Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/essays/casual-viewing/

by thunderbong • 2 years ago

14 11 2 years ago

nplusonemag.com

firtoz• 2 years ago

Yesterday when I opened Netflix, the promoted content was... https://www.netflix.com/title/80092835

Which is: "Fireplace for Your Home: Crackling Birchwood Fireplace"

It's what you expect, a non-interrupted 60 minutes video of a fireplace. That's it.

It's apparently #6 in TV Shows today.

wkat42423• 2 years ago

This is because many businesses would put this up as a decoration. Probably private people too. I wouldn't be surprised if it was #6 because there isn't much choice in it.

Etheryte2• 2 years ago

I doubt a business would subscribe to Netflix for that, unless they already have a subscription for some other reason.

SonicScrub• 2 years ago

There used to be a TV channel back in the cable days for this, so this sort of thing is hardly new. It's excellent ambiance for your Christmas party.

astura• 2 years ago

It's popular right now because it's Christmas time. The video stimulates the yule log tradition for people who don't have fireplaces (most people) or don't want the mess of a real fire. A lot of people are off work right now, visiting friends and family, and want a nice seasonal ambiance.

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

It also used to air on TV in some region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_Log_(TV_program)

I understand that it would be confusing if you weren't familiar with the tradition.

megiddo• 2 years ago

That may be the most buried lead I've read in a decade.

I still have no idea what the point is. I gave up.

Anyone care to summarize?

1123581321• 2 years ago

It's a hodgepodge. These paragraphs near the end might be the point. I don't blame you for not getting this far.

"Here, streaming platforms have achieved a strange paradox. Never has a group of studios gained so much control over the production, distribution, exhibition, and reception of movies by making movies no one cares about or remembers. Having not only failed to discover a new generation of auteurs, the streamers have also ensured that their filmmakers are little more than precarious content creators, ineligible to share the profits of any hit. It’s a shift that has induced a profound sense of confusion.

“What are these movies?” the Hollywood producer asked me. “Are they successful movies? Are they not? They have famous people in them. They get put out by major studios. And yet because we don’t have any reliable numbers from the streamers, we actually don’t know how many people have watched them. So what are they? If no one knows about them, if no one saw them, are they just something that people who are in them can talk about in meetings to get other jobs? Are we all just trying to keep the ball rolling so we’re just getting paid and having jobs, but no one’s really watching any of this stuff? When does the bubble burst? No one has any fucking clue.”

"Netflix has created a pyramid scheme of attention, with no end in sight. And yet if the streamer admitted how little impact its movies make, it would undermine its long-running pitch to audiences, Hollywood talent, and their business representatives that the company is a grand star-making enterprise that produces great cinema with commercial appeal.

fidotron• 2 years ago

This is the inevitable consequence of tuning the content of productions to a subscription based business model once you have achieved market saturation. The purpose of the videos on Netflix is not to entertain or inform you, but to do the bare minimum to stop you from switching to something else.

This is beginning to take hold in parts of the games industry too, where it's far more important to keep the player "engaged" (in the absolute loosest possible term) than give them time to go off and do something else.

I believe a lot of 80s and 90s nostalgia stems from the fact media creators were incentivized to give the consumer what they actually valued in a relatively short time, whereas once given the opportunity the producers will drag it out as long as possible eventually milking everyone dry. You may have less in the way of explicit commercial breaks today, but the whole thing has become one big commercial break for something which the service is constantly promising to deliver and never does.

Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

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