Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that
nplusonemag.com
nplusonemag.com
> Several screenwriters who’ve worked for the streamer told me a common note from company executives is “have this character announce what they’re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.” [...] One tag among Netflix’s thirty-six thousand microgenres offers a suitable name for this kind of dreck: “casual viewing.” Usually reserved for breezy network sitcoms, reality television, and nature documentaries, the category describes much of Netflix’s film catalog — movies that go down best when you’re not paying attention, or as the Hollywood Reporter recently described Atlas, a 2024 sci-fi film starring Jennifer Lopez, “another Netflix movie made to half-watch while doing laundry.”
In other words, people like me, who want to focus on and experience a great film or series, are no longer the target audience.
Apparently, there's no money in targeting people who want to pay attention.
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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_Channels_(And_Nothin'_On)
So, watching a sitcom or similar where the characters' body language or facial expressions are important is an exercise in frustration.
Making video (more complicated than "talking heads") so nobody watches it is such a waste... (so is non peer to peer mass streaming, come to think of it).
erm, I'm a huge proponent of both peer to peer networking and piracy but it's hard to argue that transiting backbone links is more efficient than CDN boxen sitting at ISPs right next to last mile links.
TV show creators understood and planned for people watching their shows in a variety of environments, with varying degrees and kinds of attention. A lot of what made for example X-files and Sopranos compelling was a willingness to break this convention, so it was still firmly in place by the late 90s.
You could also maybe reasonably claim that all TV shows before those were bad as well. But then you need to view netflix as reverting to the norm rather than being a novel travesty. We are simply exiting a 20 year anomaly where TV was good.
I'm not quite making that argument here though. I think there was good TV before the 90s, so I think this is a constraint on the form that good creators can work through and still make compelling art. Why netflix can't is an interesting question but I think this avenue is a dead end for understanding it.
The first person who figures out how to sort the wheat from the chaff and does so with no interior motive could be a millionaire immediately.
"MUBI IS TERRIBLE! *---- 6y ago • Nick2866 MUBI is terrible there's no good action or horror films it's crazy because almost all of the movies on the app I haven't even heard of and I'm a big movie buff. So just don't waste your time with MUBI just get Netflix or amazon prime."
It’s worth checking out on trial, or at least browsing the catalog, but the collection was too esoteric for me to keep a subscription. If you like art house, though, and especially if you’re cool with diving into unknown titles, it’s pretty impressive.
There is also The Criterion Channel where I saw La Jetée for the first time after years of reluctance to immerse myself in a film essentially made of still photos. I have now gone back and watched it three more times, both in French and English. That’s how large of an impact it’s had on me. And I originally meant to get through it quickly (28 minutes duration), in preparation to rewatch 12 Monkeys.
Netflix does show some films that cater to a non mainstream audience, but may take more effort to find them. I recently saw Aftersun directed by Charlotte Wells, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. You will sob quietly.
Netflix has shows made for really watching too. I don't know if they are rebellious acts from their makers, brought without an option, or actual choices, but Netflix does have them.
My impression is that Netflix cornered themselves into the same AAA race to death that the major movie studios are in. Everything is too expensive, so they can't accept risks, so nothing is really good (nor really bad). Micromanaging is just one more visible consequence of that, between lots and lots that stay hidden but are as important to the final result.
What? No they don't. Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention. There's already plenty of mediocre television out there you can use as background noise; we don't need to intentionally lower the bar for the media that's being made. As the article mentions, Netflix has already played its part in ruining the job landscape for writers and actors. I guess they see a need to play their part in devaluing the work that remains.
According to who…?
There’s not even a universally agreed upon definition of ‘art’ last time I checked.
Since the day they were invented? Certainly by the mid 50s there were hundreds of different relgious sects all over the world with prohibitions of some kind.
Because different people can have differing opinions… or do you somehow believe literally 100% of the human population shares that opinion?
Unless you believe it’s impossible for someone to have contradictory or incoherent intentions?
I know several people on my life who have been leaving a TV on in their house all day, for decades before Netflix existed. Personally I can’t stand this, but because it’s a distraction, not because they are somehow disrespecting someone involved in the production who wants to believe they are an artist.
We'll still need people to create actually good content, but that crappy filler stuff will be generated.
It will be a special kind of hell, but there will probably be some way to find out what to actually spend your time watching.
I think the person choosing to spend a few hours of their one life with some audio/visual media, whether they’re doing their laundry or not, is the one who gets to decide whether or not it’s art, and how much attention it deserves. Anything else leads to some uncomfortable places.
I think what bothers me is Netflix inserting themselves into this conversation and trying to dictate what creators create. The idea of using data to say "well, some portion of people don't actually pay attention while their TV is on" to conclude "therefore, we should create visual media that is not intended to be watched" is the reductio ad absurdium conclusion of data-driven decision making gone wrong and it deserves ridicule.
It’s not that I’ve never watched a terrible tv or movie, or can’t believe that Netflix’s actions here could lead to more of them. It’s just that I have difficulty raising this to the level of art. We only consider a minuscule fraction the printed word to be art, and we don’t accuse producers of the other 99.99999999% schlocky text produced daily (including hacker news comment posters like me tbc! :) of destroying literature. People who only want to read text they consider art continue to have options, even while the rest of us are free to read less elevated prose.
What it feels like to me, is that the cost to consume video, art or not, has steadily declined over decades, so a lot more people are watching a lot more video. Just like text after the printing press, most of that is never going to be art, and imo that’s fine. I have many other concerns with a world where ppl consume video all day, just not whether or not they are consuming art or being correctly deferential.
Some of it, yes. But the majority of it is just circus, designed, together with bread, to keep the masses quiet.
The Muzak-ification of film?
Movies were an experience because... they were an experience. They weren't constantly on. They were a rare treat, not something consumed nightly.
My guess is some internal metrics favor watch time over quality and is just quietly killing their business.
We would not have as many streaming subscriptions as we do if had to sit in front of the TV to watch shows, if we couldn't have shows in the background while doing laundry and other chores.
Netflix is slowly succumbing to it's inevitable fate of turning into daytime tv. That's the only space where it makes sense economically to pay a fixed subscription fee regardless of how much you consume. If you want an all you can eat buffet, don't act surprised when it isn't michelin starred.
The future of most media is video-based, and I think Netflix probably understands this and is trying to get away from the historical model as movies you watch online and closer to the optimized video ecosystem of YouTube. The latter is more relevant in a world with video-playing devices everywhere.
Inadvertently an Inglorious Basterds paraphrase?
_Brief him._
My point was more that YouTube is increasingly designed for a world in which people have their devices everywhere and jump in and out of watching videos.
Netflix isn’t, because it is still using the “old” model of sitting down for 30-200 minutes to watch a movie.
I’m not saying that the film model is bad or somehow worth getting rid of - I love films myself - just that it’s probably not the future of video content for most people.
Anyhow- i see a gigantic problem coming towards us caused by rapidly decreasing attention capacities and this does not help.
And I do believe Netflix introduced a cheaper ad tier recently?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251942/global-youtube-k...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1301730/us-time-spent-ch...
I do recommend The Kid Should See This though, a really good selection of curated videos.
You might find your child spending 2 hours a day on ddg.
Even in real-time... My wife will literally watch Facebook Reels on her phone while we sit on the couch at night to watch something on Netflix together.
Anyway, I was thinking about this too when the article talked about the data from Amazon showing that viewers preferred stuff from the 90s and 00s over their newly produced content: How are Netflix, Amazon, etc. doing with young adults? If the audience is all Millennials and Gen-X folks, because Gen-Z folks are exclusively watching short-form video instead, it would make sense that stuff from the 90s and 00s would be the most popular. Like I think this is a well-established phenomenon with music, where a person's lifelong preferences will be fixed on whatever they first heard during their high school or college years. I will absolutely pay for a streaming service that gives me access to all the movies and TV series from, say, 1990-2015 and never adds any new content.
HN spans this incredible gamut from “Turing-award winner chimes in on their field of expertise” to stuff like this that just puts you in awe how pozzed some people are.
>A signature characteristic of Netflix’s strategy over the years has been to define genres into microscopic sub-genres and develop content on very specific customer likes — for example “Urban teen geniuses who invent time travel”
>There is an unfortunate issue with making things bad and to somebody’s taste — the person whose taste you are courting may be happy to be courted but if all they ever get of things to their taste are things that are bad representations of that taste they may come to sour on what they once loved.
and that is I think what happens a lot with Netflix, they produce approximations of the thing you love, and by doing this bad half-assed version with the wires sticking out and everything, in the end you don't love that thing anymore.
Netflix in the hunt for quick engagement eats the seed corn of fandom, and are left with nothing to build on.
Edit: Twelve Monkeys. I think that counts.
A quiet place, 28 days later, Children of Men
Snowpiercer (2013)
Melancholia (2011)
When the Wind Blows (1986)
Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and that other Charleton Heston movie with zombies that I can’t remember (not a huge fan of zombies)
The Road is a fairly recent movie that fits.
British TV had Space 1999, lots of early Doctor Who and an attempt at the Tripods series by John Christopher. By far my favorite was “Survivors” written by Terry Nation - who needs zombies when you’ve got actual problems to deal with!
Not be confused with Spaced (1999) :)
The Omega Man probably. The first adaptation of Mathesons "I am Legend". Though some people might disagree about the "Zombie" part.
_The Seventh Seal_
_The Sacrifice_
_La Jetee_
Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it does at least make sense in terms of why Netflix are doing so.
Audio works on the subway, on the bike, while riding a bike, cleaning the house and the big one, driving a car. To get into a situation where you can both watch and listen is much rarer.
Terribly terrible.
Here’s a fun interview that includes a related question:
> Did having the helmet affect your acting at all? How did you maneuver around wearing that for the entire movie, and could you see through it?
> Oh yea [I could see through it], it took a bit to figure it out, it really did, and it was a challenge, you know, the challenge was how to communicate with an audience. And not only because my eyes weren’t visible, but because of the fact that the character of Dredd operates within a very narrow bandwidth, he is a man who has been trained to keep his emotions in check, so consequently it was very important for me to identify how I could humanize the character as much as possible. The sense of humor became very important, that dry, laconic sense of humor, and finding out where’s this character’s compassion? Where does his empathy lie?
NOTE: minor generic plot references follow.
https://reelreactions.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/reel-reaction...
She chooses to watch shows in which characters address each other with full names and say their intentions out loud. My brain hurts.
Below is not a spoiler, but I like to avoid reading anything about a good film before watching it, and I recommend to do the same here. You like it or you don’t.
This film has no staged speech that tries to explain anything. The little dialogue that it has is what would naturally arise given the situation. For the same reason, most characters have no names or no full names. No situation in which they would formally introduce themselves takes place.
Do I fully understand it immediately, or even after watching it once? No. Does it mean I dislike it? Rather the opposite. Actually, I enjoy being treated as an adult who can make conclusions without having given any pre-digested explanation.
And agreed on not being spoon fed.
A prime example to the contrary was when in the Joker, spoiler alert, they had a recap showing his delusion. The movie would have been so much better if they had cut that entire segment, and just have the neighbor female act all surprised and weirded out like she did when he entered the apartment.
Upstream Color was a great movie as well, it's a shame what happened between Carruth and Amy Seimetz.
I don’t know if we should denounce the art if the artist turns out to be a bad person in some ways, previously had some thoughts about it but forgot what they were. Maybe the answer is “we should if we know about it”. However, no person is unchanging, and by that logic the person who creates the art is not the same entity as the person who does bad things, unless it happens in close enough proximity or relation to each other.
For example, I recently watched It Ends with Us, a book-turned-movie about a woman, played by Blake Lively, dealing with physical and sexual abuse from her boyfriend, played by Justin Baldoni, who also directed the movie. Well, it just came out that he and other staff sexually harassed her constantly throughout the filming of the movie. That would make any rewatch significantly more difficult for me, as I know that Lively did not enjoy the process and that the director, someone with power over her, treated her as such.
Personal issues aside, Carruth ultimately had a professional responsibility to Seimetz which he broke, and his subsequent behavior and general rejection of the Hollywood apparatus means we likely won't get any more films from him.
However, I don't want to derail the discussion away from Upstream Color or Carruth's other work. Just mentioned that because it saddened me.
Stanley Kubrick did something similar in `2001: A Space Odyssey`. In a scene where staff were being transported in a taxi... on the moon... 100% of the dialog is meaningless. They're discussing the merits of this or that sandwich, not how wonderful the Earth looks from space, or overcoming technical challenges.
It's so refreshing to be living in an environment vs being spoon fed.
Even better is very old or even silent movies ("M" is fantastic: modern-ish thriller from 1931 where sound is a character; Metropolis)
Also dialog-less movies: `Koyaanisqatsi` is incredibly beautiful and has a specific plot, even if there's no understandable dialog nor words.
In theaters _right now_ is `Flow`. No dialog, and no _human_ characters! It's all animated cats and dogs and other animals. It's startling how directly the characters transmit their goals and agenda and emotions.
> Oh help me! Oh, help me! My life is in danger!
> The venomous monster is drawing upon me
> And I can’t escape him.
> How near is his bite,
> With teeth sharp and white!
> Oh gods above!
> Why can’t you hear my mortal cry?
> Destroy the beast or I will die!
> Or surely, I will die!
The opening lines to The Magic Flute (which continues in a similarly expository tone for the duration). Seems like there have always been scripts which were easy to understand while also staring at your phone, though that doesn't stop the ushers at English National Opera getting narky at you if you try!
International audiences nonwithstanding, it's just hard for many people to hear song lyrics, and a very common choice to make song lyrics simple, and hearing lyrics is critical for opera in a way it isn't if you're singing Goethe at a small salon concert.
The original point is it's silly to compare opera lyrics to spoken dialogue. Songs with belabored and repetitive lyrics can easily be interesting, spoken word with this property is banal.
Die Zauberflote is easy to understand because it’s a fairly light work, and you’re meant to be staring at the lavish staging and costumes. The performers narrate the action because that’s the convention for the genre - it’s a sung story. They break into more conventional dialogue for the recitative sections (a tradition that went out of style with Verdi.)
The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan were contemporary to Verdi's work and still feature lots of dialogue, so they are very approachable. You still won't be able to use your phone, though - you'll be too busy laughing!
My recommendation for an introduction would be the 1982 Canadian production of The Mikado by the Stratford Festival. It is currently available in its entirety on YouTube:
It is true that a lot of old plays, operas etc do exactly what Netflix is accused of here. What is a monologue? Was Shakespeare guilty of creating casual viewing content when he wrote Hamlet's monologue? Shouldn't he have just showed Hamlet's ambivalence???
Treating art with reverence and rapt attention didn't get to be a thing until the late Enlightenment. Before that the kind of art you took seriously was religious, and the idea that you were supposed to reverent about it could be considered a carry-over from religion.
Talking over things and not paying attention is almost the default. Sitting still and concentrating on a performance of any kind is a relatively recent idea.
None of this makes the crapification of Netflix (and related trends in other media touched by streaming and tech) any less annoying.
But it just occurred to me... Maybe Netflix should do half-movies next. The movie is designed to be appealing on the menu, to have a good but not too engrossing first 30 minutes, and then start ramping down the budget drastically for the remaining of the film, which -it seems- people aren't watching any more. Like don't bother with FX, then just don't bother with actors, then just insert shots of the storyboard or don't even bother with the story at all and just insert stock video, etc. Maybe at the end add a narrated summary of what happened (or didn't happen).
(Unfortunately, it turns out he was struggling with dementia and it seems he was trying to cash out before he couldn't act at all)
Knowing the reason why though, I don't blame or fault him for doing it.
But then it splits, the useless aspect discarded and the useful merged with other old and new fragments, in combinations tried by the experimental startup ecosystem.
In the end we may have for example entertainment venues for both playing arcades and watching movies and theater plays, perhaps with dinner for example. (We already have this actually.)
And this is fine when you realise that Netflix replaces direct-to-video movies and not that of cinema, as much as they refuse to admit.
Seems to me they provide what the market wants.
Maybe you aren’t being suggested kids movies. Most Xmas productions are. The hallmark/romance style of Xmas movie seems to be for housewives.
And there are lots of people who just want background noise. Before streaming it was just leaving the TV on while you did other stuff. Before that it was radio. Daytime programming has always been like this.
It’s not a Netflix invention.
Good One (2024) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30319516/
Strange Darling (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22375054/
The Creator (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11858890/
The Night House (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9731534/
The Empty Man (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5867314/
Possessor (2020) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5918982/
Booksmart (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1489887/
Volition (2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6385952/
Welcome the Stranger (2018) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5716280/
Time Trap (2018) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4815122/
Wind River (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/
A Dark Song (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4805316/
I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4303340/
Midnight Special (2016) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2649554/
The Devil's Candy (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4935372/
Mr. Holmes (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3168230/
The Witch (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/
A Most Wanted Man (2014) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1972571/
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1340800/
Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1465522/
Pandorum (2009) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188729/
The Fall (2006) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/
In a Savage Land (1999) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151047/
Office Space (1999) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/
The Double Life of Véronique (1991) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101765/
Don't have Netflix so not sure what's available there, and several might not be wife-friendly. Also I enjoy weird, so YMMV.
This.
Netflix does have good productions. But they are often surrounded by the sea of mediocracy.
Stopped subscribing to N over a year ago and haven't missed it a single bit.
Isn't it true for the whole film industry? Among the highest grossing movies from recent years, how many follow a different approach?
The one use case I wanted to see for AI is "tunable" contexts for videos. If this is your first time, watch the whole thing but if you need less context just edit it so it skips over the obvious parts
They're not fine-grained enough IMO - IMDB's "parent's guide" is great for detailed content information.
Similarly, with game ratings (video- and boardgames, as it happens), I appreciate them, but often they're trying to do two things, rate the game content and the gameplay. They fail often, and I buy outside the ratings, but I'm happier having them than not having any information in that space.
I wouldn't want no ratings for film/TV as that would mean I'd have to seek out spoiler-level information before finding if media was right for what I wanted to consume (or take friends/family to consume). I try my best to see little about the plot of films I'm keen to watch.
I don't think it's possible yet by a very very very long shot but if it were it would be a better idea than "write your own movies".
My stories probably suck outside a captive, very young and related "audience" which is fine because I'm not script writer.
But I would pay quite a lot of money for a "get to the point" button.
then you're missing the point of storytelling.
Handing a talented team enough time, freedom, and budget doesn’t guarantee success but it’s definitely a prerequisite for success.
Just look at the artistry and story-telling skill displayed in both seasons of Arcane - there's so many brilliant examples of "showing, not telling" on display there.
As a counter-example, I enjoyed watching the "Flow" film the other day - an animated film about a cat (and other animals) trying to survive a flood and there's not even a single word in the entire film.
The music is a huge part of Arcane though, and complements the emotional content.
e.g. The Line (Twenty-One Pilots) was written after Tyler Joseph witnessed the passing of his grandmother and is written from her viewpoint - incredibly powerful and poignant, but also fits in wonderfully with what is happening with Victor (Arcane character).
Some of my favourite recent series haven't been from Netflix - Slow Horses, Day of the Jackal etc.
A friend was pushing me to give it a try, a friend who likes Marvel, and the Miles Morales spiderman film, who plays League, who was excited by Baldur's Gate, etc etc. I tried to say "no, there is no chance of me enjoying that, it'll be the usual drivel", but they insisted it was really good.
And I watched, against my better judgment, saying to myself: "come on now, give it a serious try, be open-minded". To no avail!
I recall the scene where they'd the punk or alternative or "underground" live music in the bar in the underworld place, in the 3rd or 4th episode, and that being the final straw for me. A viler and more disharmonious appropriation of dissident culture I've never had the displeasure of sitting through.
Personally, I hadn't had any contact with League of Legends and knew none of the lore before watching Arcane, but was thoroughly taken with the incredible art and story-telling. What I find surprising is the amount of character development they manage to incorporate - the first season had meaningful character arcs for almost all the characters (maybe two side characters were left out). The second season feels a bit more rushed though.
It sort of feels like living in a town that is getting crowded and the infrastructure isn't being maintained. Then one day they decide to change all the traffic lights to stop signs and everyone goes the same slow speed.
Small digression: Turkish series have been doing an extreme version of "telling" for ages. I've been watching the cheesiest ones with my wife as she uses them to unwind (I do the same with YouTube videos). In these shows, characters don't just say what they're doing, they also explain how they feel, what they plan to do, and how they'll feel afterward. It's oddly addictive, like watching a bad movie on purpose, and somehow, you end up completely hooked.
It is weirdly addicting, perhaps only because I'm bored of the show-don't-tell style and it's refreshing to see something going contrary to that.
From a european perspective that is what US TV series and movies have been doing for 4 decades already as well as following the very same mechanics. In most shows you can tell in advance what is about to happen next at any point in time this is embarassing. I used to think US people had to be super dumb for that reason then realized they gradually started doing it on euro stuff. I guess we just use the lowest baseline possible because the people who spend the most time passively i front of a screen happen to also be the dumbest ones.
You most certainly can, though it relies on trusting the audience.
Flow (2024)
Sasquatch Sunset (2024)
Hundreds of Beavers (2022)
Hundreds of Beavers! So pleased that someone else here has seen this awesome film
Never paid for a subscription and never will, precisely because I want to pay for individual movies to reward them for being good movies.
For example with their TV-style content, Netflix starting churning out tons of cheaply produced baking and cooking competition shows during the pandemic -- probably due to the popularity of "The Great British Bake-off". Whatever they were going for, they didn't capture the magic of it, nor did their cooking competition shows capture the magic of "Iron Chef" despite the blatant struggle to do so.
Compare this to HBO. HBO has been subscription far before streaming was a thing and they have an excellent track record of regularly producing quality series with a subscription model.
In HBO's TV era post-2000, you have The Wire, Sopranos, Entourage, Boardwalk Empire, among many others. As things moved to streaming (2012-), there's Game of Thrones, Succession, Barry, Chernobyl, Last of Us, Veep, etc. It seems, on average, every year there's a new must-watch series that ranks well with both critics and viewers.
While there's skepticism about HBO maintaining it's legacy after the Discovery-Warner merger, Apple TV seems to be filling HBO's shoes.
Perhaps Netflix ought to consider cutting back the number of series it's churning out.
Not even that, they optimize for acquiring and keeping subscribers. They gain nothing from you watching movies, it is just costing them bandwidth, at least on their ad-free plan, which was the only option until recently. It is completely different from YouTube and TikTok, or even oldschool TV, which get most of their revenue from ads.
They need a few good ones to attract new subscribers, and they do. Stranger Things and Squid Games are really good. For the rest, they just need enough content for people not to cancel their subscriptions.
If you want to encourage quality production, just subscribe for the month they are doing something good, ad-free of course, then unsubscribe. Many people are doing that, and maybe that's what it takes to get them to change their strategy. Maybe not for the better though.
Most people are probably lazier and less organized than you give them credit for. If subscribe/unsubscribe cycles were really that prevalent I think you'd see a lot more incentives to sign up for, say, annual subscriptions.
A lot of people basically use TV as background and, especially if they don't have live TV, that means a lot of streaming content.
People don't need more than one streaming platform for "background noise", and switching to the one with the most popular shows of the month makes a lot of economic sense. At the end of the year, it can easily save you hundreds of dollars, and the bigger the amount, the more people are going to do the maths.
Maybe an annual Netflix subscription is planned.
- Netflix produces the casual viewing content next to other niches, and just serves this as well. The other stuff doesn’t go away, this is in addition.
- This is something you can put on during long car trips, no need to focus on the screen, just focus on the audio, and it’s easier to listen to than an audiobook (which is just a narrated actual book).
- It has nothing to do with “endumbification”, even it it appears to be framed that way. People are still smart.
They could add a tag saying if you need to pay attention to the show or not. Currently it isn't very different from the other stuff just disappearing.
My guess is that this guidance was given to a specific writer or person in charge of a specific genre.
Not all movies are high art, nor should they be. It’s for a certain audience. We’ve had crappy made-for-TV movies since long before streaming and it hasn’t been the death of cinema.
In fact that's actually what my main complaint is about this article - the point it's making is a good one but the article is probably 5x longer than it needs to be.
This is exactly why I founded IZSIT, a streaming platform designed to do the opposite. Instead of pumping out content to fill the background, we’re championing stories that demand your full attention and actually entertain you. IZSIT is all about giving independent creators the tools to tell powerful, boundary-pushing stories using AI.
Streaming doesn’t have to be a race to the bottom. Platforms like Apple TV+ and HBO are showing that high-quality content still has a place, and IZSIT is joining that fight by putting AI artistry and storytelling first.
We won't settle for "endumbification." Film and TV should inspire, challenge, and resonate—not just fill silence while we do chores. If you’re tired of scrolling through mediocrity, keep an eye out for what we’re building at IZSIT
www.izsit.com for AI film and series
You can read review of journalists you usually agree with, ask for advice from your friends, check if you liked other movies from the same filmmaker, check if the movie has been displayed in your favorite movie theater or in the movie theater you dislike (but okay, won't work for netflix movies).
You’re describing watching the movie. Which is what most people do. If the movie is terrible then you just stop watching it, or if you finish it you can then decide if you liked it or not.
Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.
Then again from the UK POV the leftpondians barely count as native English speakers anyway ;)
[1] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-p...
I was more thinking about the words/grammar/idiom etc.
(also as a Lancastrian I find e.g. Deep Somerset barely comprehensible, especially when the speaker is a few pints in, but their wording is still usually closer to mine than the USians' is)
To be fair, I'm probably less informed for doing so.
Poe's law speaks to the size of the population on the internet and of the range of viewpoints it hosts as a result.
In this case understanding the context of being sarcasm. It's annoying as you now have messages ending in /hj /lh.
Discord especially where the audience is young; but as we now cater to a world audience of those with disabilities and those without where do you tow the line?
Counterpoint, it's weird to me to be surprised to encounter a problem when you knowingly avoid preventing that problem.
You can award the content exactly as much time as it deserves according to you.
/me sings "Let's all go to the lobby! Let's all go to the lobby! Let's all go to the lobby ... and get ourselves a snack!"
Anyone else remember the dancing cartoon popcorn and coca-cola cup?
I remember 80 Days Around the world where peril of missing a connection gave it tension; ever since documentaries seem to have used this more and more.
The BBC Horizon episode on Voyager passing Jupiter was so inspirational to me, but now we just being ridden by TV personalities.
Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, Mystery, and Rebirth.
Next to save bandwidth they’ll drop video and just display text on screen.
Talking heads are equivalent to (badly written) text only content too.
Additionally, videos of still images compress remarkably well, to the point where the image itself is largely the same size as the video track.
In all these kinds of stories that revolve around how much crap there is on Netflix, there are two things you have to keep in mind:
* Netflix didn't invent shlock and probably didn't even accelerate it; if anything, Netflix probably reversed the trend away from scripted and towards "reality".
* What distinguishes Netflix more than anything else is its efficiency getting content to viewers, which means that there's more of everything on Netflix, and in its catalog of originals. There's more schlock, which is very noticeable, and, compared to pre-Netflix-streaming outputs of places like HBO, also more solid original films. But 99% of everything is crap, so if the only way you have to engage with the Netflix catalog is browsing their interface, that's most of what you're going to see.
My breadth of viewing and thus my subsequent taste was extremely impacted by them. And I e yet to find an algorithmic equivalent (nor music or books).
But this is just a bias. Most of the video stores I ever used were garbage.
I presume soda fountains were the same but that didn’t stop my grandfather from bemoaning the loss of the soda jerk.
I do like trading stocks but it does seem like it's the #1 reason for companies to turn into shit.
The second set of audience this would appeal to are people with autism. Sitcoms have always done this. Some people really need to be told when to laugh and what people are thinking because they have no ability to read body language, zero empathy, and cannot read the room. Once you encounter it regularly it’s mind blowing and that a significant portion of the population commonly lives with this sort of mental blindness.
That is the distinction of ADHD. Self reflection, the bit about offense, is important because for the person without attention disruption there isn’t a performance difference to reflect upon, but for other people there is an issue of concern.
It has nothing to do with optimizing performance of a task. Doing the laundry for your family for the 10,000th time is a chore, not a task that is optimized.
This is a pretty common thing to do, so I’m not sure why this is so confusing.
So you imagine that I downvoted you, and then you claim that I imagine emotional hostility and as a result diagnose me with some form of ADHD?
Wild.
They're using the word empathy wrong but trouble reading emotion sounds accurate enough.
As for empathy, it too varies from person to person. It is possible, though unlikely, to score high in empathy and yet utterly fail all the rest of the performance criteria. One of my coworkers with autistic children may or may not have autism themselves but does demonstrate high empathy.
In my experience people with autism tend to score remarkably low in empathy with some people even having absolutely no empathy at all. That is why many people with autism seem socially weird or have trouble reading a room. For people with high empathy these observations of low empathy in others is most obvious potential indicator of autism.
While very few people score high in empathy it’s equally rare to absolutely have no empathy at all. It is such a striking disadvantage as to be a major disorder. It is severe enough that it looks like sociopathy minus an informed intent. It’s a processing void. That void is further obviated by an equally diminished introspective capability in that reading one’s self is the same skill as reading others.
Also, empathy is not in any way related the quantity of emotions people display. A person can be both selfish and highly emotional.
Money quote of the evening: "Our average viewer is between 60 and 65 and they are not 100% there mentally when viewing, so it needs to be so simple that you can still follow along while you are ironing your shirts."
Nobody there believed they were making good entertainment, everbody in fact hated it and yet they all said it has to be that way. Theh knew they are losing the young audiences, but didn't know what to do.
It’s the reason I, and others I know, unsubscribed. Over time it edged out all the movies I actually wanted to watch simply because it makes them more money. But making them more money doesn’t entertain me so I unsubscribed.
Turns out that catering to dumb consumer zombies is still a safe bet.
There is still so much good stuff (especially films) being created still, but nowdays if it is Produced-by-streaming-corp, I'll just assume its going to have a inflated length to keep people from unsubscribing.
The main feeling you'll get out of a Streaming show is being sedated
That's the critical bit of context, this is essentially radio you have on in the background while you do whatever.
I guess netflix is really competing against youtube and twitch here.
So most of our usage these days of Netflix is just having something playing on the side or background while we go about daily tasks like working or whatever. It's glorified filler that you don't need to pay attention to.
I'm giving it a year maybe and I'm canceling our sub to Netflix. There are better alternatives, and life is too precious to spend worrying about copyright when all copyright holders just want to make me a criminal instead of letting be give them money.
That's fascinating to me, as I could not ever sleep with the TV on. Anything that has spoken voices keeps my brain turned on decoding the language and sleep is just not possible.
[0] for example as found on YouTube.
>critical drinker
It's not the new stuff that pulls me into Netflix. Instead I go to Paramount+. As it turns out, these guys actually know how to tell a compelling story. Nobody is more surprised than me!
> Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
I have an easier time understanding Japanese movies than English ones, because at least in the former they're speaking to the audience. English actors have a habit of mumbling everything.
There’s some fascinating industry trends here but the analysis in the article is overwhelmed by the cacophony of anecdotes about b movies and bland tv shows all encouraged by the corrupt and evil parent company. Not helpful.
My take on the quality of shows— there’s a huge volume of mediocre stuff but that’s always been the case with TV. (There’s literally hundreds of forgotten sitcoms on broadcast tv from the 70s to 90s). But there have been many gems in the past decade.
A random list of fantastic or innovative shows I saw first on NetFlix. - House of Cards, season 1 and 2 - Russian Doll - Squid Game - Queens Gambit - Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Arcane - Kaos
Only the first was mentioned in the article, and with negative comment.
Overall, a poorly written article and a waste of time to read it.
I thought Hollywood (Disney) long before Netflix tapped into other revenue such as merchandise.
Why must all content turn to crap?
One other curious and quite insufferable thing which exists now is when a show/movie/game will give an unmistakeable and unsubtle nod to some other bit of media or information, either from the show/movie/game itself, or some other show/movie/game/cultural artefact.
And the learned and informed modern-media-gooner who is "in-the-know" will go: "aaaaaaha!" and "oooooh, clever!"
How has this happened? How is it considered so substantive and sophisticated for a show to make surface-level nods to other media? Please, someone explain this phenomenon to me.
I think Rick and Morty do a good job ridiculing this trope, but it doesn't seem to have been effective at slowing the tide. When a movie or a rap song alludes to something outside of itself or makes a meta-comment about itself, or breaks the fourth wall in some way, people are titillated beyond belief, I find.
What exactly is tickling them so hard?
noticed this when watching Stargate SG1 the other day
It seems hard to accept for movie fans, but the audience wants mindless drivel. The big screen is the second screen.
Netflix has competition and has to produce what the audience wants. The audience just wants something different than what critics like.
Plus Netflix has a lot of anime and I like that.
I am surprised that no one mentions these extra narrations as providing very valuable audio descriptions for visually impaired users. This in my opinion is a much more important use case, as long as it remains optional, selectable as a separate audio channel for example.
Wait, what's wrong with Tide Pods?
But it is hilarious in a meta kind of way that a bottom feeder "summarize real writing done by others, and slap on a clickbait headline" website pretends to have the moral high ground on this issue. I wonder what the guidance they give t to their writers is, and what metrics they're pushed to improve.
I wouldn't call the OP clickbait, it's a reasonable title for the focus of the article. And I appreciate it having focus.
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