The Dude wrote:I'm not paying anywhere near free for the tv I watch

This proves my point--people who make free content (like TV in the 70s) can get away with making crap, because no one consuming it has any real investment in it.

Conversely, the internet has removed the gatekeeper and opened up creator controlled content paid for by minimal advertising and viewer support. The existence of sites like Patreon can lead to a resurgence of the patronage model that resulted in great works of art. Sure the signal to noise ratio has increased, but people still stand out. The only one stopping someone from creating the thing they want to create is the audience not wanting it.

WheelsFellOff wrote:Conversely, the internet has removed the gatekeeper and opened up creator controlled content paid for by minimal advertising and viewer support. The existence of sites like Patreon can lead to a resurgence of the patronage model that resulted in great works of art. Sure the signal to noise ratio has increased, but people still stand out. The only one stopping someone from creating the thing they want to create is the audience not wanting it.

All that is well and good, but there's a lot of evidence that suggests that because real old fashioned reporting is expensive, the internet (and the difficulty of monetizing content) has resulted in a serious decline in the quality of information available to us. This, however really isn't central to my basic complaint.

I guess I mostly don't see a need for "an internet of things" and suspect it will create more harm than good. And I like to touch things.

The internet of things is marketing and is only intended to create profit.

TenuredVulture wrote:

The Dude wrote:I'm not paying anywhere near free for the tv I watch

This proves my point--people who make free content (like TV in the 70s) can get away with making crap, because no one consuming it has any real investment in it.

What's the timeline, then, bc tv hasn't been free since the 70s

obviously you didn't grow up in philadelphia (non-south philly division) since we didn't get cable 'til around 1985

The other problem with this argument is that you're suggesting music can't be good now, since we can stream it for free. You're kind of all over he place

Bucky wrote:obviously you didn't grow up in philadelphia (non-south philly division) since we didn't get cable 'til around 1985

Yes I grew up around here. That doesn't change the point though, channels like ESPN and HBO started in the 70s. Even 1985 is 30 years ago.

Bucky wrote:obviously you didn't grow up in philadelphia (non-south philly division) since we didn't get cable 'til around 1985

But when we got it, man, we got it

Fun fact: prism launched in 1976 and had 6 paying subscribers, all in upper darby

Bucky, is 1985 what your mom told you?

I remember being obsessed with the pay per view movie preview channel, even though I don't think I ever ordered one

The ppv channel used to play the first couple minutes of a movie for free before scrambling, hoping you'd get sucked in and buy it. I always hoped against hope they'd forget to turn off "Disorderlies"

The Dude wrote:"Disorderlies"

YES

The Dude wrote:The other problem with this argument is that you're suggesting music can't be good now, since we can stream it for free. You're kind of all over he place

It's not that music can't be good now, it's that people don't care much about the music they listen to. Obviously, this does not apply to everyone--some people care a great deal. But when people tell me they've downloaded 15,000 songs, I wonder how close do they listen to any of it. When I bought Quadrophenia with my hard earned lawn mowing money, I listened to it probably dozens of times if not more before I could afford to buy another album.

The overall point is we're increasingly treating things as disposable. I think TV is an exception, because for a couple of reasons we're actually more invested (both financially and in terms of the time we spend watching it) than we used to be. TV is different in other ways too--I think the current number of channels puts things in a kind of consumer sweet spot. When there were only three channels, shows had to appeal to a wide audience, and thus ended up appealing to that old lowest common denominator. Now, with a couple of hundred channels, you can have a "hit" show that really only appeals to a niche audience but there aren't so many channels that the audience becomes so diluted there's no money to be made anymore and all there is to watch are shows about storage locker contents and you tubes about people throwing food on the floor.

I was responding to your point that since tv used to be free, that they didn't care about the quality

The Dude wrote::lol:

The ppv channel used to play the first couple minutes of a movie for free before scrambling, hoping you'd get sucked in and buy it. I always hoped against hope they'd forget to turn off "Disorderlies"

I remember watching scrambled soft core porn hoping to see a green slightly wavy nipple.

The Dude wrote:I was responding to your point that since tv used to be free, that they didn't care about the quality

Well, TV is much better today than it's ever been in my life, and I think that's because of the economics of television have changed fairly drastically.

The Dude wrote:I was responding to your point that since tv used to be free, that they didn't care about the quality

I think he's talking about himself. He used to be free, but then he got married.

TenuredVulture wrote:

The Dude wrote:I was responding to your point that since tv used to be free, that they didn't care about the quality

Well, TV is much better today than it's ever been in my life, and I think that's because of the economics of television have changed fairly drastically.

I get the point, I just don't see it. I think people just got better at it and weren't prudish anymore about what they showed. Television has always been about making money

feel like there should be more excitement about Spike Eskin posting