Platform Visibility
A little housekeeping up top: Since relaunching Mystery Date I've been itching to do a little personal podcasting, and this week I'm debuting the fruits of my (and pod-partner Jimmy Bramlett's) labors. The first set of episodes will be a slightly belated recap/critique of the HBO Max series IT: Welcome to Derry, which I hadn't intended to talk so much about, but it kept annoying me in fascinating ways, and I feel compelled to complain about it in excruciating detail into a microphone. The introductory episode is available to listen to below or on your podcast platform of choice. If you can't find it on your podcatcher, you can also subscribe via RSS here. New episodes will debut on Fridays (hopefully).
Speaking of HBO Max: This week Netflix launched an acquisition attempt to buy much of Warner Bros. IP and studio operations for nearly $90 billion. My knowledge of takeovers, IPO's, and M&A's is limited to having read Barbarians at the Gate in the 90s and listening to the unabridged audiobook of same when it was finally released a few years ago, so I hold no strong opinion about whether this is a legit attempt to gain WB's immense cultural cachet, or a cynical ploy to keep a major competitor out of play for a few years while the regulatory dust settles, but I think we can all agree that it's unlikely we're finally getting a home video release of Ken Russell's The Devils anytime soon.
If it seems like lately almost all the news about media consolidation has been bad, that's because it is. Even if you only half-care about monopolization, information access, and media bias, it's impossible not to notice that our information and entertainment environment has become less of a web than a set of 2 or 3 firehoses that blast everything you see and read into your face at a rate that makes it impossible to separate or differentiate the things you like and want from the overwhelming amount of pure shit in the pipeline. AI is part of the problem, of course, but it didn't create the firehose model or start the process of enshittification; it just hooked it up to a near-infinite ocean of sewage so the hose never stops spewing and you have no hope of ever feeling clean again.
There's not much we can do about AI except refuse to use it, and the effects of that are mostly meaningless except for maintaining that internal sense of superiority that comes from being correct in the face of a pandemic of wrongness. Even then, depending on your job and organizational rules, you may be pressed or even required to use the tool that your boss is investing in with the expectation that it will one day replace you. If that's the boat you're in, you have my deepest sympathies and firmest wishes that this bubble bursts soon and without taking us all down with it.
We're in a different position when it comes to the media we support and consume. I've cancelled multiple streaming services and magazine subscriptions this year as the ownership class has cozied up to the criminal conspiracy currently running the country, not because I think my meager contribution matters much one way or another to them, but because it matters to me. This has been made much easier by the collapse of legacy media as the VC firms that bought these various platforms ruthlessly contract and pivot, shedding most of the writers, reporters, and other personalities that gave them value in the first place. On the plus-side, a lot of those creators have discovered platforms that allow direct monetization, so I can still see and support their work with fewer ethical qualms about what else my dollars are enabling.
I could go on about this topic for basically forever, and I'm certain it will come up again here and on the podcast. I don't want this to be an overlong entry that no one ends up reading, so I'll close out for now by suggesting that we should all be more aware of our diets as consumers generally. That we should strive to understand where our money for services and subscriptions go every month, and if there is room to redistribute that to places where it could do more to build a a real community and culture, rather than increasing the number in the cell of gargantuan corporate spreadsheet by one. Where you do this is really up to you, though the two resources I think everyone should contribute to on an ongoing basis are Wikipedia/the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive, both of which are models for how to run an enormous digital empire in the public interest. Beyond that, find some creators and buy or subscribe to their stuff. Throw them some money when you can.
Oh, and remember that if there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, there's no ethical barrier to piracy, so torrent away and damn the paywalls!
