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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

To me it is the difference between art and product.

A show like The Simpsons is both. The viewers care about the art, and we tolerate the product to get it. The creators are creating art, compromising with the corporation and broadcaster to make it enough of a product. But the corp/broadcaster only care about the product. The art is the chocolate around the advertising pill.

So when the product-minded people control preservation and resharing of the product, the art always gets compromised. Jokes are clipped. Audio is broken. Episodes are pulled. For all the wrong reasons.

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Same with Beavis and Butthead with all its music videos, it seems like it cant be properly released with alm that intact so its up to King Turd to do the dirty work and make it avaikable to all

This happens with any TV or Movie that has music, and its incredibly frustrating. Always best to download to not confuse yourself as to why the media is somehow different than you remember.

Ironically, tho, sometimes I wish there was a parallel collection without the music videos because I kind of enjoy their actual real-world misadventures and them being "on the road" out in public (menace) more than the hilarious music video critique sessions

The terminology is art vs content. Anybody talking about "content", by definition, do not actually care about what that content is, just that it is contained into something they charge for.

This is a great example of when pulling out a dictionary implies that you've lost the argument, because if people were using the word in the same sense as the dictionary definition, you would have no need of the dictionary to “prove” the meaning.

User toyg is using the same definition than Richard Stallman (I tried to find the relevant essay but can't; I just remember RMS also pushed back against "content"). Toyg is not making up a new line of thought, this has been argued before. Not only by Stallman, either, this dislike for the term "content" is also espoused by some here on HN (and I agree, to be clear).

I think it goes beyond latching on the dictionary definition, and really looking into how platform owners see the bits they push around. It's not about being "clever" with words to score a point, but actually about the meaning we want to give art, be it novels, drawings, music or shows/movies.

If they said “platform owners” I'd give them credit for that, but they didn't; they said “anyone”.

Context matters.

Also, "platform owners" (or advertisers, as another comment puts it) managed to install this term and so most of us use it, so it's no longer just platform owners. Which is why RMS railed against it.

No I don’t think that’s what I’m going for.

To me content often implies a kind of volume of work. Always be posting. Don’t miss a few days or your viewers go elsewhere. Lots and lots of content!

The concerns of a product are the salability. Is has to fit perfectly into a 22 mins slot. It can’t upset the wrong people. It has to fit the mood and culture that our advertisers want. Etc.

You seem to be violently agreeing with the parent commenter. What you're saying matches their definition.

No, it doesn't. You get good at something by doing it a lot, consistently; it's basically rule 1 of learning any artform.

This still doesn't contradict the framing of "art vs content".

It absolutely does for a movie.

Of course it implies volume - shipped volume. Which is what you worry about when you think about posting every day: viewers going elsewhere is a commercial worry about your product, it has nothing to do with the quality of your art. When you think in terms of content, art quality becomes an optional byproduct of commercial worries about having product.

Your point is valid (and I make a similar one frequently), but it doesn't gain from being presented as good term vs bad term use. It's the context that makes it pejorative.

In the context of advertisers, content is just what you deliver for a price (Netflix, Disney), or against which you slap advertising (Youtube). You want more of it so you can charge more, and care little what fills this content pipeline.

They are unlikely partners. And yet it is the model that allows arts to get something out there while it gets exploited for gains. But at the end those with the money make the final call.

Alas, we would hope that it would be the best art that gets preserved but a lot of the time it is some of the most mass produced.

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