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pachorizons | 7 months ago
Part of the reason why mass media entertainment - Squid Games, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Minecraft Movie, etc - is so popular is because it is a shared experience that is commodified and then widely distributed. People watch things because their friends and families watch them, and the shared experience is a sort of asynchronous social experience. The same is true of games - just look at the popularity of Lets Play content on Youtube and Twitch. The same is true of music - concerts are still the primary way musicians make money.
So long as this is true, the 'dream' of hyper customised, personalised Netflix-style entertainment is an utter fantasy that denies the human need to experience, share and discuss their entertainment. I would go so far as to call it a delusional claim, and also very dystopian - to realise this goal is to atomise the social lives of billions via a complete walling off of the shared lived experience.
(Maybe this is not true with porn, given it is a commonly viewed in a, uh, solitary context; although at the same time Porntube and pre-Verizon Tumblr both show that it turns out that many people share their porn taste with others.)
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