I only had time for one video this week. I’ll promise to do better next time.
Have you seen Last Samurai Standing? It’s good. But it also serves as another example for why Netflix hasn’t made entertainment better compared to the good old TV days.
I stumbled upon this article by the New York Times. It’s behind a paywall, so don’t bother with the link if you don’t have a subscription. It discusses the recent trend of Hollywood movies bombing heavily, despite having plenty of “stars.”
Things like streaming, Marvel fatigue, the lingering shockwaves of Covid, and even inflation are often cited as reasons why modern movies underperform at the box office. Some people even argue that “wokism,” which they claim injects every story with a political agenda, is to blame.
Recent entries on the list of box-office failures include:
I’ve already shared my opinion on why Amsterdam flopped a couple of years ago, despite having a massive all-star cast.
But I want to add one reason for current movie failures that I’ve never seen anyone mention: globalism.
Globalism has shifted the market from culturally isolated to multicultural. As a result, companies now design their products for a global audience. The problem is: if you try to make something for everyone, you end up targeting the lowest common denominator — which usually leads to a product that feels low-quality or generic to everyone.
In the world of movies, that looks like this: Imagine a film made for young men — primarily Western men — in the 1980s. You’re probably thinking about car chases, explosions, an action thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, directed by James Cameron, John McTiernan, or Richard Donner. Maybe Mel Gibson shows up in the final act to save the day.
Now imagine a 1990s movie made for women — Western women, younger, maybe married or engaged. You’re likely picturing Meg Ryan in a Nora Ephron film. She falls in love with Tom Hanks, and every few scenes there’s a harmless little joke to ease the tension.
Filmmakers in the past knew exactly which demographic they were targeting. That’s why those movies worked — not just at the box office, but artistically as well.
But today’s filmmakers have decided they want to make movies for everyone. It’s like making a rom-com and casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead. Or making an ’80s-style action flick and casting Charlize Theron or Ana de Armas as the hero (both of which literally happened).
And that’s still not enough for a global audience. “Representation” has to be included, no matter what. We need a gay character, a trans character, someone who’s Muslim, the Asian guy has to be the action star, and of course we need an Indian comedic side character. Where’s the mixed-race couple that shows how tolerant we are? And naturally, the one group it’s acceptable to offend — white heterosexual males — has to be the villain.
The result is a Frankenstein movie designed to please all demographics and cultures while being terrified to take any risks.
By trying to pander to everyone, Hollywood is getting almost no one into theaters anymore.
The only way to fix this — and bring people back to theaters — is to make highly targeted niche films again. Instead of producing a $100 million blockbuster for everyone (that no one watches), make ten $10 million niche films. You’ll attract ten different target demographics, and at the very least you’ll recoup your investment. Every now and then, one of those smaller films will go viral — your $10 million investment becomes a $100 million success.
That’s how Hollywood used to operate. And I don’t see any good reason why they couldn’t return to that business model.
This week, I had a bit of an epiphany. I’d just completed my STORY52 project and had to decide what to work on next. I started with four different ideas, and after writing two pages for each, none of them clicked. So I abandoned all of them.
However, abandoning them didn’t free my mind. It didn’t help me think about the next idea or dive into a new project clearheaded. Instead, my thoughts kept circling back to the ideas I had tossed aside. I kept asking myself: Should I return to them? Is there something in those ideas worth exploring after all?
I realized soon after that most story ideas will stick with you forever—until you finally flesh them out into full stories. The 52 short stories I wrote for STORY52 are on paper and therefore out of my head. But the four ideas I deemed “not good enough” are still lurking in the depths of my mind, creeping around a dark corner to remind me of their existence whenever I start thinking about writing something else.
The only way to get these idea-creatures out of my head is to actually work on them. Even if there are better ideas in my swipe file or floating around in my mind, the abandoned ones won’t let me go until I’ve at least finished a first draft.
That experience helped me formulate a simple rule for my writing: When you start working on an idea, finish it. Always. No excuses.
I intend to stick to that rule from now on. It will lead to more stories, more books, and a lot more sanity.
The Selfish Gene is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. It changed my perspective on life and on what it means to be human. It also sheds light on the world we live in and even on how politics works. If you feel like nothing makes sense anymore in the “clown world” we were born into, read this book—suddenly, many things start to click.
In simple, accessible language, Dawkins explains the theory of evolution and how humans came into existence. The central idea is that every organism is a “survival machine” for the genes it carries. Each human is essentially a machine controlled by genes acting as pilots. These genes survive by jumping from one machine to another, made possible through reproduction.
After finishing the book, my view of myself, my family, and even the possibility of life’s meaning changed profoundly. The Selfish Gene is what I would call a true “must-read.” If you haven’t explored it yet, I highly recommend doing so.
Just as a side note: The Selfish Gene does not rule out the existence of a creator, despite what some reviewers—and even Dawkins himself—might suggest. It simply explains the theory of evolution, which (even if fully true in detail) does not necessarily make the existence of God impossible.
Learn more about the book on Goodreads.
Search engines may be on their way out thanks to artificial intelligence, but I found myself wondering: How will AI crawl websites to generate its answers?
I believe that whatever systems companies like Google developed to search and index webpages will simply be repurposed to “train” AI models to judge whether a piece of content is high quality or not. In the end, what’s marketed as AI is often just another algorithm doing what Google’s crawlers have been doing for decades.
Because of this, AI optimization will not be very different from traditional search engine optimization.
Yesterday, for example, I used ChatGPT to look for a good movie. I wanted to start with the earliest classics and work my way through the history of cinema year by year. ChatGPT recommended silent films by Georges Méliès—among the first true movies, dating back to around 1898 (some say 1902). It gave me a link to a free YouTube upload and shared some background information with another source.
But how did ChatGPT know this was a good answer? And how did it know the link would actually lead me to the right place?
The answer is SEO. The information about the film, the link to the video, and the related resources were well optimized and ranked high in Google’s search results. ChatGPT simply relied on that structure to determine that these sources were likely to be high quality.
Of course, you usually have a brief conversation with the AI to fine-tune its responses—this is a form of answer optimization, that is unique to AI because it happens directly between the model and the user. Still, whenever an AI gives me a link, it’s doing so for essentially the same reason Google ranks a link highly.
Therefore, even if search engines fade because of AI, SEO will not disappear. Most of its principles will continue to influence how AI models refer users to your content, just as Google does today. Understanding the basics of SEO is still essential—and worth our time.