My friends and I snuck into Summer Catch and got caught because there were three of us and they hadn’t sold any tickets. They let us purchase tickets instead of kicking us out. (“Free” air conditioning used to be a compelling reason to catch a movie) anyway that’s how I spent September 10th, 2001.
For all of great fair labor practices they fight for, unions obviously also serve as a gatekeeper for those who can work on studio projects and who cannot (not a critque, just stating it). But youtube's pitch to "creators" is that those gates do not exist. So would a youtube labor union only pertain to those who make money through the platform? Or would you want youtube to effectively become another hollywood studio and disallow those with a little league umpire nut shot to upload their clip?
this brought back a beautiful teen memory of my friend and i seeing will ferrell's stranger than fiction in theaters, absolutely hating it (idk if i still would today but at the time i thought it was the worst thing i'd ever seen), and in our disappointment deciding to immediately go watch the prestige for the second time that week, which we both considered a cinematic masterpiece (also have not rewatched but i stand by this)
I think it's very astute to single in on the role boredom of the 90s and 00s played in keeping all sorts of media companies thriving, and i think it's correct to zero in on Youtube as competing directly with union organized labor in Hollywood...
But it also still seems too myopic...because it's not just that video is competing against video for hours in our day...it's that podcast audio is completing against video, and streaming music back catalogs are, and random X threads about niche current events, and books, and AI read audio of some NYT Style Section piece, etc. The real issue (as you sorta alluded to) is that Competition for Entertainment options is working TOO well...and if you admit to that, then the only REAL solution is to essentially gate keep some creators out of the market for entertainment (or cull the "algorithm chasing trash")... which, if we are being honest, is exactly what Media conglomerates did for decades by subsidizing Distribution monopolies with Advertising.
While I agree, much of it IS trash,...it's hard to ignore that Trash is what the vast majority of folks crave. And the blatant dismissal of that fact just sort of reminds me of how Media and Hollywood got here...which was taking for granted the reason why *most* people picked up those papers WAS the trash and advertisements...not the Prestige stuff the employees and Social Elite loved to dote on.
Has always bugged me that the inability to take Advertising / Trashes role in cross subsidizing
On one teenage boredom-killing occasion my friends dragged me to the Dukes of Hazzard. I've never entirely forgiven them. Late-night TV had a much bigger influence on my eclectic taste; anecdotally I feel like they don't show as many good movies on TV these days (more Transformers, fewer confusing psychosexual thrillers), but who knows? That could just be nostalgia talking.
For more evidence that film and television compete generally with other smartphone-enabled methods of time wasting, see Netflix's persistent (if poorly marketed so far) push into smartphone gaming: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/games
They even have a great content strategy, porting some of the best indie PC/console games of all time to mobile (eg. Hades, Into The Breach, Death’s Door, Kentucky Route Zero)!
Goddamn - as a long-time goon (reg'd in 2004 and still shitposting there occasionally, yikesaroo), your theory of Something Awful being the cause and catalyst for the worst posters online just caused me to drop my Kobayashi tea cup as that realization hits everything I have experienced
you never elaborated on what Stancil meant by "race science is fake." If he means science that purports to show that minorities are dumber than others for genetic reasons, I'd tend to agree with him. Is that what he is talking about?
Having been on somethingawful like 10-15 years ago I don't think I could have predicted in a million years the level of influence fyad and lf would have on our culture. I think I would've guessed zero
From a practical perspective, I think the issue with unionizing youtube/tiktok/whatever is that would raise costs for the creators of the videos, unless youtube/tiktok subsidizes it somehow, not sure how that would work considering these companies rely on user created content. Right now we expect social media content to be “free”rather than hollywood productions, which the general public still expects to pay to see a movie (or at least pay for the streaming service its on)
I’ve been thinking about this since week when a youtube channel I enjoy (Watcher) tried to move all their videos off the site and put them onto a streaming service with a monthly fee and the fans completely revolted. Within 72 hours the channel backtracked and returned to youtube, and posted a video apologizing to their fans. I think social media users are happy to give creators a lot of their time, but none of their money.
That's an interesting insight about movies as boredom killer. I wonder if that's what killed (some) malls as well.
My friends and I snuck into Summer Catch and got caught because there were three of us and they hadn’t sold any tickets. They let us purchase tickets instead of kicking us out. (“Free” air conditioning used to be a compelling reason to catch a movie) anyway that’s how I spent September 10th, 2001.
For all of great fair labor practices they fight for, unions obviously also serve as a gatekeeper for those who can work on studio projects and who cannot (not a critque, just stating it). But youtube's pitch to "creators" is that those gates do not exist. So would a youtube labor union only pertain to those who make money through the platform? Or would you want youtube to effectively become another hollywood studio and disallow those with a little league umpire nut shot to upload their clip?
this brought back a beautiful teen memory of my friend and i seeing will ferrell's stranger than fiction in theaters, absolutely hating it (idk if i still would today but at the time i thought it was the worst thing i'd ever seen), and in our disappointment deciding to immediately go watch the prestige for the second time that week, which we both considered a cinematic masterpiece (also have not rewatched but i stand by this)
I think it's very astute to single in on the role boredom of the 90s and 00s played in keeping all sorts of media companies thriving, and i think it's correct to zero in on Youtube as competing directly with union organized labor in Hollywood...
But it also still seems too myopic...because it's not just that video is competing against video for hours in our day...it's that podcast audio is completing against video, and streaming music back catalogs are, and random X threads about niche current events, and books, and AI read audio of some NYT Style Section piece, etc. The real issue (as you sorta alluded to) is that Competition for Entertainment options is working TOO well...and if you admit to that, then the only REAL solution is to essentially gate keep some creators out of the market for entertainment (or cull the "algorithm chasing trash")... which, if we are being honest, is exactly what Media conglomerates did for decades by subsidizing Distribution monopolies with Advertising.
While I agree, much of it IS trash,...it's hard to ignore that Trash is what the vast majority of folks crave. And the blatant dismissal of that fact just sort of reminds me of how Media and Hollywood got here...which was taking for granted the reason why *most* people picked up those papers WAS the trash and advertisements...not the Prestige stuff the employees and Social Elite loved to dote on.
Has always bugged me that the inability to take Advertising / Trashes role in cross subsidizing
On one teenage boredom-killing occasion my friends dragged me to the Dukes of Hazzard. I've never entirely forgiven them. Late-night TV had a much bigger influence on my eclectic taste; anecdotally I feel like they don't show as many good movies on TV these days (more Transformers, fewer confusing psychosexual thrillers), but who knows? That could just be nostalgia talking.
For more evidence that film and television compete generally with other smartphone-enabled methods of time wasting, see Netflix's persistent (if poorly marketed so far) push into smartphone gaming: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/games
They even have a great content strategy, porting some of the best indie PC/console games of all time to mobile (eg. Hades, Into The Breach, Death’s Door, Kentucky Route Zero)!
This is of course explicitly because Netflix sees mobile games as competing with their film/tv content for share in the market of wasted time: https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/7/20/22586084/netflix-gaming-strategy-earnings-explained
Goddamn - as a long-time goon (reg'd in 2004 and still shitposting there occasionally, yikesaroo), your theory of Something Awful being the cause and catalyst for the worst posters online just caused me to drop my Kobayashi tea cup as that realization hits everything I have experienced
you never elaborated on what Stancil meant by "race science is fake." If he means science that purports to show that minorities are dumber than others for genetic reasons, I'd tend to agree with him. Is that what he is talking about?
I don't do Twitter so I've never encountered him.
It does sound like a kind of tampon
Having been on somethingawful like 10-15 years ago I don't think I could have predicted in a million years the level of influence fyad and lf would have on our culture. I think I would've guessed zero
The Stancil argument is also the one that the Menswear Guy has advanced for his own posting skills-- early 2000s forum culture is a different beast.
From a practical perspective, I think the issue with unionizing youtube/tiktok/whatever is that would raise costs for the creators of the videos, unless youtube/tiktok subsidizes it somehow, not sure how that would work considering these companies rely on user created content. Right now we expect social media content to be “free”rather than hollywood productions, which the general public still expects to pay to see a movie (or at least pay for the streaming service its on)
I’ve been thinking about this since week when a youtube channel I enjoy (Watcher) tried to move all their videos off the site and put them onto a streaming service with a monthly fee and the fans completely revolted. Within 72 hours the channel backtracked and returned to youtube, and posted a video apologizing to their fans. I think social media users are happy to give creators a lot of their time, but none of their money.
FAMILY MAN is in my top 5 holiday movies (possibly top 2 but if I think about it too hard I'll suddenly have lost an hour of my day)