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Comment by civilitty | Hacker News Reader

Finally, I can fulfill my destiny of taking over r/television and banning anyone who says anything positive about a show with a laugh track. It should never have been allowed to begin with.

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More seriously, the other day someone spent significant time and effort trying to convince me that the new version of The Wonder Years featuring a black family was anti-white propaganda by The Jews. If he's a reddit user I'm sure he'd love to mod a sub with such a large community.

Ohhh, it's a new version of The Wonder Years... I had never seen the original show, but I was vaguely aware of it, and it was playing in the gym the other day and I saw the main characters being black and I felt like I was deep in the Mandela Effect or something.

I feel like the crazies ranting about "white erasure" are making it harder to criticize these race-reboots on the grounds they should be criticized for: laziness. Mediocre products where the selling point is, "we swapped races, give us points," remain mediocre and are unbelievably lazy compared to what we should see... which is new and interesting things with diversity baked in.

Unfortunately the hysterical racists are so loud and pervasive that this is yet another issue we see broken down in a Manichean battle to cover for a total lack of new ideas.

I just let it be "lazy" as you say as the rest of tons of other stuff is lazy and don't bother to think to much about it. I'd rather focus on stuff I actually like.

That's a good default, I think people who spend all of their time obsessing about what they hate are really missing out.

It's extremely hard to take any middle of the road position now. Extremists on either side just won't allow it.

It's like calling a song lazy because it uses the same chords as another song. Gender/race-bent remakes are still entirely original works with new scripts and new shots. Even if they were to keep the script the same and make a shot-for-shot remake with new actors and a new crew, that's still 99% new work that's being done. I'd watch a shot-for-shot remake of something like Star Wars with a gender-swapped cast, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Ideas are worth very little, it's the execution that matters.

I'll go on the record of being in favor of species-swapping Ewoks and Gungans, with Rancors and Gamorreans respectively.

Its lazy on the plane of 'what kind of show should we hire some one else to make'.

Good shout on bringing it up though

> Gender/race-bent remakes are still entirely original works with new scripts and new shots.

That's not what the word "original" means.

Sequels, adaptations, remakes, reboots, etc. are not "entirely original" because they're using existing stories or characters.

Whether you like those works or not, it's flat out _false_ to call them "entirely original".

Rather than arguing with him about racism I tried explaining the commercial logic behind the decision, pointing out that advertisers would like to reach black consumers and if the original show was popular with a black audience then recycling the successful formula was a safer commercial decision than trying to build a new brand, but he kept going on about his heritage being stolen. I guess this means all the Fred Savage statues will have to come down.

I don't watch television much except for a little bit of news and local weather, but it seems to me there's always about the same number of family-centered sitcoms and dramas set in the present, about one's parents generation (nostalgia aimed at 30 something starting a family) and grandparents or older ancestors (mythmaking, culture reproduction). Sitcoms are like the McRib of television; they generally don't age well but since they come and go as the cast ages out it's easy to get teary-eyed at how great they used to be.

I admire your attempt to reason with the unreasonable!

A lot of people end up as neo-nazis or similar because they're anxiety-ridden losers who take refuge in cosmic narratives. Aggressive and violent ones need punching, but lot of them are confused and need a way to vent to a non-judgmental person. Moralistic approaches tend not to be very effective ime - horse, water etc..

I agree with you, but I've never had the patience to make that work in practice.

same, but for r/music for praising songs that have fade out endings

Add drum mixes panned from the audience perspective instead of drummer perspective and you’ve got my vote.

I always mix audience perspective because I usually stand in front of the drum kit when I see bands live. Do most people stand behind them? Am I doing something wrong?

I'm assuming OP is themselves a drummer.

yes, you are doing it wrong. drummer is not drumming from the audience perspective

Duly noted. Next time I mic up a speaker cab I'll stick the microphone where the guitarist's head is instead of on the speaker grill.

In all seriousness this topic falls squarely into the square of "strong opinion, weakly held" as far as I'm concerned - nobody except people like us actually cares. That being said I've yet to hear a cogent argument for the contrary position... I make music for the audience, not for musicians.

I think a rational argument for it is that stereo panning of drumkit elements are not something you can hear from the audience, and maybe even from the stage. Can anybody even remember having the "audience" stereo experience in real life? You'd have to be standing right in front of the drumkit.

Whereas drummers actually experience this panning configuration in real life, and when you're placing the mics in the mix, that's the set of ears you're trying to mimic, really because there isn't any _other_ set of ears to opine. And it's an important one because it provides the lion's share of the stereo image.

Speaking as a drummer and sometimes producer, the only people likely to have strong opinions about this are drummers. All of my drummer friends agree: audience mixes make some albums unlistenable on headphones. Nobody else will notice either way, so mix drummer perspective on the off chance that the drummers listening will appreciate it.

Live albums get a pass, of course. And yes, lefty drummers exist. If a lefty drummer wants their kit panned the way they hear it, that is of course fine.

How do you know the drummer isn't left-handed?

And CDs where the track actually starts five seconds into the previous track and it’s never been fixed in any digital version ever.

blame Bob Ludwig for that

I’m gonna ban everyone who complains about Ted Lasso.

Barbecue sauce.

The worst part about Ted Lasso was that there wasn't more Ted Lasso in it!

Your account has been suspended for 24 hours.

I need someone to make an AI-show filter for removing laugh tracks.

It doesn’t work.

The pauses are built into the script. It’s worse, it’s far worse. It highlights that the scripts are usually pretty bad.

Classic example of a completely unfunny basic show https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs

As uncomfortable as some of the timings are without the tracks, it still feels a lot more bearable.

If the timings could be adjusted I feel shows might actually be better off.

Agreed. As weird as that was, I prefer it to the original.

They already have tools to cut down based on silence. So, remove the laugh track to enable this silence, then cut based on the silence. If there was a filter for ffmpeg, you could just chain them together in a single command.

that show is hilarious without the laugh track

just not in the way the creators intended

But what about Seinfeld??

I support you in your quest.

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