When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending?
i think there’s a difference between truly “pleasing” the audience and simply occupying their screen time, which is all Netflix’s algorithms are based on.
the amount of time you watch a show/movie only correlates to how much you enjoyed it to a limited extent (like the difference between “awful” and “tolerable”). To Netflix, the 2 hours you “watched” a just-okay movie is the same as the 2 hours you watched a movie you truly love. True enjoyment doesn’t matter, all that matters to them is how much you watch, and that means making things just-good-enough so you won’t turn them off.
i think there’s a difference between truly “pleasing” the audience and simply occupying their screen time, which is all Netflix’s algorithms are based on.
the amount of time you watch a show/movie only correlates to how much you enjoyed it to a limited extent (like the difference between “awful” and “tolerable”). To Netflix, the 2 hours you “watched” a just-okay movie is the same as the 2 hours you watched a movie you truly love. True enjoyment doesn’t matter, all that matters to them is how much you watch, and that means making things just-good-enough so you won’t turn them off.