This makes sense but... If all the studios desired was engagement metrics, why doesn’t it make say... a Nazis in space series, except the Nazis are presented as the good guys? I’m pretty sure that would drive *cough* “engagement" . Seems like low hanging fruit. But it always only goes one way.
I know nothing about the writer - is he an insider? It is a pretty good take though. I had toyed with the idea that the show was deliberately designed to infuriate. This take is quite logical.
That all makes sense, but where I fail to follow the logic is this: how does secondary engagement accrued through successful ragebait have any material value to the suits?
A coterie of bearded mod-cons and lolberts on YouTube watch the parasite-script, make videos bemoaning how it ruined their childhoods, and they grow a personal following as essentially new-gen MST3K with built-in political flame wars under each episode. This profits the commentators solely; a tiny handful of their audience will rubberneck with their own eyes, a fraction of the Woke brigades might renew a subscription to own the Chuds, but most people are engaging only indirectly. There is no direct benefit to having hundreds of thousands of people laughing or yelling about how your new Big Budget Media is a contemptible garbage fire.
This isn’t even getting into how, while it took until recent years for eyeballs to start precipitously sliding off the slop on screen, guys rejecting merchandise and branding in protest of the new direction happened early and to crippling effect. Sequel Trilogy toys were rotting for years in Ollie’s and Park attractions were publicly humiliating failures.
How were angry Twitter threads enough to compensate for the loss of revenue over a full decade? Especially when a majority of the content in those threads were haters saying “I won’t buy this anymore” and hanger-ons saying “I never have or will buy this even if it sucks up to my politics perfectly”?
I know that “modern producers only care about short-term visibility boosts” and “Hollywood still thinks all publicity is good publicity” but are the stockholders really so stupid and oblivious that they nodded along with being told that social media traffic was a sign of robust health without taking one look on if the attention was positive or translating into climbing sales?
It’s one of the things you learn if you’ve ever worked in corporate, or especially moved into middle manager territory. You’re not just “managing” people, you’re also managing signal and noise going to the higher ups.
Like when you’re talking about something on the scale of Disney and when you ask “wouldn’t the shareholders…” well no. How would they? Disney is vast with billions of moving parts. A shareholder would have to take an interest in that specific part of the company and start diving into researching it to even begin to see how much it’s costing vs earning.
Like the D. Herald pointed out - you can’t really prove a relationship to something and streaming results. If D+ lost X subscribers one quarter, how do you prove it was Star Wars or Marvel or Willow or Pixar or Descendants or… maybe it just lost those subscribers because of plain old death?
This is what the author is getting at in regards to engagement. With all this noise floating out there obscuring information, engagement becomes the signal these people are using to signal to higher ups that they get results. One might call it the moneyball of entertainment - trying to maximizing ROI. But modern corporate structure has fucked up the feedback system so they no longer have any decent metrics to measure and gauge whether they are in fact, getting ROI. This has allowed these people to start picking their metrics.
The big problem is, when burnout hits, it hits HARD. Like a junkie, you may have a quick infusion of cash, but eventually the overdose happens and the junkie is dead. Witcher, Wheel of Time, Dr Who.... how's Willow doing nowadays? It's like the ultimate grasshopper philosophy applied to story making.
Also retroblasting's classic vid on corporate culture and creativity goes well with your points here. Risk Management was the key piece I was missing you helped me click with. Which is antithetical to creativity, because creativity must risk. Or rather... creativity must dare.
The online Right and the FOXcons always take the rage bait like they are boat dock bluegills, always. At my end of the SSH (Delta) I want to apply some agree & amplify just for the lulz. At the higher end of the SSH I doubt these new shows register to them more than military town 2s and 3s would to Chad. So we are stuck in this loop till it burns thru all the cash.
I am reminded of comedian Fred Allen's assertion that you could take all the sincerity in Hollywood, put it in the navel of a flea, and still have room for three caraway seeds and the heart of an agent.
It’s a combination of “any publicity is good publicity” and the fact that the writers and showrunners are overgrown children who have no experience outside of Hollywood and who are fanatical adherents to the debased “current thing.”
The old writers (mostly men) had lives and families before sciptwriting, while these childless women and simpy males have never had to work for a living or experience real hardship.
I dunno mate, sure, but I think there are even more of us who not only didn’t argue, we just stopped engaging period. lol I even unfollowed the Star Trek insta.
Eh, I disagree. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is *indifference*.
You care and you're writing about them and giving them free publicity, which is exactly what they wanted. Don't think it wasn't a middle finger exactly to YOU, personally, and everyone else who is still trying to wring some life out of this worn-out franchise. I mean, DS9 was a serial drama and V'ger was awful.
Bring on AI movies and shows and put those pedo rapists in Hollywood out of business, permanently. One of you must do this.
Stonetoss_but_how_will_this_sell_tickets.jpg
Academy isn't Star Trek. It's 90210 in space.
Supposedly the pitch for the original Star Trek series was, "Wagon Train in space."
More like Sesame Street in space.
"Dark Herald is a Part of the Problem"
I knew it was all your fault.
Also, New Coke was you too, wasn't it?
I think he's behind Crystal Pepsi.
I tried that when it came out and couldn't even get through half the 16 oz bottle before having to give up.
This makes sense but... If all the studios desired was engagement metrics, why doesn’t it make say... a Nazis in space series, except the Nazis are presented as the good guys? I’m pretty sure that would drive *cough* “engagement" . Seems like low hanging fruit. But it always only goes one way.
Uh.... they did?
https://youtu.be/Py_IndUbcxc?si=n7tNOfIOm1ixN0gk
It was better than it appears, but of course it had to end on a modern Hayes Code ending.
They had that one I heard, but Space Hitler was in the Mirror, Mirror universe and was a woman, of course.
It's almost comforting to know that ethnic nationalism is still a threat in the 23rd century.
Amused contempt for the win, then? Works for me.
I know nothing about the writer - is he an insider? It is a pretty good take though. I had toyed with the idea that the show was deliberately designed to infuriate. This take is quite logical.
I still believe ideological woke conformity script development with use of AI.
I’d rather not believe that anyone could be that twisted to destroy a series for engagement.
But if the measurements for success are as described…
That all makes sense, but where I fail to follow the logic is this: how does secondary engagement accrued through successful ragebait have any material value to the suits?
A coterie of bearded mod-cons and lolberts on YouTube watch the parasite-script, make videos bemoaning how it ruined their childhoods, and they grow a personal following as essentially new-gen MST3K with built-in political flame wars under each episode. This profits the commentators solely; a tiny handful of their audience will rubberneck with their own eyes, a fraction of the Woke brigades might renew a subscription to own the Chuds, but most people are engaging only indirectly. There is no direct benefit to having hundreds of thousands of people laughing or yelling about how your new Big Budget Media is a contemptible garbage fire.
This isn’t even getting into how, while it took until recent years for eyeballs to start precipitously sliding off the slop on screen, guys rejecting merchandise and branding in protest of the new direction happened early and to crippling effect. Sequel Trilogy toys were rotting for years in Ollie’s and Park attractions were publicly humiliating failures.
How were angry Twitter threads enough to compensate for the loss of revenue over a full decade? Especially when a majority of the content in those threads were haters saying “I won’t buy this anymore” and hanger-ons saying “I never have or will buy this even if it sucks up to my politics perfectly”?
I know that “modern producers only care about short-term visibility boosts” and “Hollywood still thinks all publicity is good publicity” but are the stockholders really so stupid and oblivious that they nodded along with being told that social media traffic was a sign of robust health without taking one look on if the attention was positive or translating into climbing sales?
It’s one of the things you learn if you’ve ever worked in corporate, or especially moved into middle manager territory. You’re not just “managing” people, you’re also managing signal and noise going to the higher ups.
Like when you’re talking about something on the scale of Disney and when you ask “wouldn’t the shareholders…” well no. How would they? Disney is vast with billions of moving parts. A shareholder would have to take an interest in that specific part of the company and start diving into researching it to even begin to see how much it’s costing vs earning.
Like the D. Herald pointed out - you can’t really prove a relationship to something and streaming results. If D+ lost X subscribers one quarter, how do you prove it was Star Wars or Marvel or Willow or Pixar or Descendants or… maybe it just lost those subscribers because of plain old death?
This is what the author is getting at in regards to engagement. With all this noise floating out there obscuring information, engagement becomes the signal these people are using to signal to higher ups that they get results. One might call it the moneyball of entertainment - trying to maximizing ROI. But modern corporate structure has fucked up the feedback system so they no longer have any decent metrics to measure and gauge whether they are in fact, getting ROI. This has allowed these people to start picking their metrics.
You are not wrong.
The big problem is, when burnout hits, it hits HARD. Like a junkie, you may have a quick infusion of cash, but eventually the overdose happens and the junkie is dead. Witcher, Wheel of Time, Dr Who.... how's Willow doing nowadays? It's like the ultimate grasshopper philosophy applied to story making.
Also retroblasting's classic vid on corporate culture and creativity goes well with your points here. Risk Management was the key piece I was missing you helped me click with. Which is antithetical to creativity, because creativity must risk. Or rather... creativity must dare.
https://youtu.be/FqhC5fMyU_I?si=E65zxH5A4bZirir4
The online Right and the FOXcons always take the rage bait like they are boat dock bluegills, always. At my end of the SSH (Delta) I want to apply some agree & amplify just for the lulz. At the higher end of the SSH I doubt these new shows register to them more than military town 2s and 3s would to Chad. So we are stuck in this loop till it burns thru all the cash.
Relevant Larry post on this general topic.
https://x.com/monsterhunter45/status/2022029099414565254
I am reminded of comedian Fred Allen's assertion that you could take all the sincerity in Hollywood, put it in the navel of a flea, and still have room for three caraway seeds and the heart of an agent.
It’s a combination of “any publicity is good publicity” and the fact that the writers and showrunners are overgrown children who have no experience outside of Hollywood and who are fanatical adherents to the debased “current thing.”
The old writers (mostly men) had lives and families before sciptwriting, while these childless women and simpy males have never had to work for a living or experience real hardship.
The damage is deliberate. There is no other explanation
I dunno mate, sure, but I think there are even more of us who not only didn’t argue, we just stopped engaging period. lol I even unfollowed the Star Trek insta.
Eh, I disagree. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is *indifference*.
You care and you're writing about them and giving them free publicity, which is exactly what they wanted. Don't think it wasn't a middle finger exactly to YOU, personally, and everyone else who is still trying to wring some life out of this worn-out franchise. I mean, DS9 was a serial drama and V'ger was awful.
Bring on AI movies and shows and put those pedo rapists in Hollywood out of business, permanently. One of you must do this.
-Lord Elrond.