zlacker

> Well, people that want to half-watch TV deserve stuff made for them too.

What? No they don't. Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention. There's already plenty of mediocre television out there you can use as background noise; we don't need to intentionally lower the bar for the media that's being made. As the article mentions, Netflix has already played its part in ruining the job landscape for writers and actors. I guess they see a need to play their part in devaluing the work that remains.

>>brendo+(OP)
6.5/10 movies only deserve 65% attention, and 6.5/10 is the target imdb rating for all streamers. Not bad, not great, but good enough to avoid controversy and maintain subs.

>>brendo+(OP)
“ Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention.”

According to who…?

There’s not even a universally agreed upon definition of ‘art’ last time I checked.

>>brendo+(OP)
Don't worry, very, very soon the crappy shows that people half-watch will no longer be produced. By humans.

We'll still need people to create actually good content, but that crappy filler stuff will be generated.

It will be a special kind of hell, but there will probably be some way to find out what to actually spend your time watching.

>>brendo+(OP)
> no they don’t. … > meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention

I think the person choosing to spend a few hours of their one life with some audio/visual media, whether they’re doing their laundry or not, is the one who gets to decide whether or not it’s art, and how much attention it deserves. Anything else leads to some uncomfortable places.

>>Michae+F2
Since when is there video that's not meant to be viewed? Is there also audio not meant to be listened? Written words not meant to be read? Of people want something to listen in the background while doing something else, there's music, podcasts and audiobooks.

>>skeled+Wq
> Since when is there video that's not meant to be viewed?

Since the day they were invented? Certainly by the mid 50s there were hundreds of different relgious sects all over the world with prohibitions of some kind.

Because different people can have differing opinions… or do you somehow believe literally 100% of the human population shares that opinion?

>>apprec+b6
There are two different perspectives. The viewer is, of course, entitled to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home. The creator or creators, conversely, are entitled to create something with the intention that it be viewed; if they didn't have that intention, then they probably wouldn't choose a visual medium.

I think what bothers me is Netflix inserting themselves into this conversation and trying to dictate what creators create. The idea of using data to say "well, some portion of people don't actually pay attention while their TV is on" to conclude "therefore, we should create visual media that is not intended to be watched" is the reductio ad absurdium conclusion of data-driven decision making gone wrong and it deserves ridicule.

>>brendo+Ix
...actually wait, you unintentionally brought up an interesting point, how exactly did Netflix get data on how people are consuming their media in the privacy of their own home. That's not something you'd get good data off a simple survey

>>tomato+bF
The Netflix app knows when it's playing but the video window isn't visible.

>>brendo+Ix
That’s fair, I guess my interpretation of Netflix's actions isn’t that they are not inserting themselves between artists and art lovers, but rather as simply another middleman between consumer and producers. Neither bad or good, imo. They apparently feel they have data showing that most people most of the time, don’t want art, so they are acting accordingly.

It’s not that I’ve never watched a terrible tv or movie, or can’t believe that Netflix’s actions here could lead to more of them. It’s just that I have difficulty raising this to the level of art. We only consider a minuscule fraction the printed word to be art, and we don’t accuse producers of the other 99.99999999% schlocky text produced daily (including hacker news comment posters like me tbc! :) of destroying literature. People who only want to read text they consider art continue to have options, even while the rest of us are free to read less elevated prose.

What it feels like to me, is that the cost to consume video, art or not, has steadily declined over decades, so a lot more people are watching a lot more video. Just like text after the printing press, most of that is never going to be art, and imo that’s fine. I have many other concerns with a world where ppl consume video all day, just not whether or not they are consuming art or being correctly deferential.

>>skeled+Wq
Why aren’t people allowed to to use movies or tv shows as background listening?

I know several people on my life who have been leaving a TV on in their house all day, for decades before Netflix existed. Personally I can’t stand this, but because it’s a distraction, not because they are somehow disrespecting someone involved in the production who wants to believe they are an artist.

>>brendo+(OP)
> Film and television are visual art forms that are meant to be viewed and given the appropriate attention

Some of it, yes. But the majority of it is just circus, designed, together with bread, to keep the masses quiet.

>>apprec+Mm1
Oh they can use it for background listening, but content shouldn't be specifically designed for that mode. Same way people using a hammer to drive screws shouldn't have screws designed for hammer driving. It just doesn't make sense when something more appropriate already exists.

>>Michae+Ku
The viewing of particular visual content being restricted by some religion, etc is a different argument from visual content somehow designed not to be viewed - by anyone - being created. The former is a matter of opinion, the latter a pointless paradox.

>>skeled+Q23
The latter is also an opinion, because the people who decide to create videos are also fallible human beings…

Unless you believe it’s impossible for someone to have contradictory or incoherent intentions?

>>Michae+4t4
Nothing about opinion or fallibility here. The latter is theoretically possible, but practically senseless. In a very literal way. There is 0 purpose to have something visual that is not intended to be consumed visually. What is a picture that is never seen? This is actually very similar to the philosophical question of whether or not a tree falling in a forest with nothing to hear it makes a sound, but this isn't philosophy we're dealing with.

>>skeled+I48
“0 purpose” according to who…?