ah yes, https://xkcd.com/915/ https://xkcd.com/915/
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    There are only two certainties in life: 1. There’s an xkcd for that 2. Simpsons did it https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://thomaspark.co/2017/01/relevant-xkcd/ https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_It https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/The_Simpsons_Already_Did_I...
  - harimau777 3y ago
    I kind of dislike XKCD strips like that because they seem to encourage people not to think. In actuality the issue may be much more nuanced: - Perhaps different things do have a greater or lesser degree to which they lend themselves to deep analysis & enjoyment - Perhaps engaging in meditative analysis of some interest such as wine is valuable in itself even if it is mostly arbitrary what people choose to analyze. - Perhaps the decision that wine is worth studying was mostly just an accident of history, but now that it's become part of culture failing to engage with it represents a failure to engage with valuable cultural traditions. Any of those ideas and others might be worth agreeing or disagreeing with. However, it sometimes feels like people just read the XKCD comic and don't think beyond "wine snobs dumb". Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to say that the parent post is doing that. Just that I'm not a fan of how XKCD engages (or more specifically doesn't engage) with some issues.
coryrc 3y ago
If you've seen one episode of Law & Order or House you've seen every episode in the series.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Animats 3y ago

And at some point, you'll feed all that stuff into GPT-(N+1) and get as many new shows as you want.

wddkcs 3y ago
That will be too much work, most will subscribe to a few curators with matching taste that fulfill all your content needs. Can we eventually do away with other people entirely? Idk
- gumby 3y ago
  to make streaming economically viable there will need to be Gpt-x that watches the content too.

r00fus 3y ago

You don't understand how people (especially kids) work.

labster 3y ago

Honestly detective fiction is perhaps the worst format you could give for your example, because the structure of the story allows you to essentially tell a different short story with different characters every time. Moody Twin Peaks has almost nothing in common with the goofball Psych (except the one tribute episode). Inspector Lewis plots are complex and intellectual, while Castle is fluffy and predictable. Recipes for Love and Murder, Brokenwood, Midsomer Murders, and Murdoch Mysteries are more about life among the varied settings than the murders; the murders give us an excuse to explore the characters around them. Though maybe the most important point of that is that watching TV from different countries will make your viewing more interesting.

the_af 3y ago
Agreed. Police fiction is a good format. You can vary it by focusing on a realistic procedural, or the mystery, or ditch the mystery and just focus on characters. And police shows vary a lot by country; shows from the US, the UK or Norway will be wildly different.
salad-tycoon 3y ago
So you must like detective fiction, eh? You’ve won me over and to your point you can have a Fr. Brown (1950s Catholic priest detective) and a Dexter (blood splatter analysis turned serial killer). Now of course the basic premise is always the same good (but conflicted) guy sees bad thing done, investigates, finds bad guys and reconciles one small aspect of world and maybe one small aspect of self discovery. Heck, most shows have this arc now that I think about it from Sherlock to dr house to those criminal lawyer/police shows.
- jprete 3y ago
  Nit: Basically all stories have a form like that. (I _think_ detective stories specifically choose for the protagonist to want societally-sanctioned retribution. The protagonist then has to publicly demonstrate that the antagonist deserves retribution, rather than take retribution on their own. And the stories also assume that society can and will inflict retribution on the antagonist once the society's rules are satisfied.)

gumby 3y ago

There was a show I watched every episode of, not because I particularly liked it but it starred one particular actor that I really wanted to watch. I'm rather embarrassed to admit this, but there it is.

the_af 3y ago
Why embarrassing? I also do this on occasion. Sometimes I acknowledge the show isn't very good but I really like the actor or actress.
LTL_FTC 3y ago
Was the show Gumby? Haha sorry, I had to!
- gumby 3y ago
  No need to apologise! TTTT I have never seen that show though I know what the character looks like. Nowadays I suppose it's on youtube but I don't even care.

nl 3y ago

Once you've read one HN comment you've basically read 80% of all comments.

labster 3y ago
Does your comment scale? And is it written in a memory-safe language?