Shame we don’t live in a democratic society where that would matter.
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the combination of writers & actors striking in tandem while the streamers are all jacking up their rates/introducing ads/locking down sharing/enshittifying is an incredible moment for cultural output/consumption.
i know that we’re in the seasonal “off” season for a lot of TV too. but even with that, it definitely feels like the streamers have been slow-walking out the content since the strike popped off so they can keep as much in the tank as long as they can… and absolutely blasting out the “unscripted” aka reality content. which, is of course dogshit on its best day.
my from-the-hip analysis is that the workers have the edge there. we’re not in the cable bundle days anymore and i dunno about you all, but i haven’t been to a theater since before covid. and even then, i went only went when a storm took out the power over the summer and i wanted a few hours of A/C.
if the studios don’t cave soon and start making the good slop, more people are going to pull back on how many troughs they subscribe to and set up some pretty vicious competition / mergers. i dropped 2 streamers in the last year due to price increases and was able to quickly find friends/family to strategize a sharing arrangement, because the writing is on the wall: we all want the treats but with digital treats, all scarcity is artificial.
i pay significantly less and now get way more content. and we’re all ready for suspending subscriptions as content dries up/enshittification happens. things can change pretty quickly since there are no contracts, so unless the streamers form a cartel to roll out bad policy uniformly, we can hop around to resist as long as possible. and try off beat streamers like mubi.
and there’s always the high seas to get at those must-see series/movies.
while the streamers are all jacking up their rates/introducing ads/locking down sharing/enshittifying
This has been fucking baffling to watch. Like, even if I try to put myself into the shoes of a wealth hoarding dragon who opposes good things and only wants to increase the size of his hoard, raising the prices of streaming services while everyone is on strike is a fucking insane choice. You’re going to have less new content, everyone’s already pissed at you for treating writers and actors so badly, you just had record profits, and you think now is the time to raise prices?
What are you doing??? That’s a terrible idea! Wait until the strike resolves and raise prices THEN, and claim you had to do it to afford to strike demands!
It’s honestly frustrating to watch capitalists be so fucking bad at capitalism and just fail upward anyway because if you have billions of dollars it’s impossible to do anything other than make billions more
See, this is why you are not thinking like a capitalist.
For the monopolist capitalists, this is exactly the time to raise prices. When the war in Ukraine started in 2022, the commodity monopolists all raised their prices in anticipation of potential shortages in the near future, which led to inflation. Nobody could do anything about it.
It’s the same logic here. The streamers have already priced in the potential drop in subscriptions by raising the prices, making those who continue to subscribe compensate for the loss in revenues. There is no need to wait until the strikes end.
This is how a monopoly economy works. There is no alternative to Hollywood - the actors and the writers on strike eventually have to go back to work somehow, and back to the same groups of employer, unless they intend to switch their jobs entirely. So, the capitalists will simply wait it out until the strikers can no longer keep going, and come back with contracts offering even shittier conditions than before.
Wait until the strike resolves and raise prices THEN, and claim you had to do it to afford to strike demands!
But that could be a whole fiscal quarter away. There’s cash to be grabbed now.
Shareholders require infinite money, and we are their cash cows. The cattle should stampede the shareholders, but are too busy being distracted by influencers, and so stay impoverished. It really is the perfect crime.
History seems intent on demonstrating that the more money a person has, the more detached from reality they become. Holy shitsnacks, just look at the average wealthy influencer: they’re the mentally absent funded by the very same.
my guess is it’s some kind of pre-emptive move. there is still completed content from before the strike trickling out, so now is the time to pull the trigger… before the perception of “there is nothing to watch” / stagnation becomes intolerable to a subscriber… before people have finished their rewatch of some beloved series and scoured the catalog for everything worth a fuck.
as stupid as it is to do it now, it would be a major boner jam to do it in 90 or 180 days if the strike hasn’t been resolved. doing it now gives them a little extra cash now to either make a play for a merger/back catalogue purchase or give a quick handy to the shareholders to cash out or re-organize from a position of strength.
The last time I was a theater was around the time of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and that only because the theater was on the AFB I was stationed at, so it was free. The salty seas is, without question, the only way to fly, which I learned right before the aforementioned movie came out.
Storage is cheap, people. Stack that shit to the ceiling.
no more half measures walter
The oppressive regime isn’t interested in what it’s people want
