Also, YouTube ads are about the most random things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad on YouTube for anything that I would actually buy. I’m not even nearly immune to ads, either. Show me a product that solves a problem for me and I’ll strongly consider it. Consciously and I’m sure subconsciously.

Google knows what I do for a living, where I live, and what I spend money on. Google also knows that I use YouTube primarily to watch videos in other languages. It’s not a secret to them. Yet they insist on trying to sell me products or services that have zero relevance to anything that I do. In English.

It makes me wonder if they’re even trying to profit through ads. I know the answer – no, not really – the advertiser is the customer, not me. It must be too complicated for them to realise that they could charge more for ads the more sales they led to.

I disagree that a flop means lost revenue. This is an industry that’s so adept at hiding income to avoid paying taxes, actors, and every other studio worker that dodgy accounting is known as ‘Hollywood Accounting’. Maybe we’re talking about different things. When I say Hollywood, I mean the movie industry as a whole.

Hollywood has failed to capture some income streams. From theatres, for example, as you say. But there’s still too much money to be made (and too much propaganda potential) for enough big money to leave that the problems of monopoly finance capital go away.

Good point. And it’s a lot easier to accept ‘failure’ (there could still be something learned in a game that doesn’t quite hit the mark) if the budget isn’t astronomical.

There are games like FFXV that get quite creative on a big budget. (Not sure if it’s AAA.) I enjoyed that game but some of the novel features bugged me a little bit and they skimped on some important features, I thought. Maybe there’s a better formula for trialling novelty than an all or nothing approach.

I can’t remember who it was. A famous actor, anyway. They were talking about what’s happened with movies. There’s nothing in the middle.

It’s either $100m+ or less than $3m. Either it gets a big producer and they pump so much money into it that it must be safe because it can’t lose money. Or is a small producer doing it for the love, but a small budget doesn’t go very far. The risky narratives done well would be funded somewhere between the two extremes but it’s just not how it’s done anymore.

In a strange way, to get more money in for the riskier productions, we need to get the money out of Hollywood. Can’t see it happening, myself.

True. I’ve noticed this happening more in recent years than ever before, too.

Not to mention that Google is also terrible for retrieving some (most?) kinds of information. It can work with basic facts but then you’re still relying on Google (or any other search engine) not to omit other salient facts or sources.

I was like you and mainly lurked for this reason, too. The fediverse can be a lot friendlier. The atmosphere had changed a little since the latest Reddit exodus. Hopefully, most of the toxicity of that platform is left behind.

It might be helpful to reiterate that knowledge isn’t fixed and the while Google provides one answer, we could get a better answer after a discussion. So keep asking questions!