[basch]

I think this over values a lot of what is produced for tv and streaming, which I could at best describe as filler. A ton of cultural production has little to no artistic value, but exists to be basically slightly different and fresher than last years iteration. Why watch last years hallmark or lifetime movie when this years is the same one but refilmed? The same can be said for at least half of the Netflix/CBS output.

[periphrasis]

I don’t disagree about the artistic merit or lack thereof of most “content”. Will AI produced content be worse than 98% of what’s on Netflix? Probably not! But this will drastically change the economics of content creation, such that something that has the chance to be actual art will be dramatically more expensive than that which can benignly occupy a user’s attention as they alternate between staring at a screen and flipping through their phone. Give it a generation, or even just a decade (look at how rapidly audience tastes have degenerated since 2014 or so) and no one will be able to conceive of “content” being anything else. Who is going to sign on to fund popular entertainment with artistic ambition, eg The Fabelmans, or art house fare, eg Tar, in such a world? Such a future, a world without popular or even middle brow art, is dystopian to its core (and indeed it may already be our present) which is why I fail to conceal my contempt for the aesthetic values of anyone who would eagerly embrace it.

[basch]

Does “art” occupy much of the collective attention to begin with? If we look at best picture nominees by box office gross, something like 6/10 weren’t seen by anyone to begin with, and that was an unusually low percentage historically.

[LewisVerstappen]

Exactly.

You'll get one Kubrick/Spielberg/George Lucas every decade. But the vast majority of what's produced is another dumb Star Wars movie or another Marvel cash grab.

[wahnfrieden]

You are looking only at mass distributed titles