I'm watching the newest Netflix show, Shadow and Bone. It's YA fantasy, based on books. I read most of them and I have an opinion on them. Basically, the author used to have some nice ideas, but then it all devolved into typical teen girl fare.
But what Netflix does is so typical of what happens with shows and movies now. The main character in the books goes through this long period of being a fish out of water. An orphan girl suddenly becoming a powerful person, living in the royal palace. Everyone is superficial and a total backstabber, they make fun of her. They have gone through the same kind of rigorous training through abuse, but nobody tells her, so she feels she is worse than them.
Then in time she finds her place, and it turns out everyone else also felt those things.
In the show everyone, except like one girl, automatically accepts and loves her, but then mean people are... RACIST, because she is half their world's equivalent of Asian in the show (she was 100% white in the books).
Why do these people always, always trade universally understandable human emotions for in-your-face, comical Muh Racism? It's not like she would have suffered any less if they went with everyone being a catty bitch to her.
It almost feels like the creators don't understand human beings have feelings other than oppression. Like you can be lonely even if you are not coloured. You can be an outsider without having the gays. You can have limited opportunities without having a vagina.
But that's too complex for them. Too much thinking.
I’ll disagree on many points here because I’ve worked with many of the companies people are complaining about that are spewing out leftist garbage, and I’ve been party to many wide-reaching decisions made in the following way:
This may be true but in a true capitalistic market place, you don't get to keep making these bad calls. It's not just "Hey, a few billion here, a few billion there. We'll write it off on our taxes."
These consistent losses over the span of years has to be propped up by something other than poor management. Shareholders wouldn't put up with it. There is something driving the money that's not greed or ineptitude, even if that's what they want you to believe.
Profits don't matter any more.
Netflix has never made money. It is enormously in debt.
But it will never have to repay it.
It is all about the propaganda. Netflix is a loss leader for total globalist domination.
Netflix has been cashflow positive since last year.
The reason people don't care about net debt is because it's assumed the money they borrow will be sunk into capital assets (ie. the shows, or new studios, or other "one-time" costs), and those investments have been coming closer to paying for themselves every year (until last year, when they started making more than they cost).
Netflix's content is a fixed cost for the company. They need just enough new stuff to keep people from leaving every year, but they don't to add, say, another show for every million subscribers. It was only a matter of time before the math worked out in their favour, based on what they were posting for EBITDA.
Thank you!
You clarified it so much more succinctly than the prolix that was my comment.
Shareholders are given explanations for why things tank. More often than not it’s based on similar logic as wokeism and they assume market forces or Star Wars fatigue or racism is why things tank because they’re told that by people with made up titles and Wikipedia degrees. Seen it happen. Can’t say that’s all companies but many of the companies you guys are talking about are people I’ve worked with and seen that happen to.
That's a fine example of when it happens the first or second time.
But you completely skipped over my examples of Marvel, DC and gaming companies who have been doing it for the past decade now and have only saw profit margins shrink drastically on new products, especially the comic book industry.
In gaming, the only major profit movers are digital recurring spend (i.e., cash shop or loot box items). Product sales (other than Nintendo) are in the absolute gutter, and they're trying desperately to hook people on subscription based models.
As I said in my previous comment, the whole "dumb execs, lol, they don't know any better" works the first couple of times as an excuse, but when this has persisted for nearly a decade and the results are mass amounts of people either tuning out, dropping your product, canceling the subscription, or boycotting to the point where the revenue keeps dropping, and eventually profits follow suit, you can no longer use the "dumb execs just don't know, lol" excuse.
Another perfect example is WWE. All their SJW pandering has not resulted in more engaged fans, it's resulted in less. Fewer and fewer people are tuning into their weekly shows. Idiots keep using the excuse "b-but muh streaming WWE Network" which also has an abysmally low amount of subscribers. In fact, if you combine WWE Network subscribers and their weekly TV show ratings it's still LESS than what they were getting during the Ruthless Aggression era.
Even before the Plandemic, ticket sales were WAY down compared to previous eras. Back in the day you used to find normal folk walking around and about town with Austin 3:16 or The Rock t-shirts. Heck you would even occasionally see some 619 or Cena t-shirts during the mid-aughts. These days? Despite the WWE pushing people like Becky Lynch to the moon, you'll be lucky to find a non-wrestling fan who even knows who she is, much less will you spot average people around and about with a shirt on.
Long story short, the "they're doing it for the money" excuse doesn't hold water when you actually compare the quarterly finances of any of these woke companies. No one who has jumped into that poisonous pool has actually come out of it bustling with profits.
You can take a look at most publicly available financial sheets and compare the quarters from before a company went woke to after they went woke, and the numbers usually speak for themselves.
They should fire those kids if they loose that much money on a 200 million dollar film or video game that is being created and being told we need Transgenders and gays because of diversity it sounds like a sex cult robots came up with these ideas then actually knowing.
Hell, I felt the same when they made Warrior Nun Areala TV series based on the indie comic by Ben Dunn on Netflix and they turn that show into shit. They made Shot Gun Marry into a Black woman but at the same time the actress did alright but that whole show wasn't good enough which was cancel.
The social media manager types usually stay with a company for as minimal a time as possible to jump ship and build a longer LinkedIn resume. Personally, I see resumes on there that show someone only stays with companies for 6 months to a year and I assume that person is an asshole.
In the working-class world, if you are at a company for less than a year it's typically a black mark on your resume.
They should of hire the person behind the Sonic the Hedgehog account on twitter that person is doing a far better job of marketing Sonic games and other stuff by shit posting Sonic memes on twitter without trying to be political.