#Netflix Ad-Supported Plan

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Netflix is rolling out its new system to crack down on password sharing in Canada, one that will see customers who share their accounts across multiple locations pay an extra $8 a month.

The streaming giant says it will begin notifying Canadian users today by email about limitations on who can access their account outside their household.

In Canada, the new rules are as follows: An ad-supported plan that can be used by one person on one device in one location will cost $5.99 a month.

The same basic plan without ads will cost $9.99 a month.

Under what the company calls its "standard" plan for $16.99 a month, a user can watch on two devices at the same time, but they must be in the same physical location. If they want to watch in different locations — at a parent's home and a college-aged child's dorm room, for example, or between two members of a couple who live apart — there will be an extra fee of $7.99 a month.

The standard plan will be limited to one additional user. [...]

When Netflix launched in Canada in 2010, it cost $7.99 a month and had no formal limitations on the number of devices on the same account, although its selection of titles was much more limited than what was available in other countries for the same price. [...]

Netflix did not say when it would begin enforcing the new rules, but in its most recent earnings report it said it planned to roll out the new rules worldwide some time before the end of March.

"Over the last year, we've been exploring different approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we're now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months, starting today in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain," the company said.

Once the system is in place, customers will have to set their "primary location" for their devices but they will be able to "still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new TV, like at a hotel or holiday rental." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[queerly-autistic]

I've been thinking about potential pick-up of Our Flag Means Death by another streamer, and how it all might be tying in with the current BBC release, and I have some thoughts about what might be happening and what we can do to give the show the best chance of being picked up.

I think it's important to start by saying that all the whisperings that I heard over the past few months (including from some people who work at/with the BBC) pointed firmly towards a scheduled March release for Our Flag Means Death on the BBC. Needless to say, this means I was extremely surprised when they suddenly announced it was dropping at the beginning of February. I think it's also clear from everything I've seen that the BBC's marketing/social media plan for the release was not ready for February (there was no trailer, which was odd), which, again, really supports the idea that the show was initially schedule for a March release, not a February release.

I firmly believe the release was brought forward. The question is: why? Is it because they saw how much noise and press the show (and our campaign) was getting, and decided to try and capitalise on it? Or is there something else going on?

On top of that, we now have specific questions about Our Flag Means Death appearing on YouGov UK, including asking whether respondents would watch another series. This doesn't just happen. The charity I work for has commissioned YouGov polling (including some very recently) which I have been tangentially involved with, and so I know that this sort of polling is not easy work, and it's not cheap. Someone has put time AND money into commissioning this polling. This is significant. Someone is not only watching, but they are specifically watching the UK response to the show, and putting questions to the UK audience about it.

I have strong suspicions that a streamer (or several streamers) are interested in picking up the show, and are using the UK release as a live case study (Apple, Amazon and Netflix also have a presence in the UK, so we are a big target audience for them in a way we never were for Max). This could account for both the potential bringing forward of the BBC release (they didn't want to wait until March), and the YouGov polling that's going on (bear in mind, the YouGov questions were specifically as part of a wider survey about streaming services).

And this isn't just a passing interest: working with the BBC to bring forward the release, and investing time and money into YouGov polling? That's a strong interest. That's so interested they've already invested something into it.

Of course, I don't know anything for certain, so take everything with a pinch of salt (it's just a theory...a gay pirates theory...), but I think it's something to consider as a strong possibility.

So what does this mean for us?

It means we need to keep streaming on iPlayer. Watch it as many times as you can. Share it with your friends and family. If you're outside the UK, get yourself a VPN and join the party. Watch the live broadcasts on Monday nights (if you have iPlayer, you can stream the live broadcast - this is what I do because I don't have a TV). Keep tweeting about it (add the #OurFlagBBC hashtag to the existing hashtags we're using). Tag and email the UK media (including TV guides and radio shows) and ask them to talk about the show/our campaign. If you're tagging/emailing Apple, Amazon or Netflix, make sure you mention you're from the UK (and tag their UK specific social media accounts).

According to Parrot Analytics, the demand in the UK for the show is rising - let's keep adding to that!

You can also sign up to YouGov and rate the show (more instructions in the quote retweets of the tweet I linked to earlier), and keep answering questions about TV shows and streaming (and marking Our Flag Means Death as one of your interests) as a way to try and get them to give you the specific questions about the show (these start as a question about streaming and streaming services, which then turn into questions about OFMD, so if you get a survey like that, take it!).

It's also worth considering that if there's any validity to this, then there's a possibility that they might be waiting until after the show has finished airing in the UK (the finale is airing on 25th March) to crunch all the numbers together. This means that if we don't hear anything in the next few weeks, do not despair! We need to buckle in for a long fight, and to keep pushing the show and making noise over the next few weeks and months, especially around the BBC release.

This show is worth the fight. Let's get our damned men back!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[leclerc-s]

big reputations - part five

series masterlist // previous // next

ASKING DANIEL RICCIARDO THE MOST POPULAR F1 FAN QUESTIONS

comments

user1 this interview further proves that max is daniel’s emotional support boyfriend.

↳ user2 was that ever up for debate?

↳ user1 no, but you get what i mean.

user3 oh, he’s got those stupid stars in his eyes again. this man is down bad.

user4 i love how he never brushes off questions about daphne. every single time he answers the questions about her

↳ user5 take notes joe alwyn. this is how you talk about mother daphne.

↳ user4 the shade towards joe. this fandom will never let him rest.

user6 these two are never beating the dating allegations.

↳ user7 i don't think they want to

↳ user6 oh for sure, these two want to know how far this whole thing is going to go

user8 even if they aren't dating it's such an adorable friendship

↳ user9 it'll be official when he meets ryan and blake. that's when you know they are actually dating.

↳ user8 or when she meets christian and max, oh wait.

↳ user9 that's actually a good point

user10 someone stop this man from being so down bad for daphne.

user11 i am loving that max is daphne and daniel's third wheel.

↳ user12 i'm living for max teasing daniel. you know this man does it constantly and never let's daniel rest

↳ user11 oh i know max has never given him a moment of peace.

george russell everyday i am reminded that daphne jones fans are a different breed.

lando norris i would ask why but i have been on twitter today. apparently dts is trending on netflix

alex albon charles, mate, you've got the daphne fans crying.

charles leclerc oh god, what did i do now?

fernando alonso season 1 episode 8 charles leclerc oh.

daniel ricciardo is that why we're trending? i thought old tweets of mine were found and i was getting cancelled

esteban ocon have you said things that’ll get you cancelled?

daniel ricciardo no, but it’s a genuine fear estie! max verstappen at the ‘girlies’ have joined in on our mutual hatred for zak (oscar and lando you saw nothing) oscar piastri never thought i would see the day max verstappen said ‘girlies’

yuki tsunoda added one person

yuki tsunoda speaking of daphne jones ARE YOU TWO DATING RICCIARDO??

george russell yuki who did you add??

unknown number hello, it's liam lawson. george russell oh cool.

daniel ricciardo i don't feel like i have to expose my personal life to you people. i already see you too much.

max verstappen stop being a pussy and ask her out.

daniel ricciardo how about you shut the fuck up for once?

charles leclerc in the words of arthur, 'uh oh, the girls are fighting'

logan sargeant arthur's chronically online so it doesn't surprise me that he knows what that is.

valtteri bottas have you asked her out daniel?

nico hülkenberg i have to admit this is the highlight of my year, have you done it yet ricciardo??

kevin magnussen yes, have you?

mark webber MAN UP RICCIARDO! FUCKING DO IT ALREADY!

jenson button no pressure or anything, but have you?

daniel ricciardo oh for fucks sake. i hate all of you.

liam lawson i'm so confused.

liam lawson i thought they were dating already? considering what ajdbfwei

max verstappen sorry, liam is currently out of commission.

george russell why is that so fucking threatening? what did you do verstappen?

max verstappen nothing. liam is just out of it for the next 20-30 minutes

sergio perez i have never seen max's body move so fast. i fear liam is unconscious.

carlos sainz what the hell is happening?

daniel ricciardo what the hell did you do to liam? is he okay?

max verstappen liam is okay. i pinky swear it.

daphne jones what happened?

max verstappen i was not going to let liam ruin the magnificent plan that i made. he had to be silenced.

daniel ricciardo you make it sound like you killed the poor guy

daphne jones he makes it sound like he's a mafia hitman

max verstappen i could totally be a hitman.

daniel ricciardo cat-dad verstappen could never be a hitman. mad-max however is a different story.

max verstappen i could be a hitman who loves cats. hitmen have many sides to them daniel.

daniel ricciardo do you think this man could be a hitman?

daphne jones that man could never be a hitman

daniel ricciardo could max be a hitman?

charles leclerc absolutely not oscar piastri no fucking way sabrina carpenter i'm going to need context but the answer is no

max verstappen fuck you guys. i could be hitman.

daphne jones face it max, you could never be one.

sabrina carpenter however this version of max and charles could totally be hitmen

charles leclerc how the hell?

sabrina carpenter tiktok is a wonderful place.

daphne jones i thought it was the countless twitter tags asking if you had seen it already? sabrina carpenter oh no it came up on my for you page. it was a video called f1 quotes i quote on the daily. i, of course spiralled when i saw that specific part.

sabrina carpenter my favorite driver is kimi.

charles leclerc well he's retired. so who's your favorite driver on the grid right now?

sabrina carpenter fernando alonso

daniel ricciardo wow, that's so mean.

oscar piastri i would've said the same thing just to annoy you.

daniel ricciardo look who's no longer my favorite grid son

charles leclerc what the fuck? i'm a part of this group chat too.

daniel ricciardo you're on thin fucking ice until you tell xavi off or someone at ferrari.

max verstappen you can't seriously still be bitter about singapore

daniel ricciardo OF COURSE I CAN! HE WAS SACRIFICED MAX! LIKE A LAMB TO SLAUGHTER! I CAN BE BITTER IF HE WON'T!

sabrina carpenter i think charles has no choice but to enter his reputation era.

oscar piastri not yet, he hasn't hit rock bottom yet. charles leclerc and, in the rookie's opinion, what is rock bottom? oscar piastri dnf, dns, dsq max verstappen if at any point charles gets dsq'd i will be calling oscar a psychic. daniel ricciardo WHY WOULD YOU PUT THAT OUT THERE OSCAR??

sabrina carpenter so, mom, dad, are we going to qatar??

oscar piastri yeah, mom and dad, will you be at qatar?

max verstappen they went from being two strangers to mom and dad to three children in span of a few months.

charles leclerc he's only a few years older than me, how is he my father?

sabrina carpenter you dare argue with the twitter giriles?

charles leclerc no?

sabrina carpenter then congrats, you are now mine and oscar's older brother.

oscar piastri charles right now

max verstappen he should save that energy for xavi and ferrari

charles leclerc don't tempt me to crash into you max. i'll do it. then we'll have to wait another weekend to see you crowned world champion again

daphne jones THAT'S THIS WEEKEND? OH WE DEFINITELY HAVE TO BE A QATAR!

sabrina carpenter via air max?

max verstappen who told the pop girl about air max?

sabrina carpenter once again, tiktok is a wonderful place max verstappen once again, i hate you so much sabrina carpenter stay pressed sid. i'm their child and you are simply daniel's mistress. oscar piastri what is it the twitter people say? gagged him.

taglist: @glow-ish @agustdpeach @msolbesg @spilled-coffee-cup @1nt3rnetgf @six-call

¡leclerc-s speaks! can you tell i started rewatching dts now that the season is over? i actually do cry everytime i watch episode 8 of season 1. personally, i love suzuka, but i think the fia's choices with putting tractors on the track has given it a bad history. anyways, hope you enjoyed this, it's a little sad but i never write sad stuff so this is new.

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet. enjoy!

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

The Daily Mail has helpfully listed all the times Meghan’s rebrands and relaunches have failed.

Archived Link

Here, FEMAIL reveals the Duke and Duchess' projects that, for all the carefully constructed razzmatazz of their launch, have so far come to little.

ARO/Roop:

[L]ittle more has been officially revealed about the brand, with no Instagram posts on the firm's official account since March and the website simply offering fans the chance to join a waitlist. But what exactly are potential customers waiting for? Jam and dog biscuits? A source told The Daily Mail in June that the priority is instead the launch of a rosé wine. It's unclear when exactly American Riviera Orchard products will be available.

Archetypes:

The Duchess, who produced only one series of her podcast Archetypes for Spotify before parting ways with the company, had signed with Lemonada to develop and host a new series. However, a source told Eden that there is not expected to be any work broadcast this year. 'The relaunch of Meghan's Archetypes podcast got pushed back to 2025,' the California-based source says….Lemonada is said to be concerned that there would also be 'scheduling conflicts' between the launch of its podcasts and that of Meghan's lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard.

40x40:

It was unclear at the time as to exactly how the project would work, or whether there would be any way to measure its success. But according to The Sun, less than 10 months on, there was no follow-up on the campaign and royal expert Angela Levin said she thought the 40x40 project had been 'cancelled'. She said: 'I think it's very quietly gone into the dustbin,' added that it was an idea of the royal's that 'didn't come off'. There also doesn't seem to be any mention of the 40x40 project on the Duke and Duchess' Archewell website.

Spotify:

Last January, [Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head head of podcast innovation and monetization] blasted Prince Harry, saying it was 'embarrassing' to be affiliated with the same company. 'Shoot this guy to the sun,' he said, according to sports website The Big Lead. 'I'm so tired of this guy. What does he bring to the table? He just whines about s*** and keeps giving interviews. Who gives a s***? Who cares about your life? You weren't even the favourite son. You live in f****** Montecito and you just sell documentaries and podcasts and nobody cares what you have to say about anything unless you talk about the royal family and you just complain about them.'

The couple produced less than 13 hours of content during the three-year partnership: 12 episodes of Meghan's Archetypes show, and a 30-minute Christmas special featuring both the Duke and Duchess.

Pearl/Netflix:

Harry and Meghan signed a five-year agreement with Netflix* in 2020 worth an estimated $100million (£80million) but earlier this year there was speculation that their contract renewal was under threat.

The couple's first launch on the streaming giant was their six-part documentary 'Harry and Meghan' which was released in 2022 and caused controversy with its series of swipes at the Royal Family. … But in May, Netflix dropped Meghan's planned animated series Pearl as part of a wave of cutbacks prompted by the streaming service's drop in subscribers. All references to her doomed animation were wiped from her Archewell website after the series was axed by the streaming giant. A prior description of the series under the Archewell Productions subsection was nowhere to be found after it was cancelled.

*There’s been a lot of speculation over the years about their Netflix deal, but this is the first official confirmation in writing (that I’ve been able to find) that it’s a 5-year deal. This supports my theory that the new push for content (Meghan’s lifestyle show, her cooking show, and Harry’s polo documentary) is a final “do or die” effort to be able to renegotiate their contract and renew their deal.

[cutecatlov3r]

"𝐢 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮."

kenma kozume x reader (fem)

some drabbles on your rivals to lovers relationship with kenma !

words: 1.4k

warnings/tw: all characters are 18+, college AU(?), mean! kenma, enemies to lovers, and some suggestive themes.

a/n: I just needed to write about kenma being mean to you and you being mean back, if you want I can make a smut version as well... heavily inspired by the Netflix series "The Beef", made me cry sm . like, comment, re-blog ily ! don't copy my work . not proofread .

★ As soon as he met you he despised you . He couldn't stand the sound of your annoying ass voice, all he wanted was to sit in peace . Usually he doesn't mind being around loud people but you... You pissed him off for some reason, he never wanted to be around you.

"I don't think Kenma likes me..." you whispered in Kuroo's ear. You started to sense Kenma rolling his eyes at you and scoffing every time you spoke. He annoyed you, if he had something to say, you wanted him to say it to your face .

It was so obvious you were talking about Kenma, he sat in front of you and Kuroo. You talked so loud, you couldn't even whisper silently, it irked Kenma even more.

"You're fine Y/n, everyone loves you," Kuroo reassured, patting your back, gently.

Kenma furrowed his eyebrows as he played his game. Yeah right, he can't even stand you. He would never be able to like someone so childish and annoying...

★ He hates the fact that all of his friends adored you. He knows damn well they only like you because you are somewhat attractive. He knows what you are thinking when you show up to their practices in skirts and tank tops, he knows that you're just there because you're a slut .

"Stop distracting our team, just get out of here... We don't want you here anyway," Kenma mumbled, sweat dripping from his forehead.

To be fair, you were kind of distracting Kuroo and Lev by talking to them whenever they got the chance to speak with you. But still! It infuriated you that Kenma worded it like that, it was rude!

"No need to be rude Kenma, I'm here to support my friends," you retorted, crossing your arms. you've about had it with him, you know he doesn't like you. And it pisses you off because you did nothing!

★ Kenma loathed the way his friends talk about you any chance they get. You are a cute girl, those boys just can't help themselves. Still, it makes Kenma frustrated.

"Y/n is so sweet, she made me some brownies today," Kuroo swooned. Kuroo had a little thing for you, you weren't aware of this but all of the boys knew.

"Oh yeah? Well she's planning to wear my jersey the next time we have a game," Yaku teased.

"She said she'll be cheering for me at the next game too. Only me," Lev added, punching Kuroo's shoulder playfully.

Kuroo started to visibly sulk.

"...I hate you guys... She won't be doing any of that, she's going to-"

"Can you guys please shut up? I'm tired of hearing about Y/n, that's all you guys ever talk about. It's annoying," Kenma said, his eyes glued to his phone.

★ Finally, you confronted him at a party in front of everyone. After that day, the two of you HATED each other, or so you thought. You could never see yourself being friends with him, ever.

"What the hell is your problem?! You spilled that drink on me on purpose!" you yelled, very angry at the situation. You were embarrassed, everyone saw, it made you feel like crying. You had issues when it came to having everyone pay attention to you. You only liked being around your group of friends, not the whole damn party.

Kenma did spill his drink on you but it wasn't on purpose, it was a simple accident. He bumped into you as you were dancing with Kuroo and Bokuto, causing his cup to spill on your clothes. Still, he found it amusing when he saw you get angry at the situation, so he did not apologize or even acknowledge you until you called him out.

"I didn't do it on purpose so..."

"Yes you did!" you exclaimed, Kuroo held on to your shoulder, trying to calm you down.

"Let's calm down y/n," Kuroo tried to say.

"Stop trying to defend her idiotic ways. She can handle things herself, she's not a damn baby," Kenma commented, feeling more aggravated

Kenma pinched his eyebrows together.

"What did I ever do to you?! Seriously! You're always so mean for no reason! I knew you didn't like me but holy fuck, spilling a drink on me is a bit much!"

"So bothersome... I'm going to tell you this once. I. Did. Not. You fucking idi-"

Slap!

★ After the whole slap situation Kenma saw you in a different light kind of... He still hated your guts but he did notice how strong and confident you were. He couldn't help but admire some of the good aspects of you. So instead of dreading you, he openly speaks to you, only making rude comments of course. And you did not hold back either.

"What should I wear to Akaashi's party?" you asked, showing off a few outfits to Kuroo and Bokuto. The men sat on the floor, they loved listening to your rants and their favorite thing to do is tell you what to wear.

"The black skirt is cute," Bokuto said, pointing at the skirt in your left hand.

"No way! I like the dress, it always shows off your natural curves," Kuroo added, giving you a sly wink.

You giggled at their suggestions, Kuroo and Bokuto were your favorite friends.

Kenma groaned, bored of the conversation, he was dragged there because he is Kuroo's best friend so he was forced to go wherever he went.

"Do you have an issue?" you asked, sassily, placing your hands on your hips.

"Your voice is so damn annoying,"

You pretended to gasp, gripping your chest. "How mean Kenma!... Is what I would say if I cared. I didn't even want you here so please refrain from making any unnecessary comments,"

Kenma rolled his eyes at your bratty attitude.

★ You two banter all the time, some would consider it flirting but you never saw it in that way. Mutual disrespect for each other... Yeah, only mutual disrespect.

You whined, begging Kuroo not to leave you with Kenma. He was on his way to class, if he went to class, you'd be left with Kenma.

"Please Tetsuro!" you begged, giving him the best puppy eyes you could. "Stay! Skip class! Please!!"

Kuroo smiled, he loved seeing your bratty side, it excited him. "You know I can't n/n, just stay with Kenma, I'll be done in an hour,"

You groaned. Kenma cocked his eyebrow at you.

"Trust me, I'm not happy either," he mumbled, his hands shoved deep into his sweatshirt pockets.

"Oh of course you are Kenma! I know you're in love with me, you love being around me!" you cheered, sarcastically.

Kenma visibly gagged, causing Kuroo to laugh.

★ Eventually though... The two of you were forced to be around each other more, creating an unusual bond. You both don't directly hate each other, you just don't have a super stable friendship. But! You guys can be with each other without having the mean tension.

"Sup bitch, have you seen Kuroo?" you asked, placing your legs on Kenma's lap.

He shoved them off him instantly.

"Disgusting. And I don't know where he is, I think he went to grab some snacks for movie night,"

You hummed to yourself. A happy tune was in your mind and you couldn't help but hum.

"Can you hum quieter? Holy shit, so annoying," Kenma said, pulling his own hair. Obviously he was joking.

And with him saying that, you hummed as loud as you could.

★ Uh oh... Why did he have to walk in on you changing your clothes... That just made some things weird between you two...

"Idiot, where are you-"

Your face burned with embarrassment, you were in the middle of removing your shirt in your room. Why the hell did he have to come in right now?!

The two of you just stared at each other... In complete silence, unsure how to break the awkward tension.

Luckily, Kenma slammed the door shut.

"What the fuck," he thought, taking a deep breath. "No fucking way..." he continued thinking, looking down at his pants.

Kuroo ran to the scene, worried about the door being slammed.

"What's up with you? Oh shit man you have a boner," Kuroo commented, pointing at his pants.

"No shit!"

You heard the whole conversation, shaking your head, wishing you didn't hear anything.

★ After that the two of you just teased each other, meanly, sometimes being harsh. And actually started building a friendship, not a friendly one though.

"Slut,"

"Pervert,"

"You wanted me to walk in on you," Kenma yawned, placing his hands behind his head.

The two of you were currently walking through the hallways, planning to meet up with Kuroo. This was the first time you guys spoke about the situation. It made your cheeks burn thinking about it. But... It made Kenma feel other things.

"Shut up! You probably were spying on me! You wanted to see me like that,"

Kenma shrugged. "I still think you wanted me to walk in on you,". He faked a gasp "Are you in love with me?!"

"You wish," you rolled your eyes.

That's all I have for now... Maybe I'll make a part 2, just wanted to drabble some scenarios :x

[g5mlp]

Here's the entire My Little Pony 2024 Franchise Overview presentation. This was originally distributed online in mid-June 2023, and we reported on it then, but there are a couple of details that didn't make it into the post.

Download links 2024 Franchise Overview 2023 Marketing Plans Hasbro Brands Overview

Slides 2–4. Various random stats which are mostly not important or not properly contextualized. I have just a slight feeling that the stat on slide 3 implying that MLP is bigger than Barbie at the moment is cherrypicked.

Slides 5–6. Slide 6 is the first slide with specific data about Tell Your Tale viewers. It tells us that Tell Your Tale outperformed Make Your Mark on audience approval and toy purchase basket size, and that it outperformed other franchises on repeat toy purchase rate. There are a few more of these stats on slide 20.

Slides 7–9. Tell Your Tale Season 2 will be real, and will have four specials (the accompanying visuals don't seem to be related, other than the beach stuff for special 2). They didn't really explain what "hair play in every episode" or "more magical moments" will mean, although maybe the former is intended to encourage the purchase of toys.

Slides 10–12. This is basically a summary of things that have already been done within the MLP brand over the last few years. "LBE" means "location-based entertainment".

Slide 10 seems to indicate that there are about 7 songs left to be released in Tell Your Tale Season 1.

On slide 12, from left to right, the featured things are the VR book My Little Pony: Virtual Magic; the Sofia Carson-narrated Calm "sleep story"; the I Can Read Comics Level 1 book Sister Switch; the first issue of the G5 IDW comics; the MLP mascots at the Galaxyland theme park in Edmonton, Canada; a render of the lobby of the My Little Pony & Transformers Playlodge in Shanghai; and the "Flight to Equestria" ferris wheel at Galaxyland.

Slides 13–14. Mostly licensed merch, although the Izzy brushable on slide 14 still hasn't been seen anywhere other than this presentation.

Slide 15. Another indication that Make Your Mark won't get anything in 2024: the best they can say about it is that it will "live on Netflix" (i.e. won't be removed from Netflix), which was probably going to happen anyway.

Given the "new episodes weekly" statement, 328 minutes can be neatly divided into 4 22-minute episodes and 48 5-minute episodes, all for Tell Your Tale. Consistent episode lengths make sense for Hasbro, since they intend to license their shows out to TV networks with standard half-hour programming blocks.

"Linear and AVOD" probably refers to traditional TV channels and ad-supported free streaming sites. Some past MLP content is already available on "AVOD" sites such as Pluto TV.

It seems like G5 music will continue to have that generic pop sound.

It's implied that some of the video games shown will be updated in 2024. Maybe not all of them, though, since the MLP Roblox game (Visit Maretime Bay) was shut down in February 2023.

Slides 16–17. They want to grow viewership a lot and convert it to toy purchases. They call Tell Your Tale their "one & only ponable content series"; obviously, maintaining two ongoing animated shows would directly contradict this statement.

The Pipp, Misty, Sunny and Izzy brushables shown all seem to be new, as is the concept art for the accessories of the former three. The Izzy brushable is probably the same one as on slide 14.

Slide 18. They will do a bunch of promo stuff, including releasing a licensed console video game in Q3 2024. The first and third Tell Your Tale specials are to be the tentpole moments (i.e. big marketing focal points) of 2024.

Slides 19–20. Slide 20 features some more new stats on how well Tell Your Tale is performing; it has 177 million cumulative YouTube views, good repeat viewership and better repeat purchase rate than Make Your Mark.

This image is from a different presentation, "2023 Marketing Plans". This slide reveals the Secrets of Starlight logo for the fourth and final My Little Pony: Make Your Mark special.

The "album launch" could be referring to the My Little Pony Theme Song (Sped Up + lofi remixes) EP that was released today. Or maybe something else?

This slide is from the other presentation that was revealed, "Hasbro Brands Overview". It doesn't really reveal anything that wasn't previously known, although it does suggest that Bridlewoodstock will feature in more marketing content through the rest of the year.

Notes

Almost all of the text in the 2024 Franchise Overview presentation is shown in the Calibri font. It doesn't seem like it was originally intended to be that way, and I think it might be due to custom fonts not being loaded properly by whoever converted the presentation to PDF. In spite of this issue, the presentation is likely genuine, evidenced by the high quality images embedded in it, including a shot from a future Tell Your Tale episode on slide 8.

Slides 15 and 18 both note that future plans are subject to change. However, it's probably somewhat unlikely that Hasbro could return to Make Your Mark in 2024. Even if they were to commission more Make Your Mark episodes right now, and could justify the budget for it, it would probably still take more than a year before the first episodes could be completed. I could be wrong about this, but there's nothing to suggest that it would be in the interest of Hasbro, Netflix, Atomic Cartoons or anyone else (except maybe the fans) for Make Your Mark to be renewed after 2023.

While the TYT Audience Report and MLP Shopper Analysis by AIM & We Are Family both seem to be focused on 2- to 8-year-old girls, it's not necessarily an indication that Hasbro is focused solely on this demographic – they might just be the most lucrative demographic, or the one whose analysis produced the best numbers to show to Hasbro's investors and partners.

[brighter-by-the-daly]

Rachel Daly x Millie Bright x Reader

Part One - It’s the Shirt, Isn’t It?

Posted: 08/04/23, Edited: 23/09/23

With Millie still living at Rachel’s house after moving out of a toxic relationship and you barely at your own home since becoming Rachel’s girlfriend, the three of you were constantly together - it wasn’t just Millie and Rachel anymore; it was Millie, Rachel and (y/n). You worked from home and in between went to both of their games, your friends visited every other weekend and all your families came last week for a BBQ. The last few weeks had been so full on for the girls with Champions League, FA Cup, regular league games and the impending England camp. There had been injuries in both squads making the players that weren’t injured work even harder and the girls were exhausted. Today was a rest day and with nothing planned you all snuggled up on the sofa to binge watch murder documentaries on Netflix.

Realising you didn’t have a clean shirt to wear to Rachel’s Villa game tomorrow you started to load the washing machine before flicking the kettle on to make the teas, swanning around the kitchen gracefully someone couldn’t help but feel envious.

“Yknow, nobody but my parents have worn my shirt in the stands, Levi never did” Millie started to daydream, “that’s because he’s a jerk” Rachel scoffed as you asked why from the kitchen. You couldn’t imagine a good enough reason for anyone dating a sports person not to wear their partner’s shirt. “He said it wasn’t masculine to wear it” Millie rolled her eyes as you screwed up your face in disbelief of the answer she gave. You offered to wear her shirt at the next game but that wasn’t good enough for the blonde who now had a face like thunder thinking about Levi again. “That doesn’t really count though does it, it’s not someone that loves me and wants to be seen supporting me” she said sadly, this time you were the one scoffing at her! “Excuse you bitch?! I love you! You’re my girlfriend’s best friend, you’re one of my best friends now too and you’re the defender of absolute dreams! Why wouldn’t you want me supporting you?” you acted dramatically heartbroken. Rachel over exaggerated her surprise at your statement like you’d forgotten she’s also a defender when she wants to be, noticing her heightened facial expression before adding “I think you can manage a night without me wearing shirt babe” flirtingly. “You underestimate me” she chuckled under her breath, “you’re not jealous are you?” you asked kinda loving the fact she’s territorial over you. “I’m joking!” she burst through the torture of being tickled by you, “I think it would be really cute, I love that you two love each other as much I love you both” wrapping her arms around you and squeezing her favourite people into her. “When it’s your next Chelsea game we’ll both wear your name on our shirts” Rachel added. “You guys are the best, your relationship is adorable I wanna be a part of it” she slumped back, happy that she has the cutest friends yet still sad that she’s single again. Her statement made you and Rach look at each other confused, “girl, you practically are!” shouting at her in unison making you all laugh.

The next week you went to the Chelsea game, Rach had training but met you at half time and watched as the blues bought home the win. Arriving home you slipped your jeans off at the door and went to put the kettle on knowing this household runs on tea. You usually walked around with no trousers on so this wasn’t anything new and nothing out of the ordinary for you regardless of who was home. The other two flopped onto the sofa where they were talking quietly.

“I see why you like her wearing your shirt so much Rach” Millie said candidly as they both gazed at you tiptoeing to try and reach the top shelf for the sugar. Rach watched as your shirt rose up exposing the tattoo on your hip “she’s so hot in’t she, even with your shirt on” she smiled.. but hearing Millie hum in agreement made Rachel turn to look her suddenly. “Do you fancy my girlfriend Mills?” she questioned her bestie, “I think.. I might…” Millie said honestly but quietly questioning what was happening inside her stomach as it fluttered uncontrollably. “I always knew there was a bit of gay in you!” Rachel said sitting up excitedly. “I’m not gay! (Y/n) is the only girl I’ve ever felt attracted to!” the conversation started going in a completely different direction to what Rachel expected. “That’s how it starts” she said cheekily, “you definitely chose a good’un for once Rach, you’re so perfect together” still both their eyes were firmly set on the back of you - admiring the way you’d gotten distracted and was now cleaning the kitchen. “She’s beautiful, hilarious, she’s our biggest cheerleader, makes the best tea in the world and her arse in those pants man” Rachel continued listing the things she loves about you while biting her knuckle in admiration for the woman she calls hers. “If you wanted to.. yknow.. do anything with her, I think she’d be up for it” your girlfriend was now becoming your pimp. “I can’t do that Rach she’s your girlfriend!” Mills voice raised slightly but you were none the wiser in your own little world, “mate, I know how much you both love me, if you’re questioning I’d rather you do it with someone you’re comfortable with. You’re part of our relationship regardless.” The conversation suddenly went silent as you finally made your way over with the teas, plopping yourself in the corner and draping your legs over Rachel. Noticing the silence you asked what they were talking about but Millie looked away, raising your suspicions. Rachel’s hand glided up your leg “Millie fancies you” she said bluntly which took you by surprise, your eyes jumping from both of their faces waiting for the punchline, “how do you feel about that?” your girlfriend sounded genuinely intrigued. “It’s the shirt isn’t it?” your head tilted towards Millie who’s cheeks had now turned a bright shade of red. “You footballers are all the same! If I knew this is how you get a girlfriend I would have done it years ago!” you laughed, still not believing what conversation you’d walked in on. “There’s just something about a woman wearing your name, it’s fucking hot!” Rach squeezed your thigh, “yeah you don’t let me forget it babe” holding under her chin kissing her cheeky smile. “So.. how did that conversation go?” inquisitive as to why Millie still hasn’t said a word or even looked at you which was highly peculiar. “I said you’d probably be down if she wanted to” Rachel shrugged seemingly unbothered by the entire situation. “Well.. you’re not wrong” you said honestly which made Millie’s head lift a little like she was listening intently. “How would you feel about that though?” you asked your girlfriend with furrowed brows, still unsure if she was being serious or not. “I suggested it! How do you feel about that?” she threw the question straight back at you. You questioned how to respond thus not to jeopardise your relationship with Rachel and before answering you asked for them both to explain the conversation they had and how they both feel about it so you could tailor your response appropriately. Of course you would jump Millie in a heartbeat but you didn’t want it to ruin your relationship or their friendship. Rachel insisted she was okay with it and Millie seemed serious about kissing not just any girl but you in particular.

You were ready to give them your answer after you made everyone pinky promise that it wouldn’t change anything. “Okay so the day I met you Rach you know that my phone wallpaper was the both of you, which is weird cause now it’s all three of us” smiling as you lit up your phone to show them what they already knew. “I fancied you both so much! I never thought I’d meet any of you let alone having you fall in love with me” touching Rachel’s face as you said this. “Millie, you’re fucking hot and I fancy the pants off you so if you’re sure you both wanna do this then I’m down for anything” the penny dropped the second those words left your mouth. “See I told ya! There’s not much my girl wouldn’t do. As long as you don’t start a secret relationship behind my back!” she laughed pointing her index finger at you both threateningly. “You two are the best” the taller blonde pouted, “I wish I had a relationship like yours, not many people would let me experiment with their girlfriend. I probably won’t even feel anything but I need to figure out what my brain is doing. It’s all so confusing” Millie said as her forehead met the palm of her hand. “We all go through this Mill, we’re practically already a throuple anyway so kissing me isn’t gonna change anything” you let out a light hearted chuckle. “That is true though, we do everything together, you’re literally already part of our relationship” Rach leant over squeezing her thigh as you took her hand. “Millie Bright, will you go on a date with me?” you blushed as she nodded gently in agreement.

You said goodnight to each other and snuggled down in your beds giving you a chance to talk to Rachel alone about what the hell had just happened. What if it’s not just a kiss, would she kiss Millie, she’s always wanted a threesome, but with her best friend? You were now overthinking everything but reminded yourself that most girls kiss their friends, you’ve kissed your besties and know that your sister has talked about kissing hers too so it’s not really that weird… is it?

Part Two - Three Isn’t a Crowd 🔞

[skullinahat]

some long-ass thoughts on watcher and dropout

for the record, i've enjoyed both of their work. i won't talk abt it much in this post, but it's very interesting how people kind of view shane's performative anti-capitalism making their consumption of ghost files a reflection of their own politics. then, a business making a business decision feels much more personal, because an aspect of your morals has just betrayed you. instead of just losing access to media you enjoyed, you just lost a reference point for your identity. Dropout is very mildly more aware of their function in capitalist society when they make anti-capitalist jokes, but the effect is still the same. the concept of supporting small business being an effective political action has obviously fed into, or perhaps came from, consumer culture. there's been a lot of "disappointment" in shane specifically, which is why i bring this up.

this post is a mess and i definitely used some of the wrong words, but i hope it makes some sense.

Watcher and Dropout have been compared alot as of late, of course both being attempted independent subscription based streaming services with a small host of content. dropout is cast as the good guy, the thing that watcher is striving for and failed at. I've seen several people joke about subscribing to dropout instead as a little fuck you to watcher.

A lot of people have genuinely asked what the difference is. Why is watcher bad and dropout good?

The most common answer i've seen is that dropout was pitched as a last effort to save a dying company, instead of the greedy money grab that watchertv feels like. dropout also offers a much larger cast, and many more shows, releasing new episodes monday through friday. Both of these things, however, are only true of dropout as of now.

Dropout was started two years before collegehumor's death, and it was only able to release as many shows as it is now very recently. It also didn't originally advertise itself as a final resort, rather "netflix- but worse!"

It didnt begin as a hail mary for a dying platform, just a new branch of an old one with no ads and more freedom. (Though it was a final resort later.) i think the biggest material difference between the two is that dropout always felt like an addon rather than an ambush paywall. later when it did become an ambush paywall, it felt justified. there was complete clarity over what would be on dropout and what would remain free on youtube.

this clarity was never present in watcher's announcement. I personally don't think watcher was ever planning on removing their free content from youtube, and they just worded it really poorly in their original video, but keeping new episodes behind a paywall is still enough to alienate their fanbase. the concept of them removing everything from youtube has stuck around despite their assurances against it.

the rest of the reasons why watcher went over so poorly is audience trust, yearly context, and marketing.

People had already followed ryan and shane from buzzfeed to watcher, so their trust had been tested before, resulting in them being more loyal, but still. I've seen a lot of people discussing their disappointment with watcher's content compared to buzzfeeds, which, everyone hates change so on and so forth, but most people are pointing specifically to the overproduction and the awkwardness. I had the same expeirence. I specifically remember watching an episode of too many spirits and realizing i was forcing myself to continue. It just felt like lipstick on a pig, hours of animation work on top of an awkward joke. I think there's been frustration with watcher's content building for a long time, and this poorly worded announcement is the straw that broke the camels back. i also don't think there was as much streaming service fatigue back when dropout was started as there is now.

It is entirely possible, given that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on post-production per video, that watcher needs more money to continue. I, as many do, would attribute this to poor financial decisions. However, i think they could've framed watchertv as a last resort for a company that fiscally couldnt continue on youtube and gotten away with it. they still would have gotten some flack for steven's tesla and gold-leaf pizza, but it wouldnt be the total takedown it is now.

Instead, in the video they simply talk about being to big for youtube. No stressing about money. It feels entitled. even in the apology, where they claim that watcher couldn't continue on youtube, the overt focus is not placed on money. Wether this was a decision to try and not sound too whiny and pandering, or it's that they genuinely could continue to work on youtube but want more freedom on watchertv, i'm not sure. either way, it worked out horribly for them.

[denimbex1986]

'Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan has said he "absolutely" will not work on another film until the Hollywood strikes are resolved.

Tens of thousands of Hollywood actors have joined writers in taking industrial action, because they want streaming giants to agree to a fairer split of profits and better working conditions.

The Screen Actors Guild also wants to protect actors from being usurped by digital replicas.

Nolan admitted he was "very fortunate with the timing", as his film's premieres were held just before the strike began, meaning Oppenheimer would not be affected by industry members stopping work.

When asked if he would write another film during the strike, he told BBC Culture editor Katie Razzall: "No, absolutely. It's very important that everybody understands it is a very key moment in the relationship between working people and Hollywood.

"This is not about me, this is not about the stars of my film," the acclaimed director, writer and producer added.

"This is about jobbing actors, this is about staff writers on television programmes trying to raise a family, trying to keep food on the table."

As more production companies use streaming platforms - like Netflix and Amazon Prime - for their shows, it has changed how actors and writers get paid.

Previously every time an episode was re-run on a TV network, it would tend to involve payment, allowing those who worked on projects to get by in between jobs.

The director said the companies involved had not yet "accommodated how they're going to in this new world of streaming, and a world where they're not licensing their products out to other broadcasters - they're keeping them for themselves".

Nolan, who was Oscar-nominated five times for the films Dunkirk, Inception and Memento, added: "They have not yet offered to pay appropriately to the unions' working members, and it's very important that they do so.

"I think you'd never want a strike, you never want industrial action.

"But there are times where it's necessary. This is one of those times."

Speaking ahead of the London premiere, where several of Oppenheimer's stars left the red carpet early to strike, he explained: "It's very important to bear in mind that there are people who have been out of work for months now, as part of the writers strike, and with the actors potentially joining - a lot of people are going to suffer."

Despite the row in California, British-born Nolan has no current plans to work more in the UK, his home country, as he prefers to be "on the real locations" where his films are set.

"The UK has wonderful film studios," he explained. "It's a great place to come to shoot a film if you're going to be on sound stages."

Oppenheimer tells the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic Manhattan Project scientist, who had a leading role in developing the atomic bomb that made him a "destroyer of worlds".

He "gave us the power to destroy ourselves and that had never happened before", Nolan said.

Commissioned by the US Government during World War II, and believing themselves in a nuclear race with the Nazis over who would create the bomb first, in 1945 scientists in Los Alamos, New Mexico detonated a test bomb, codenamed Trinity.

Their invention was then used, controversially, to end the war, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to devastating effect.

The film is an exploration not just of Oppenheimer's story, but of the "incredible decision" the scientists took on that first occasion.

"There's a possibility that when you push that button, you might destroy the entire world," Nolan told the BBC.

"And yet they went ahead and they pushed it. How could you make that decision? How could you take that on yourself?"

Another existential threat to civilization is AI, which is also part of the Hollywood strike and makes the Oppenheimer movie more timely.

"One of the interesting things about putting this film out is it's coming at a time when there are a lot of new technologies that people start to worry about the unintended consequences," he said.

"When you talk to leaders in the field of AI, as I do from time to time, they see this moment right now as their Oppenheimer moment. They're looking to his story to say, 'what are our responsibilities? How can we deal with the potential unintended consequences?' Sadly, for them, there are no easy answers."

Nolan is one of a rare number of Hollywood directors. His films - Interstellar, the Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception amongst them - are both blockbusters and arthouse fare; critically acclaimed and, Tenet aside, which was released during the pandemic, box office successes.

"I make the films that I really want to go to the cinema and sit down with my popcorn and watch" he says. "I started making films when I was a kid. I made Super 8 films from when I was seven or eight years old and I've never stopped".

He's a champion of the big screen who, famously, left Warner Bros for rival Universal to make Oppenheimer.

Nolan's known for wanting his films to feel authentic rather than computer-generated.

There was even a rumour doing the rounds on the internet that he had set off a real atomic bomb in New Mexico for Oppenheimer.

"We recreated the circumstances of it," he said, "obviously not using an atomic weapon. What we're trying to portray is this moment of absolute beauty and absolute terror.

"This is the moment that really changed the world."'

[peetapiepita]

Thoughts on what general audiences can do for the WGA and SAG strikes

I've read up a lot on the strike situation these past weeks because I'm someone who consumes A LOT OF media content. The strike will affect my daily life and I'm a curious girlie when it comes to show biz rules. So here are some of the takeaways I wanna share with my fellow audience:

1. Understand the strike

The strike is happening for 2 major reasons:

1.) The studios are refusing to pay the creators/actors residuals on streaming services.

This makes it hard for the majority of writers and actors to make a living by doing their respective jobs. They used to rely on residuals from old projects (DVD and blue-ray sales, renting, etc.) to pay bills. That's just not happening today.

To try to get out of paying residuals, the major studios started this trend this year to take old and new shows/movies off their streaming platforms and use them as an excuse for a tax write-off. Disney did this last month and got a 1.1 billion tax write-off. They can currently do that without consulting the people involved AT ALL, taking away their livelihood without warning.

2.) The studios want to retain the rights to use AI writing and performing.

In the negotiation with SAG, they proposed a plan to pay actors only one day's wage to use their AI image FOREVER without paying them ever again. And the actors wouldn't have a ground to argue that. This is straight out of Black Mirror Season 6 Joan is Awful. Netflix is really writing its own villain origin story right now.

So what would happen if the workers budge and give up mid-way?

They'll end up losing their means to survive and have their images stolen. So striking for a few months is definitely better than starving indefinitely.

What's happening right now?

Right now, no projects fiananced by AMTPT companies can film with SAG members or develop with WGA members, which means only a very small percentage of all Hollywood productions can still happen. (More to come about this.)

With finished projects, if they're being released in the next few months, they're going to be released without any promo from the actors. They can't take part in interviews, premieres, fan events, or even post about their projects on social media.

2. Help with the strike.

Now that the double strike has officially happened, what's the best outcome for the workers and the audiences?

If you're just a casual entertainment enjoyer:

Cancel the streaming services not essential to you. The studios are going to panic more when they start losing even more money.

If you're a fan of a fanchise/upcoming blockbuster:

Flood the companies behind it, demanding them negotiate with the SAG and WGA on their own and agree to a fair deal. Threat not to support the projects unless it's settled fairly.

These studios with upcoming big-budget movies are bleeding money and panicking right now, any added pressure is good.

If one company buckles, the others would follow suit.

If you have money to spare: (Congrats on being rich, btw!)

Donate to the unions and support the ones with lower income in the first place, they'd be struggling with bills if the strike goes on for too long.

For everyone:

Call out big studios who are still planning on filming projects during the strike.

Please note there are exceptions to the strike rule:

1.) Foreign productions.

Please note an actor has to be part of the foreign union to work on these. Some of the foreign unions are still in meetings to decide if they'll allow US companies to work with their members, the most notable ones being the UK one and the Canadian one. Fingers crossed they don't fall for the deals the US studios are offering.

2.) Indie productions.

Indie companies can make their own deals with the workers since they're not included in the overall deal. So a very small amount of US projects can still happen. Make sure a project doesn't fall into this category before calling them out for scabbing.

That's about it for now. I might add more later in the replies if I think of anything.

[marypsue]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on S1 of ST being a tragedy! No main character dies, so I never thought of it that way before

I mean, nobody has to die for a story to be a tragedy (at least, in the modern definition. I'm pretty sure '(almost) everybody dies' is a requirement of Greek tragedies and Renaissance revenge tragedies). But also, no main character dies in season one...if you take season one as part of a series. Which it wasn't originally conceived as.

I am not going looking for copies of the original pitch bible, because I am lazy, and also I only saw them floating around this webbed site. But the show changed a lot from the initial pitch (Joyce had a Long Island accent! Lucas' parents were divorcing! Murray was there and named Terry Ives! Most of what ended up in Hopper's character originally belonged to Mr. Clarke! The original pitch bible is fascinating). And part of the original pitch was a proposal for possible sequels.

The Duffers' proposal for a possible sequel was "It's ten years later, and Eleven is dead".

So that's the setup. Everything that came after season one was made up wholecloth after season one was a hit and people wanted more, but also people loved the adorable little psychic murder child (cue the Duffers shockedpikachu.jpg) and Netflix obviously recognised it would be a bad call to make a new season without her in it. So it makes sense to take season one as a unit, as a self-contained story on its own. You can also take it as part of a whole, but it makes sense to read it first as a complete story. Especially given the thematic drift of later seasons and the way they are...I'm just going to say it, each new season is very much added-on to what came before rather than being built on foundation that the earlier season(s) laid. It is very clear there was never a planned five-season story arc from the beginning. (This isn't necessarily always a bad thing, when it comes to sequels, but it does mean it makes sense to 'read' each season as its own thing.)

Okay, now that we've established all of that. Season one has one very clear goal, one very clear stake for the characters: save Will Byers from the Upside Down. (I like this. It makes the stakes both extremely high and extremely personal, it makes it very easy to understand each character's motivation, it also keeps the stakes grounded in reality. I like this a lot.) And by the end of the season, that goal is accomplished. So at first blush, you're right, season one doesn't look like a tragedy.

But when you start to unpack it a little, you start to see just how many important things were lost along the way. It's most glaringly obvious with Mike and El, with Nancy and Barb. The whole Wheeler family is fractured down the middle, with Mike and Nancy on one side and Ted, Karen, and Holly on the other, and Karen, who's been trying so hard the whole time to be part of her children's lives and understand what's going on with them, is aware of the ever-expanding gulf between them but will never be able to cross it, and will never fully know why. Hopper's finally managed to snatch a kid out of the jaws of death, save a woman he obviously cares about from the pain of losing a child, and Joyce has finally had someone believe her, support her, trust her. But it became blindingly obvious to me on my fourth rewatch that Hopper's plan, from the moment he went to leave the middle school gym, was always to trade El for Will. And that decision (and the fact that Joyce obviously understands that he did something to get the lab to let them go after Will, but she obviously doesn't dare press him on what) has broken her trust in him, and left him with what looks like an equally heavy burden of guilt as what he was carrying before. The lab stays open. The government gets away with everything. No one will ever know the true extent of the hurt they've caused.

And in the end, none of it even saved Will. He's back. He's alive. But he's spitting slugs in the sink. He's permanently marked by the Upside Down, and by trying to hide it from his family, he's putting a crack down the centre of them, as well. They're losing Will, just as surely as they had when they thought he was dead, just without him going anywhere.

And there's still a hole in the world.

The fragile bonds of community, the things that people share in common, the way catastrophe can bring people together and bring out the very best in them, are the major thematic threads woven through season one. Human connection is the only thing that can change what seems inevitable, the only thing that can bring back what's seemingly lost forever.

And it's still not enough to protect anyone from the random tragedy of the world.

The love was there. The love mattered. The love bent the entire course of the world around itself.

And it still wasn't quite enough.

If that's not a tragedy, then I don't know what is.

[distracted-and-diffused]

Hit my subscription renewal date - Thoughts Part 2

At this point, my subscription to Netflix is functionally a subscription to Dead Boy Detectives.

That's partly because I really, really love the show -- and I do! Partly because I've been rewatching the show as much as I reasonably can in hopes of supporting the fandom as we hope to change Netflix's mind about the cancellation. And partly because -- for a lack of time, to get a point across, out of stubbornness / spite -- I haven't been watching anything else on Netflix since the cancellation.

My Basic subscription was recently dropped, and before the cancellation news, I was actually telling myself that the forced move to new plan would have an upside, because this show is one of the very few things that have made me wish I had that higher resolution subscription.

I want to see all the details, and it feels rewarding to notice little things in the show, like the plaque on the moose bobblehead in Episode 2, or the wording on the label on the black salt, or the different ways that Esther accessorizes with the evil eye necklace that she wears constantly. I've paused the show so many times to get a better look at things, and it's almost always been rewarded.

And also, before the cancellation news, I thought that I would give "with Ads" a try for at least a couple of weeks, to see if I could live with it, since I couldn't keep my Basic plan.

But I can't imagine, now that rewatching the show is part of my routine, having ads pop on in between scenes. (It would very much be a "flames on the sides of my face" situation if they messed with the timing and transitions of the show at this point. I don't feel like this is a show that is written to have ad breaks.)

And that's not even counting the whole targeted ad situation I talked about in my previous post.

Because of this show and this fandom, I'm watching more Netflix right now than ever. (I'd previously have bursts of watching, at most, a few 22-minute episodes a day while I cooked, followed by weeks of nothing as I watched shows on another service. Now I'm averaging at least 14 hours a week, while I do other things.)

Now, I'm renewing so I can keep up the rewatches (round 12 right now!), and in hopes that Netflix, too, might choose to renew (hint, hint).

But frankly, I'm considering my options, in the event that they don't.

If there's ever an official DVD/BluRay release, I'm going for it. (Very much hoping that Warner Brothers will put one out; what can I say, we're a passionate fanbase, and at the very least I hope they'd see that it would be worth it for them to do so.)

And if there's no hope of further seasons, I can't see myself keeping up a subscription full time. I'm sure I'd want to come back and visit the shows that I already like that have ended, but I don't think I'd have any motivation to try to keep up with anything new that's exclusive to Netflix as it comes out. What would be the point?

(Since the cancellation, I've learned about multiple Netflix shows I've never heard of before that sound interesting to me. I've heard about them specifically because they have also been cancelled -- and because Netflix's recommender thinks I'd be interested in them since I like Dead Boy Detectives. The fact that they have multiple recently cancelled but well-received shows in that segment seems somewhat damning.)

If I do drop back to part-time, I don't think I'd be coming back for enough time to make up the revenue they'd lose compared to the last price point, so that, too, seems like a loss for Netflix. (For the cost of a year's subscription at the last price point for Basic, I can manage almost 8 months of Standard. But I'm not sure I'd be coming back for 8 months at a time, if I knew I wasn't planning to stick around.)

Maybe I'm not the customer that Netflix is thinking of. Maybe I'm not the demographic that they want, or I'm not motivated by the same things that they think I should be.

But for a service that wants steady revenue and is concerned about cancellation/subscription churn, Netflix has been making some odd choices lately, as far as I'm concerned.

[lol-jackles]

Three tweets on one day to push a hashtag campaign AND a cast video. Do these campaigns really work with an audience as low as TW?

https://twitter.com/jensenackles/status/1656822082519302145?s=21&t=btS2vaUa_UKjRTm6rBuAzw

Lucifer, 911 had bigger followings and audience numbers than TW. I get jensen is trying to rally the spn family but he should have thought about that when he created such a terrible idea of a show.

I’m also really surprised that he’s even doing this much effort. Seems like he knew this show was cancelled months ago. Is this just for show…to save his reputation and posture for Amazon that he’s actually a good producer?

https://twitter.com/rowwyaboat/status/1656752108874395668?s=21&t=nguMbGDbT6tcbBO_Li9Q1Q

I’m a bit surprised that jared isn’t doing something similar along with Windy cast. It’s almost like they already have a plan in place. 🤔

No these campaigns rarely work. Majority of the "saved" shows simply went back to network owned by the original studios: 9-1-1 is owned by 20th Century who is a division of Disney that owns ABC channel that 9-1-1 ended up on. Similar thing happened for Last Man Standing and Brooklyn 99. The biggest disadvantage is the studios won't make a handsome mint selling the rights had a different network picked up their shows, like when Netflix bought Lucifer from WB.

Producers, showrunners, and cast encourage fan campaigns because they have nothing else to lose. Link-- So this was back in March? Well, it was an open secret that Jensen was shopping around TW since November 2022 because it takes months to shop and then hammer out an agreement if they find a buyer. With no buyers after 6 months, the hashtag social media campaign is the last ditch, last resort effort by dangling the $PN fandom in front of potential buyers. Bonus if the hashtag campaign encourages people to stream TW on the Ad-supported CW App and boost the viewership numbers to attract advertisers.

This is why I expect as you did that the lack of call for fan campaigns to save Independence is because CBS is already in talks to move the show to Paramount cable network or Paramount+ in part because it goes well with their Western brand, not to mention the confusion surrounding Yellowstone's incomplete 5th season.

[nanowrimo]

Raising Kids & Writing Books: Five Tips for Parents Daring to Try NaNoWriMo

Sometimes, it feels like we never have time to write, especially if you’re a new parent! NaNo Guest Ruth Harper-Rhode gives some tips on fitting writing into a busy lifestyle. Writing a book while also being a parent of young children may seem like an impossible feat, and there’s no doubt that both parenting and writing are challenging endeavors. Both can be vastly rewarding, too. I believe it’s healthy for parents to channel their creative muses, and NaNoWriMo is a great way to do that!

I won my first NaNoWriMo in 2019, while working full time and raising my daughter, who was 3 years old at the time. I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo ever since. This year, I’ve got an added challenge: I welcomed baby #2 in August. I debated participating at all this year before I realized something: it’s not about how “good” your book is at the end of the month, but about how much you enjoy the journey that is NaNoWriMo. It’s possible for parents to not only participate, but to have fun! Plus, your determination to write a book in a month can serve as a great example for your kiddos.

Here are a few tips I’d offer other parents – or any busy person, really — who decide to join in on NaNoWriMo this year.

1. Find pockets of time that work for you. For me, getting up 30 to 60 minutes earlier each morning — before anyone else in the house woke up — worked best. I’d also sometimes take 10 or 15 minutes of my lunch break and scoot off to a quiet place to crank out a few paragraphs. Of course, weekends or days off from work lend themselves to longer writing blocks that help you get ahead of thegame during weekdays.

2. Use tech to your advantage: Writing on a laptop or in a notebook works.However, you can also write on your phone while you are waiting in line or on your commute (if you aren’t driving). Then, you can what you wrote to your main document later.

3. Lean on your support systems — and tell them what you’re doing! I made sure to tell my husband I was doing NaNoWriMo and when I would be writing, so he would know why I had to skip Netflix that night or why I decided to go to the library for an hour (or three) on a Saturday afternoon. If people who care about you know you have a goal you’re working toward, they’re bound to want to lend a hand, especially if they know it’s only for a month.

4. Plan what you’ll write. There’s nothing worse than sitting down to a blank page in a tired state of mind with only 15 minutes to spare and no idea of where to even begin. That’s a recipe for giving up! Use October to plan as much as you can. I had my general plot ironed out and wrote scene ideas on index cards. Each writing session, I knew exactly what scene I’d be tackling. I’ve found that the first minute or two of writing is the hardest — but once you get going, it can sometimes be hard to stop! Setting a timer for yourself and putting on some quiet, relaxing music can help with focus.

5. Be easy on yourself. Writing a book as a parent can feel particularly intimidating. Just remember, this is your first draft! It’s not supposed to be perfect. If you only make it to 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 words — that’s still more than you started with. You can always keep writing once November is over. In fact, the month may serve as a jump start to a long, happy writing life — one that may continue even as your kids get older.

Ruth Harper-Rhode has participated in NaNoWriMo since 2019, writing stories as an emotional outlet. She works full-time in healthcare communications and is a mom of two humans, two cats and one dog. When she’s not exploring the area around her home in Upstate New York, she enjoys curling up with a book or making something delicious in the kitchen. She tweets @Ruthings and posts on Instagram at @What_Ruth_Ate.   Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash

[isagrimorie]

So Matt Mercer DM-ing for Dimension 20 apparently is cause to list every mistake Critical Role’s done despite them apologizing and trying to do better.

And they include the list of working with Amazon for Vox Machina series.

The unfortunate truth is, Amazon Prime / FreeVee is the only streaming service that gives creators both the creative control and IP ownership.

The Red Wedding of animated series from 2022-23 showed that Netflix and HBO Max (hell even Disney) have no care for animation and have canceled animated series with no plans to air the canceled series again.

It’s to the point that creators of animated shows have encouraged people to pirate their shows since its the only way people can watch what they’ve made.

Amazon doesn’t have the subscriber numbers so they’re betting on fan favorites to get people on their platforms. This is why they’re willing to give small production companies that creative freedom.

It’s also why Leverage Redemption is airing on Amazon’s “FreeVee” ad supported streaming service.

It is the unfortunate thing about living in a late stage capitalist society.