upvote
Media, arts, film, and America: things that are not monolithic and cannot be evaluated with blanket statements.

A side-effect of the democratization of content creation and the explosion of ways to consume content is that there’s more low-quality things to consume. Low-quality content will always be produced in greater abundance than high-quality so there’s more garbage to dig through, but there are still gems out there.

Personally, after years of infrequent movie attendance, this is the first month that I can remember in my adult life that my wife and I saw two movies in the theater and given the opportunity there’s a third we’d still like to see!

reply
Let’s go back to the good ol days when half of movies were about cowboys.
reply
Go ahead and watch one of those cowboy movies like Once Upon a Time in the West. We've definitely lost some skills as a species over time.
reply
I can't watch youtube due to all these garbage. Youtube should allow me to blanket ban on publisher who use full AI for full video.
reply
Ironically I find that YouTube has the absolute best content. It's the only one with authentic people making quality stuff for exactly your niche.

That doesn't mean there isn't trash, and I suppose if tv series are your jam it's likely sub-par, but for me it's unmatched by light years.

reply
It's got good content but also a massive amount of slop. You don't see much straight up AI generated video, but it's incredibly common to see youtubers just sitting there reading a ChatGPT script.
reply
"In this video I'm going to..."

"Let me tell you why!"

"Is not X, it's Y!"

and so on. It's so tiresome. I can't stand AI scripts. It makes the entire video feel like a waste of my time.

reply
99% of everything is shit. There is a lot of good content on Youtube, which means the vast majority of videos on the platform is dreadful slop.
reply
They can't, as far as organizational politics goes. Tech is all in on AI.
reply
Being all in on AI doesnt mean they have to be all in on bottom of the barrel slop videos. Youtube actually does a great job of not serving you slop if it gets to know you well enough. And it does notify you if it detects the video is AI generated. I would hope tech companies are awake to the fact that people’s feeds being deluged by the absolute uncanniest and disturbing visuals you’ve ever seen is feeding into anti-AI sentiment, and they probably shouldn’t be further enabling that.
reply
Bets that some VPs are getting bonuses for supporting AI, and the number of AI videos is a metric that's going into their promo packet?
reply
I'd rather bet that YouTube wants the greatest number of people watching as many videos with as many ads as possible, and that they don't give a fuck how the content was produced as long as it acquires and retains eyeballs.
reply
I just stopped using YouTube for entertainment years ago. Try it!

(I still jump in for the occasional video tutorial etc but it’s always targeted - go for one thing, swoop in, close it when I’m done.

reply
Where do you find entertainment now?
reply
I just listen to one of many of the voices in my head and see what they have to suggest. Things get interesting
reply
I'm not who you're replying to, but I tuned out big movies and TV long ago, and just recently, YouTube became a hostile enough environment for me to start limiting it. When I do go there, it's to watch specific channels I already know. Clickbait titles and slop suggestions just aren't worth the psycholigical hassle when I want to relax.

I had been replacing it with podcasts, but they are so ad-infested now that it's been pushing me more and more to audiobooks. I also watch a fair bit of content on smaller special interest platforms, like CrunchyRoll for Anime or Pepperbox for guns. They're easy to sub and unsub depending on what I'm interested in. I often rent old movies. And more and more... I read.

I had used Prime's videos for a while when they had something I liked, but the ads have gotten so bad that I now go out of my way not to emotionally invest in anything they produce. The experience has left me skeptical of other platform exclusive shows and I generally just go do something else with my time. I used to be a big fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, but at some point they both started producing Platform Content and in response, I haven't watched anything from either for about a decade now.

reply
You’re being sarcastic, right?
reply
There is some resurgence in quality here and there but then there is Avengers, MCU, Star Wars and idk how you can balance that with any amount of quality indie products
reply
This might be (unintentionally?) part of the reason for the original subject: how many jobs does the Avengers IP pipeline support? How about for a single artifact output by it--one TV show, for example?

And how many people work on a well-loved indie artifact of about the same market position?

Gonna guess the latter supports way fewer jobs. (This isn't meant as a judgment in taste or moralizing--my own entertainment tastes run indie towards pretentious, so economically I'm part of the problem.)

reply
Sometimes I wonder about efficiency part. How efficient these big budget titles are? How much many man hours spend of them are actually waste? It does get to back to whole broken window thing. Demand was generate but was it usefully spend? Indie is most likely doing whole thing in much more efficient way. With slightly different product but still often something acceptable.

Is more jobs better than less jobs? Or does this apply to only certain things?

reply
Another issue is that the avengers is just sucking up money that would have been invested in different IP than Stan Lee's comic books. All that money would have been spent either way, just a question of if we wanted to see one of the most sophisticated rendering farms ever constructed grind on Thanos's chin wrinkles or maybe some other projects.
reply
The last Avengers movie was 7.5 years ago. The last Star Wars episode was 7 years ago. (The Mandalorian one is the only standalone one since then.) Avengers are included in the MCU btw. There have only been about 1 to 3 MCU movies per year for the last few years. (2022: 3; 2023: 3; 2024: 1; 2025: 3; 2026: 2). There are tons of other, really good movies to watch. Not just indies either: Did you happen to see Project Hail Mary this year? The Odyssey? I missed Spider-man: Brand New Day (the MCU movie that came out this year so far), but it has 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I don't think that drags down the average in terms of quality either.
reply
“Only” 1 to 3 MCU movies a year? This is an absurd amount of junk.
reply
Vague takes like this scream Facebook boomer. There's lots of great media and lots of bad media. It's the nature of trying to monetize creativity.
reply
What does this mean “to monetize creativity”?

Are you suggesting creatives just give their work away for free?

reply
In contrast, thought-terminating clichés like "facebook boomer" show critical thinking on your part.
reply
Please don’t sign up with burner accounts for one snarky reply: take responsibility for your words. You could also respond with something nice that inspires the author and other readers.

Provide food for critical thinking instead of accusing people of not being critical thinkers.

For example, tell us what new media from the US is actually great today. What do the arts offer that is next level and worth watching? Is there a rise in arts in other counties that we are missing? What could Facebook boomers need that leads to more and higher quality arts and movies?

reply
Tell me more, 5 hour old account
reply
Apparently you need a 10 K+ karma account to say the following (which another account, a new one and not mine btw, posted). Some I'm just reusing the other dude's words:

In contrast, thought-terminating clichés like "facebook boomer" show critical thinking on your part.

I fully agree with that: calling someone a "facebook boomer" is just plain pathetic.

(btw the boomers are my parents' generation: don't go thinking I take it personally. I'm a GenX'er and GenX'er are badass, which is why I don't give a flying fuck saying what I think).

Something something about the pot and calling some kettle black etc.

reply