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Conversely, a new genre has emerged: Entire media ecosystems—YouTube channels, TikTok accounts, and podcasts—now exist solely to explain the content you didn't watch. You don't need to sit through the six-hour Rebel Moon director's cut; just watch the 18-minute "Everything Wrong With" video. We are outsourcing the experience of media to influencers. Nostalgia as a Service Look at the box office for 2023 and 2024. The top ten films are almost exclusively sequels, prequels, or adaptations of existing toys (Barbie), games (The Super Mario Bros. Movie), or ancient IP (Indiana Jones). Original screenplays have become arthouse commodities.
The golden age of choice is a marvel. But as the algorithms get smarter and the franchises get safer, one wonders if we are watching media—or if the media is watching us watch it, tweaking the formula until there is nothing left but the perfect, hollow loop of the "For You" page. Mad.Asses-All.Anal.Edition.XXX
Studios are now in a brutal cycle of "rationalization." We are witnessing the mass deletion of shows for tax write-offs (the infamous Batgirl and Final Space incidents), massive layoffs across Hollywood, and a pivot back to "safe" intellectual property (IP). Why gamble on a new idea when you can reboot Harry Potter as a TV series or turn Barbie into a philosophical existential comedy? Conversely, a new genre has emerged: Entire media
For decades, the question “What’s on TV?” was a shared cultural anchor. In the 1980s, 70% of Americans watched the M A S H* finale. In 2015, the Game of Thrones premiere drew a record-breaking crowd. But ask a random group of people today what they watched last night, and you are likely to receive a dozen different answers—from a thirty-second TikTok recap of a reality show they’ve never seen to a three-hour director’s cut of a 1990s sci-fi flop. Nostalgia as a Service Look at the box
The barrier to entry has never been lower. A teenager with a phone can make a documentary, a comedy sketch, or a video essay and reach millions. The diversity of voices—Korean cinema, African Afrobeats documentaries, Latinx genre fiction—has exploded beyond the old gatekeepers.
Shows with complex, dialogue-driven plots ( The Crown ) are losing ground to visually loud, plot-light spectacles ( Extraction 2 ) and low-stakes comfort viewing ( The Great British Baking Show ). If a viewer misses a line because they were checking Instagram, the show must still make sense. Consequently, writers are forced to "over-explain" or rely on visual shorthand.
