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Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

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Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#391
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bridgerton, set in an alternate universe is a show that has had a pretty intense trigger effect. The idea of black people playing Regency era personalities is unacceptable for some despite being obviously far from historically accurate to the point of being classified as “dumb and disgusting”.

Quoted post unavailable.

I agree that it's ridiculous to assume everyone disliking the show is a racist.

However your race-bending example is not a good analogy because MLK was a Black rights leader whereas nobody (reasonable) admires queens for their white leadership. The queen's whiteness is not a defining factor in her historical character, at least from white folks' perspective. Compare this to how many Black historical figures do have their blackness as an integral part of their character's story. There is an in-built asymmetry here which makes race-bending arguments unconvincing.

> Blacks would burn and loot

This phrase is dripping with dog whistle and I almost didn't take the time to reply. It likely accounts for all your downvotes.

You can have your cake and eat it too. You can turn the screws on the woke-religionists and their moral panic, while still acknowledging that society has a lot of growing to do on race-centered topics.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#392
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add that "a formula" doesn't mean it's bad. I regularly drank beer since like when I was 14 until when I was like 35 or something? I do it way less now but still sometimes drink beer. My favorite style changes. Sometime I just drink a new one because like dopamine hits and I get excited about the potential novelty and discovery. But it's beer, and I think there's nothing wrong with it. From bud light to like…

Another commenter described what I meant using what I think is a more accurate term: assembly line. My point is that creating original content is a creative endeavor that doesn’t naturally scale. MrBeast is obviously successful but that doesn’t mean you can just cookie cutter another 100 MrBeasts. That’s not how it works.

Why aren't there independent studios creating content and selling to the highest bidder among the streaming camps?

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#393
post #200

I’m bored of Netflix. They have simply gone the assembly line direction instead of the direction of art, at least for some big niches. For example, every True Crime docuseries on Netflix is the same crap. Once you’ve seen three, you’ve seen them all. They get each cop involved in a big empty room, sit them on a solitary chair, put a dramatic light above them, and shoot them in 4k. Then they direct it at a pace to bor…

Maybe something like Steam Greenlit for Netflix. But as some have pointed out already Netflix is in the streaming business, not the risky content creation business. (I still fucking miss the OA and Sense8 if you follow my comment history)

The OA, in particular, was one that I loved. It lived in this niche that I really like. Abstract supernatural horror? Lynchian stuff.

Dark was around the same time as well.

My perception of the untouchable Netflix was changed when they cancelled The OA. For one, I didn’t really trust them with multi-season serialized content anymore and, two I started to notice good content on other streaming service.

I sort of wonder if every faithful Netflix subscriber had an OA moment over the last few years? Where they lost faith in the service because of a poorly-handled choice for a show they enjoyed.

(By the way, if you dig the OA and Sense8 you might like Severance on Apple TV.)

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binging happens on your terms, you can stop and resume on smaller units of time (e.g. 1h for western tv shows, 20 min for anime). Worse case if you’re disrupted is you’d restart the eps you were on at a later and you’d lose less than an hour of watch time. Current movies go up to 3h… I see as the same paradox as people watching Tiktok shorts for hours. Yes, in aggregate it could be more than several movies stuck toge…

> you can stop and resume on smaller units of time You can pause a movie? I don’t always watch a movie in one go.

I sometimes do. But outside of the cultural hurdle, movies aren’t planned that way so depending on what service/app you watch you‘ll need to remember where you stopped.

Rewinding until a point where you can get back the context can also be a PITA, and for many movies stopping somewhere in the middle lands you in the flat part which makes it extra dull to resume watching.

All in all, I’ll often end up dropping a movie if it was 3h30 and there was 40min left to watch, it’s just not worth it in general.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#395
post #28

Netflix really had a value proposition a few years ago before all the other players came in. A good selection of rotating movies and shows, sharing accounts with a good model (# of simultaneously running screens). This was way better than cable TV and more convenient than torrent. Now it’s mostly quite mediocre content across services that easily cost $100+ a month, so we’re back to the old cable days in terms of cos…

I never understood why Netflix is assumed to be more convenient. There are illegal streaming websites with better UI and user experience than Netflix.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a mirror to the other classic apocryphal story where the IBM ask a new Japanese manufacturer to only have a 3/1000 defect rate and the Japanese seem alarmed by this request. When the product arrives there's a seperate little box with the defective items that have been manufactured seperately to meet the spec. (There's also the "half of my advertising is effective, I don't know which half" line)

The half of advertising is effective trope hasn’t been true on the internet for over a decade. Advertisers on the internet know exactly how effective their advertising is.

> on the internet

The GP didn’t limit advertising to the internet.

Imagine you’re a law firm advertising on radio, billboard, bus stop benches, AND Instagram/Facebook.

Do you really know which half is converting?

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda wonder how long movies will continue make economic sense, at all. What we call movies are 1h30 or more of continuous contents, and in this day and age this becomes an increasingly long time to be stuck in one place doing one thing. If it’s a full hobby, like pottery or bordering why not, but for “casual” people I feel the proposition is less and less attractive.

That’s a short ass movie

I was curious, since I have been watching the "100 Films To See before You Die" and so many older films seem to clock in under 90 minutes (to be sure there are plenty of exceptions).

Just a handful of films under 90 minutes:

"Toy Story", "High Noon", "Rashomon", "This is Spinal Tap", "Frankenstein" (and "Bride of"), "Umberto D", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Run Lola Run", "Duel", "Rope"...

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#399

“Content is King” We all know this, Netflix knows this. And yet for some reason for years they have been aiming for quantity and not quality. Money is not enough in this department and baseball metaphors don’t do justice illustrating just how hard it is to put together a team that has that special thing going on. Some would argue it’s impossible - teams like the one behind Better Call Saul are just extremely rare and…

They were probably fooled by metrics. People were watching the crap, so it looked like crap was good enough (until it wasn’t).

Metrics can easily fool you on Netflix, because many will watch an entire bad season of a show. If you had to watch an episode a week, and you don’t care for the show, missing an episode one week will easily cause you to just drop the show and viewer number quickly drop off.

On Netflix I’ve watch entire seasons of bad shows, because it’s easy, and it might get better and now I’ve already watched the first two episodes. What does happen, and which can’t be meassured, is how many shows I don’t start the second season at all, because season two of that other Netflix original was bad, so there’s a big risk this is as well.

Part of the problem could be eliminated by moving to more classical episodical shows, rather that trying to make every show storylines. It would also make meassuring easier.

Re: Netflix’s bad habits have caught up with it

#400
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that’s all still nonsense > I said they have the mountains of data to predict better. I said that there must be some reason why they are ignoring that data Are they ignoring their data? Says who? I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps: 1. The data must say Woke content sucks 2. Netflix must not be listening to this data 3. Something must be forcing them to ignore it (but hehehe I…

> Are they ignoring their data? Says who? Well, the fact that they are following flops with flops is a good indicator. > I guess it’s more comfortable to your worldview to make several jumps: Ironically, the only person who made jumps here was you. All I'm doing is pointing out that they have to data to reduce the number of flops, and it isn't getting reduced, hence they must be ignoring that data. You are making the…

If you feel strongly about this and have the empirical data to back it up, you should write about that data publicly, post it on HN, call for a shareholder suit. I feel strongly that this is all conspiracy, but of course that’s why we have the legal system and the concept of fiduciary duty.
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