Hey!! you have more than one female subscriber!! Kathleen here...Mother of one of your classmates, Alexis. She followed your career, gave us your book, and then signed me up for your column as a Mother's Day gift a few years ago. Well, done, Ethan!!!!
Agreed. I’m glad Matt came on the pod and I hope he’s back again soon but the fact that he couldn’t keep the clown nose off for more than five seconds during the discussion about college was off putting. It shows a lack of substance and lack of confidence in your rebuttal.
I think Ethan’s point about a lack of rigor in certain curriculum is worth taking seriously.
Yes that was a very unappealing section and a bit ironic. Matt was on previous podcasts while he was striking in Hollywood partly due to AI concerns, to which he had an awkward analogy about a "social contract." To then have no substantive feedback on Ethan's article on AI/college would indicate to me either a lack of critical thinking/logic or narcissism.
My main thought about the "attention dollars" would be that:
1) I mostly don't do a bunch of this stuff. No IG, no social media other than Substack and a bit of reddit lurking but even that is 3% of what it was for me years ago.
2) There is a lot of very high quality UGC on say Youtube that is "the work" (also if you don't pay to skip ads on Youtube you need your head examined). You could spend 24 hours a day just watching high quality astronomy, or history, or archeology, or biology, or even geology channels. And the "the work" the big entertainment and information companies and even say PBS is able to put out in those spaces is strictly speaking inferior to what the UGC creates.
3) I just don't think it matters if this past form of work dies as a big entertainment product. Basically no one attends poetry recitals anymore. Symphonies are run on shoe strings instead of being the pillars of cultural discussion. Yes that sucks if you love poetry, but life isn't all rainbows and lollipops. A world with no HBO is one with one less cool thing, but that has been true of all sorts of things throughout history, things change.
4) No one owes the people in Hollywood or tied up in this old entertainment economy a job. Anymore than they should be forced to put money into my pocket via a twitch channels streaming my world class Axis and Allies or Terraforming Mars exploits. People like what they like and when that matches up with your interests you can be VERY lucky. But for 99% of people their interests aren't really a path to fame/fortune.
The Pitt does suck. Not b/c of woke. Every story line is a cliche. The gay couple. The trans. The neuro divergent doc. The “woke” female doc.
Doing progressive story is fine, as long as the writing is good. The is us first season (havent watched 2 yet) was great. Didnt seem force. Just good writing. Every story line in the Pitt seems shoehorned into the script for no reason.
This is actually similar the ES article, the pitt is ai writing. Boring. Lame.
Progressive during The Wire meant a gripping story about unheralded groups, providing moving and nuanced scenes and dialogue. Progressive now states white men are oppressors and everyone else is oppressed. This despite Asian women, men, and another dozen groups of non whites earning more on average than white men.
The Onion come to life, in other words.
I remember liking their last podcast, but multiple times Klinman sounds like a legitimate douche.
I think his critiques of the creator economy scam are right on. Watch, in a few years, when Mr. Beast launches some sort of Beast Corp® umbrella protection for creators it'll be lauded as some expansion of his savvy hustle and business sense, when in fact it'll just be a recreation of, oh, I dunno, a *union*. The over-"fracking of the pie" is how our new tech overlords say they are creating value from disruption, when really all they are doing is demolishing structures and reselling the parts back a la carte, swearing that it was what the consumer was always clamoring for. "Nooo, we didn't just recreate cable! We made multiple channels showing independent content algorithmically attuned to your schedule that you can aggregate merely by paying for subscriptions to each individual streamer - you dum dumbs!"
Only thing I wanted to hear more on with Matt's fin-syn (sp?) idea was how to get around Netflix or whoever not owning the IP if they were the ones who bankroll the production. Guess we need Matt back on to answer 🤷🏻♂️
Klinman's point about scam creator economy is compelling until you think about it for a second.
I enjoy college sports. Even in the NIL world, very little of the revenue generated from advertising and ticket sales goes to the players. I have had some ethical misgivings about that model. But I never had the sense that *I* was being screwed as compared to professional sports where more of the money goes to the players.Similarly, the WNBA is growing in popularity. I don't know the details of their revenue sharing other than that the players are not very well compensated. If their popularity continues to grow, and Major League baseball's continues to decline, that isn't a matter of fans getting screwed -- they have chosen a product they find more compelling.
Now, maybe the content on the tech platforms *shouldn't* be more compelling, and it's a matter of hacking our dopamine feedback systems, but in terms of survival, it doesn't really matter. In terms of their own preferences, the customer is always right.
There is not a fixed pie of advertising revenue that legacy content providers are entitled to. If someone snapped their fingers and made the tech companies disappear tomorrow, that wouldn't this money wouldn't go back to the studios. Local newspapers were undone by Craigslist. Craigslist isn't around any more, but local newspapers are in even worse shape. It feels better to have a villain, but that doesn't get you anywhere either.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. In your analogy, it wouldn’t be the players I’m referring to, it would be the teams. The team is what the resources go to, the team is collectively creating the “show.”
Or to put it back to my analogy, since the NFL is who collects the attention dollars for the teams, the question a fan should ask is “is my team getting enough of a cut the money the NFL is making in its massive licensing deals.” Especially since the team is the one actually “putting that money” on screen to make a quality entertainment product. (Out of curiosity I looked it up and the NFL splits 67% of all revenue equally among the teams. Remember, Meta and TikTok give essentially zero.)
My argument isn’t about “ethics” or “entitled,” it’s “what are your attention dollars going to?" Is the audience getting the quality shit they deserve given how much money is made off thier attention? Or is it all just going to the relatively tiny number of people running the tech platform it's all hosted on.
As for fin-syn, a better thought experiment I should have posited to demonstrate why it will benefit the audience in a world where Netflix continues to near monopoly-level dominance is: If Netflix bought the NFL (not rights, just literally the NFL and all the teams) do you think the quality of football would go up or down?
I was hoping for more substantial talk on stuck culture. To me it’s Hollywood version of fracking the pie. It shows a complete lack of industry self esteem when everything is a remake or an IP grab.
I will never understand people who end friendships over politics/ social media etc. It's crazy to me. How we got to this place where some people think you have to agree with everything about someone to have dinner with them is bizarre.
Saw Matt was unfortunately back on the docket and knew immediately it would be unbearable, won’t listen just a comment. Please continue to make his episodes available to the general public gratis because the paywall has vehemently rejected what he represents, the paragon of everything beta.
Hey!! you have more than one female subscriber!! Kathleen here...Mother of one of your classmates, Alexis. She followed your career, gave us your book, and then signed me up for your column as a Mother's Day gift a few years ago. Well, done, Ethan!!!!
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Kathleen! Very lovely to see you here. Alexis was such a smart, kind and outspoken person who I always had enormous respect for.
Well, fuck me. ✅🎇
That was unlistenable. I hope I’m in the minority but then again, I hope that never happens again.
I concur.
“Insufferable” is the first word that came to my mind.
Agreed. I’m glad Matt came on the pod and I hope he’s back again soon but the fact that he couldn’t keep the clown nose off for more than five seconds during the discussion about college was off putting. It shows a lack of substance and lack of confidence in your rebuttal.
I think Ethan’s point about a lack of rigor in certain curriculum is worth taking seriously.
Yes that was a very unappealing section and a bit ironic. Matt was on previous podcasts while he was striking in Hollywood partly due to AI concerns, to which he had an awkward analogy about a "social contract." To then have no substantive feedback on Ethan's article on AI/college would indicate to me either a lack of critical thinking/logic or narcissism.
Got going a bit in the middle. Still guy makes Oppenheimer’s girlfriend who drowned herself seem well balanced.
Last 20 minutes were really bad
My main thought about the "attention dollars" would be that:
1) I mostly don't do a bunch of this stuff. No IG, no social media other than Substack and a bit of reddit lurking but even that is 3% of what it was for me years ago.
2) There is a lot of very high quality UGC on say Youtube that is "the work" (also if you don't pay to skip ads on Youtube you need your head examined). You could spend 24 hours a day just watching high quality astronomy, or history, or archeology, or biology, or even geology channels. And the "the work" the big entertainment and information companies and even say PBS is able to put out in those spaces is strictly speaking inferior to what the UGC creates.
3) I just don't think it matters if this past form of work dies as a big entertainment product. Basically no one attends poetry recitals anymore. Symphonies are run on shoe strings instead of being the pillars of cultural discussion. Yes that sucks if you love poetry, but life isn't all rainbows and lollipops. A world with no HBO is one with one less cool thing, but that has been true of all sorts of things throughout history, things change.
4) No one owes the people in Hollywood or tied up in this old entertainment economy a job. Anymore than they should be forced to put money into my pocket via a twitch channels streaming my world class Axis and Allies or Terraforming Mars exploits. People like what they like and when that matches up with your interests you can be VERY lucky. But for 99% of people their interests aren't really a path to fame/fortune.
The Pitt does suck. Not b/c of woke. Every story line is a cliche. The gay couple. The trans. The neuro divergent doc. The “woke” female doc.
Doing progressive story is fine, as long as the writing is good. The is us first season (havent watched 2 yet) was great. Didnt seem force. Just good writing. Every story line in the Pitt seems shoehorned into the script for no reason.
This is actually similar the ES article, the pitt is ai writing. Boring. Lame.
Every unredeemable bad character on that show was white. If a character did bad things and was not white, they had nuance.
Agree. I think it's just boring and annoying. Like, look at the Wire, a show that has an obvious progressive agenda. But is great
It is sort of a progressive agenda, but it also isn't afraid to expose the downsides of that agenda and the warts of the street life.
Plus the progressive agenda has changed a lot.
Progressive during The Wire meant a gripping story about unheralded groups, providing moving and nuanced scenes and dialogue. Progressive now states white men are oppressors and everyone else is oppressed. This despite Asian women, men, and another dozen groups of non whites earning more on average than white men.
The Onion come to life, in other words.
I remember liking their last podcast, but multiple times Klinman sounds like a legitimate douche.
I watched part of a mid season episode with my wife (she watched the whole season) and felt like I was being lectured to about four different topics.
Love these pods with Klinman!
I think his critiques of the creator economy scam are right on. Watch, in a few years, when Mr. Beast launches some sort of Beast Corp® umbrella protection for creators it'll be lauded as some expansion of his savvy hustle and business sense, when in fact it'll just be a recreation of, oh, I dunno, a *union*. The over-"fracking of the pie" is how our new tech overlords say they are creating value from disruption, when really all they are doing is demolishing structures and reselling the parts back a la carte, swearing that it was what the consumer was always clamoring for. "Nooo, we didn't just recreate cable! We made multiple channels showing independent content algorithmically attuned to your schedule that you can aggregate merely by paying for subscriptions to each individual streamer - you dum dumbs!"
Only thing I wanted to hear more on with Matt's fin-syn (sp?) idea was how to get around Netflix or whoever not owning the IP if they were the ones who bankroll the production. Guess we need Matt back on to answer 🤷🏻♂️
Klinman's point about scam creator economy is compelling until you think about it for a second.
I enjoy college sports. Even in the NIL world, very little of the revenue generated from advertising and ticket sales goes to the players. I have had some ethical misgivings about that model. But I never had the sense that *I* was being screwed as compared to professional sports where more of the money goes to the players.Similarly, the WNBA is growing in popularity. I don't know the details of their revenue sharing other than that the players are not very well compensated. If their popularity continues to grow, and Major League baseball's continues to decline, that isn't a matter of fans getting screwed -- they have chosen a product they find more compelling.
Now, maybe the content on the tech platforms *shouldn't* be more compelling, and it's a matter of hacking our dopamine feedback systems, but in terms of survival, it doesn't really matter. In terms of their own preferences, the customer is always right.
There is not a fixed pie of advertising revenue that legacy content providers are entitled to. If someone snapped their fingers and made the tech companies disappear tomorrow, that wouldn't this money wouldn't go back to the studios. Local newspapers were undone by Craigslist. Craigslist isn't around any more, but local newspapers are in even worse shape. It feels better to have a villain, but that doesn't get you anywhere either.
I think you are misunderstanding my point. In your analogy, it wouldn’t be the players I’m referring to, it would be the teams. The team is what the resources go to, the team is collectively creating the “show.”
Or to put it back to my analogy, since the NFL is who collects the attention dollars for the teams, the question a fan should ask is “is my team getting enough of a cut the money the NFL is making in its massive licensing deals.” Especially since the team is the one actually “putting that money” on screen to make a quality entertainment product. (Out of curiosity I looked it up and the NFL splits 67% of all revenue equally among the teams. Remember, Meta and TikTok give essentially zero.)
My argument isn’t about “ethics” or “entitled,” it’s “what are your attention dollars going to?" Is the audience getting the quality shit they deserve given how much money is made off thier attention? Or is it all just going to the relatively tiny number of people running the tech platform it's all hosted on.
As for fin-syn, a better thought experiment I should have posited to demonstrate why it will benefit the audience in a world where Netflix continues to near monopoly-level dominance is: If Netflix bought the NFL (not rights, just literally the NFL and all the teams) do you think the quality of football would go up or down?
Just got to the opening music. Epic intro segment lol.
Scorsese style
No rage against the machine open? This ain’t the pure dope
I was hoping for more substantial talk on stuck culture. To me it’s Hollywood version of fracking the pie. It shows a complete lack of industry self esteem when everything is a remake or an IP grab.
I will never understand people who end friendships over politics/ social media etc. It's crazy to me. How we got to this place where some people think you have to agree with everything about someone to have dinner with them is bizarre.
It’s about damn time
Saw Matt was unfortunately back on the docket and knew immediately it would be unbearable, won’t listen just a comment. Please continue to make his episodes available to the general public gratis because the paywall has vehemently rejected what he represents, the paragon of everything beta.
I think I just fundamentally disagree that Congress needs to step in to increase the supply of scripted television.
Correction, public companies have an embedded growth principal because their professional managers are compensated primarily via stock options
It is quite a bit more complicated than that.
Obviously but the incentives they’re talking about are pretty specific to public companies. You don’t see private compiles run in this way very often
And I don’t mean pe or vc owned firms.