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Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

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Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#491

Post by Koshkin »

thegrimmest wrote: post #467
zentiggr wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like segregation end... the last few years, and especially the state voting laws passed in the past year, show that while it may not be explicit law anymore, it is still certainly what a lot of people are fighting to do in any way possible. I (as a middle age white male) WANT people to be thinking about because it's still happening 24/7, and people who aren't bigoted should be aware and pushing back…

It's not though is it? "black people" are not a cultural group are they?

They are; not one group but many (still distinct from "non-black").

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#492

Post by emerged »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #340

I'm Russian and, probably, I don't really understand the situation with race in US. But I think that MLK was fighting against this "X for black people" thing. (X == buses, schools, shops, etc). Isn't it racism and segregation?

I’m American and believe me, at least half of the country thinks shit like this is utterly insane and divisive. But there is no reasoning with ideologues.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#493

Post by skyde »

sangnoir wrote: post #478
skyde wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s bad because it create a bubble. It’s like the instagram for republican (parler). It turned into a social network for dangerous extremist very fast and is one of the reason the capital got attacked

I guess it's time to ban HN and force everyone onto reddit then, because HN is a bubble. I disagree with your implicit assumption that all bubbles are inherently negative.

While HN is a bubble it will not result in burning the country to the ground. The problem is when polarization create war between 2 camp.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#494

Post by Uzo0312 »

ggggtez wrote: post #360
afavour wrote: post #17

I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and went directly to outrage in the comment box. This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely imagin…

If you go to an Italian restaurant where the waiter tells you about the fine wine of his home country for five minutes, and then offers you a free sample and you find out it's a grape juice box... Then you would rightly feel outraged. The problem isn't the idea, is being sold and marketed as something it's not. This isn't like BET. This is... I don't know what it is. But it's not a Netflix competitor with classic bla…

How are we selling and marketing ourselves as something we're not? No, we're not Netflix today--I think that's somewhat inherent in the fact that we're a startup here on HN. But we say that we're working with indie filmmakers and content, not high-budget Hollywood productions, so I think we admit where we're at.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#495

Post by SaintGhurka »

afavour wrote: post #250
namdnay wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I’m European, so maybe I’m not in the right cultural mindset for this, but your comparison really highlights what is problematic for me: based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage. What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have similar tastes in media?

> What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have similar tastes in media? They don't necessarily. Not speaking for the BlackOakTV folks here but I don't think this is trying to target all black people. The US is somewhat unique in having a large population that was ripped from their respective home countries and forced to create their own shared cultur…

> The US is somewhat unique in having a large population that was ripped from their respective home countries and forced to create their own shared culture under the thumb of slavery.

Unique?

"Between 1502 and 1866, of the 11.2 million Africans taken, only 388,000 arrived in North America, while the rest went to Brazil, the European colonies in the Caribbean and Spanish territories in Central and South America, in that order"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Latin_America

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#496

Post by randompwd »

binaryorganic wrote: post #121

ITT: Whyt folx suggesting that curating media that targets a specific cultural audience is problematic without realizing that they already enjoy that same experience every day of their lives. But I love it. One thought that comes to me: If you’re successful at this, you probably get to repeat the story of the big record labels poaching black creators in the 1920s. That’d be good history to dive into and weave into th…

In the above comment, an American continuing to think that everything and anything is centered around USA and it's history.

Many of us are from countries where segregationary nonsense like this is rightly found to be disgusting.

But hey, it's HN, let's drive fractures deeper as there's a buck to be made.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#497

Post by imbnwa »

zentiggr wrote: post #241
sombremesa wrote: post #179

I think people who are being downvoted in this thread have valid points, and they’re not really critiquing the company, rather the problem seems to be your messaging. You shouldn’t say “Netflix for black people” because Netflix is for black people already. Moreover if I start selling boxed water called “water for black people” with black stories on the carton, I’m unnecessarily limiting my audience (even alienating s…

You make it sound like segregation end... the last few years, and especially the state voting laws passed in the past year, show that while it may not be explicit law anymore, it is still certainly what a lot of people are fighting to do in any way possible. I (as a middle age white male) WANT people to be thinking about because it's still happening 24/7, and people who aren't bigoted should be aware and pushing back…

Strangely Telemundo/Univision's American arms don't have to deal with this type of criticism. The "for" is clearly indicating a target audience, not that you can't sign-up if you're not Black with photo identification, which is the courts' criteria for illegal discrimination and segregation.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#498

Post by Osmose »

namdnay wrote: post #211
snakeboy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but suggesting that racism is only racism when the government does it too is a first. I think you've misunderstood this post. This is less like a "white's only" restaurant, and more like an Italian food restaurant. It's supporting a cultural niche, not excluding another.

Now I’m European, so maybe I’m not in the right cultural mindset for this, but your comparison really highlights what is problematic for me: based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage. What does a Nigerian have in common with a Jamaican, apart from the melatonin in their skin? Why would they have similar tastes in media?

> based on someone’s skin colour you are determining their culture/heritage.

People can have more than one cultural background, and American "black culture" is the common cultural heritage around the experience of being black in America, which has a lot of broad commonalities regardless of where in the country you are, and also locale-specific subcultures (e.g. west coast vs east coast vs deep south).

Like the whole point of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was that Will Smith and his uncle's family had very different subcultural contexts (although their divide was less "Nigeria vs Jamaica" and more a class divide), but also shared the broader experience of being black in America.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#499

Post by dragonwriter »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #408
mattlondon wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Where I work (US-company, but I work outside of US) it is similarly weird to me. We appear to have gone backwards in the past 5-10 years in my view - no longer can you just be "you", but now it feels like we have to be labelled, categorised, and segregated into different groups. We now have to make a big deal and a big song-and-dance to highlight our differences and define what our ethnic backgrounds are (app…

We've gone from "don't label me, I'm not a soup can" in the 90s to literal label worship nowadays.

> We've gone from "don't label me, I'm not a soup can" in the 90s to literal label worship nowadays.

No, we haven't. “Don’t label me, I’m not a soup can” was a reaction by certain people against what they saw the current dominant culture to be at the time in exactly the same way that pointing to that as an ideal today is. Except that the latter adds in the construction of an idealized view of the recent past on top of it.

EDIT: But, it is true that the 90s—basically the last period of sustained, strong, broad economic expansion (subsequent expansions have been much worse distributionally)—was also a local high point in subjective perceived quality of race conditions, though not particularly in objective measures. People are a lot more prone to be concerned with fairness issues when their experience falls short of expectations than when they don't.

Re: Launch HN: BlackOakTV (YC S21) – Netflix for black people

#500

Post by runbathtime »

zwieback wrote: post #29
afavour wrote: post #17

I can't help but feel like everyone commenting here read the headline, brushed straight past the lengthy explanation and went directly to outrage in the comment box. This is a streaming service set up to elevate content by black creators, to make up for the fact that the mainstream media under-represents those people. I'm struggling to see the outrage on a cultural level and on a startup level I can absolutely imagin…

100% agree. How is it racist to offer something as a business, it's not like it's a government or other public project. We already have BET so this is just a similar offering in a different format. "Netflix for black people" might not be a good choice as a tagline, though.

It is a double standard, not only would the mods not allow a post of a company that says its mission is to create the Netflix for white ppl, but YC would never dream of funding it.

I am all for discrimination, but you have to let everyone discriminate and currently whites can't.

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