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Archer
2009 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 14 seasons
Created by Adam Reed
ComedyActionAdventureAnimation
Smart-mouthed superspy Sterling Archer and his dysfunctional team of secret agents turn dangerous missions into messy misadventures around the globe.
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67 comments on Hacker News
One of my favourite episodes of Archer has a similar plot to this (Mr. Deadly Goes to Town). TIL this is one of the references!
https://archer.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Deadly_Goes_To_Town
Archer has a whole load of obscure literary references that are easy to miss.
e.g. in the very first episode, the flight attendant's dog is named Abelard
> The name Abelard is a reference to Pierre Abélard, the French philosopher and monk, who is famous for his work in the fields of dialectic and theology, along with his tragic romance with Héloise d’Argenteuil. Additionally, Abélard was known for the studies of the Greeks, which is referenced when Abelard (the dog) "laughs" at Sterling's Greek joke.
You can find a list of cultural references here: https://archer.fandom.com/wiki/Cultural_References
I forget where, but someone was talking about a similar difference in American vs British comedy looking at The Office (the American one) and Parks and Rec. In both, the format tends to be pre-conflict -> conflict -> resolution, with the episodes almost always ending on an upbeat tone. In contrast, in a British show, it tends to be pre-conflict -> conflict -> kick them while they are down. Things can get worse, the characters can be unredeemed, and the fun is they are inept, unlucky, arseholes that don't get out of the situation with a happy ever after.
Americans like that humor as well (see Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Archer, etc.) but it definitely is less prevalent.
This was originated (or at least popularized) in an episode of Archer from season 1. It remains maybe my favorite 5 minutes of comedy ever out to screen. It's just so tight!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=dNYMQpcqscA
"What are you doing here?"
"Uh, trying to perform my ablutions?"
I learned a great new word from that episode. Archer is one of the best shows for strange and funny use of language, they just nail my favourite type of humour.
There’s an episode of Archer where Cheryl Tunt, the company secretary, does exactly this on a trip from New York to somewhere in Canada. Their agency was extraditing a Nova Scotian separatist.
About 10 years ago Netflix became available in the country where I was living back then. I was very excited about it, I was on their email list for years, waiting for the announcement. As I got the email that they are available, after work literally the first thing I did was to grab my credit card, and subscribe.
I found 4-6 movies I wanted to watch, but when I saw that they had Godfather 1 and 3 without 2, I had a good laugh. Then I watched all the Archer episodes they had, and tried to find something interesting for 2 more days before I cancelled my (still trial) account.
Though I stopped watching movies some years ago, until than I used to watch them on the same old pre-netflix way.
Of course I have heard that they have spent many billions on content since then, I'm sure they have some interesting stuff... but that came way too late for me.
Maybe I'm getting old, lol
Gunfire is insanely loud. Even a little .22 is louder than the apparent volume of heavier rounds in most film and TV. It's one of those things people can have entirely the wrong idea about if their only exposure to it is media. You see things like people firing rifles from inside a car and it's like... nobody in that car should be able to hear a damn thing for a full minute, and with repeated fire their ears might ring badly through the next day.
Archer kinda gets this more-right than most things, LOL. "MAWP! MAWP!"
Or ISIS from the TV Show Archer.
I'm not sure the little details are enough of a moat. Consider TikTok - people use cheap "special effects" to get the message across, e.g. if a man is playing a woman he might drape a towel over his head - it's silly and low quality but it gets the idea across to the viewer. Think too about programs like Archer or South Park that have (stylistically) low quality animation but still huge fan bases.
What I think this will unlock, maybe with a bit of improvement, is low quality video generation for a vast number of people. Do you have a short film idea? Know people with some? Likely millions of people will be able to use this to put together good enough short films - that yes, have terrible details, but are still good enough to watch. Some of those millions of newly enabled videos will have such strong ideas or writing behind them that it will make up for, or capitalize on, the weak video generation.
As the tools become easier, cheaper, faster, better etc more and more hobbyists will pick them up and try to use them. The user base will encourage the product to grow, and it will gradually consume film (assuming it can reach the point of being as or nearly as good as modern special effects).
I think of it like - when Steven Spielberg was young he used an 8mm camera, not as good as professional film equipment in the day, but good enough to create with. If I were a high school student interested in film I would absolutely be using stuff like this to create.
Another obscure Archer ("The Limited", Season 3 Ep 6) reference solved.
2005-2006 Canadian series Intelligence, at the intersection of organized crime, law enforcement and intelligence is also good, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0845746/.
Elsewhere on the Möbius loop lies the madcap 2009-2024 animated series Archer, with a string of award nominations and blink-and-you-will-miss-it references, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486217/
The 2014-2017 series Turn dramatized New York farmers and shopkeepers who comprised the first US spy ring, including Benedict Arnold storyline, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543328/
This reminded me of Archer Scavenger Hunt[0]
From Wikipedia: Shortly after episode 2 aired, a viewer noticed that a serial number featured on the computer screen in the episode was actually hexadecimal ASCII code for a website URL. This URL was the first step in an extensive interactive online "scavenger hunt" which animator Mark Paterson had devised as a side project to the season, which was awarded the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Program for 2015.
[0] https://figgis.agency/walkthrough
The animated show "Archer" (action/comedy TV series) season 9 episode 7 had this as a plot point. From the IMDB trivia section:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7576240/trivia/
"Pervitin was one of the first commercially available formulations of methamphetamine hydrochloride (salts); it also contained large doses of caffeine. It was used by Nazi soldiers, sometimes along with cocaine, to help them remain alert on night patrols, long marches and also to help increase aggression and stamina during battle. Pervitin was heavily used by Stuka (a German fighter plane) pilots to help keep them alert on long patrol flights, hence the nickname "Stuka tablets". By 1940 the German Army had started greatly reducing the number of tablets each solider was allowed to have due to the severe side effects. While the drug was in their system, it had the benefit of causing decreased fear and increased strength, stamina, aggression and gave them a high resistance to pain. However, after the drug wore off, soldiers often took several days to recover. They suffered from a form of amphetamine "hangover" and were pretty much useless for the next few days because they acted more like zombies than soldiers; this was mainly because of the long duration of methamphetamine's effects which would cause soldiers to be awake for a few days straight, so it would take several days for the body to recover. Pervitin use also was responsible for Nazi soldiers becoming too aggressive and attacking fellow soldiers and superior officers. It also caused some to commit war crimes by killing civilians and raping women and young girls as amphetamines often greatly increase libido and decrease inhibitions."
It’s what made me drop Hulu/Prime and start pirating and buying (usually second hand) physical media for a lot of my content again.
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which actively lampshades all of the themes being censored now has so many episodes missing from streaming services it’s almost one per season. And they’re some of the best episodes!
I’m actually surprised Archer is still around.
Now that would be old money.
Reminds me of this episode from Archer : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2207833/
> Plex might have been stagnating,
It's not stagnating, so much as they have decided that their initial market doesn't interest them. They were writing software for end users that let end users set up their own person Netflix. But maybe the revenue was unexciting or just insufficient, and now they want to be their own streaming service.
Their streaming service sucks (they're probably at least two orders of magnitude too small to be able to afford to do it right, maybe even 3 or 4), and contaminates the searches on my server with their junk.
Also, it might be true that they're just afraid of the liability of doubling down on their original market. Contributory infringement and all that. This is almost certainly the reason they haven't expanded to include media like ebooks and audio books and karaoke. I mean they have the perfect paradigm for all of these things... the same software that keeps track of where I am in a season of shows, or halfway through a movie could definitely keep track of where I am in a book, if they wanted to.
This isn't entirely speculation on my part... at some point someone had asked them about preroll trailers for new seasons (Archer might be the most fun for these), but they said that they wouldn't add the feature because there was no legitimate source for those videos (even though just ripping them with youtube-dl is dead simple).
"vacuums aren't combustible" oh I love it idk what you did here, but the assumption of hydrogen still being used is awesome. reminds me of a great Archer episode.
I'm with the other commenter, I understand it's part of setting up the jokes and sort of an excuse for why they never grow as a character but it still makes it really unenjoyable to watch for me. I couldn't do Arrested Development or Archer for the same reason, after watching one or two episodes I just feel mad.
Animated movies that I often rewatch (in no particular order):
- Spirited Away
- Grave of the Fireflies
- Finding Dory
- Up
- Tokyo Godfathers
- Akira (NOT the English dub, which completely changes the story and dialogue for the worse, and for no good reason)
- Mononoke Hime
- Ghost in the Shell (the original one)
- My Neighbor Totoro
Animated series I'll rewatch:
- Guardian of the Sacred Spirit
- Castlevania
- Futurama
- Archer
- Arcane
- Cowboy Bebop
- Ergo Proxy
- The Dragon Prince
- Hakaba Kitaro
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
This is like an episode of Archer. But explains why Russia hasnt won yet.
There's also the Internet Movie Cars Database which I'm a huge fan of: https://www.imcdb.org/
edit: especially for a show like Archer where they feature a ton of very obscure cars... https://www.imcdb.org/movie_1486217-Archer.html
Airships do not have a good value.
The tv show archer made this point, it takes a dirigible significant amounts of time to traverse an area.
Going to our product triangle:
1. Is it faster than the alternative: no
2. Is it better quality delivery: No, similar / nearly indistinguishable from an airplane
3. Is it cheaper: Not sure, there is always a claim that massive amounts of goods could be lifted for delivery, that is why that water park in Europe exists, they were trying to gets as big an airship as possible to move goods.
The only airspace this could work is if it can deliver goods for cheaper than an airplane, truck, or rail. Which at the moment, there is a reason those spaces are dominant.
My son was born in 2013. For some reason I immediately blurted out "Archer" when we found out we were having a boy. My wife did not like it, I loved the name! I kept referring to him as Archer, and then soon she couldn't think of him as anything other than Archer, haha. It's a great name and it suits him so well, and it's unique enough (it was not a popular name back in 2012-2013) but I'm seeing it become more popular now.
He's still the only Archer at his school though. (no, I hadn't even watched the Archer TV series or heard about it, but one day I will...)
The Archer tv show used to call its main spy org ISIS. And then one day, they just stopped referring to it by name at all. Gave it the silent treatment.
The television series Archer had to do this. International Secret Intelligence Service just disappeared the name and started calling themselves a bunch of other things in season 6 and then finally made a joke of it in the season 12 premiere two days ago.
I remember an episode of Archer where Mallory says 'I swear, if you throw that computer on the floor one more time, you'll wake up in a mental ward with total amnesia under someone else's name!' I said out loud 'God Damn', it was terrifying. To think this is worse and actually happened.
Because everybody knows what 'kidnapping' means, and everybody knows that it's a crime. Not everybody knows what extraordinary rendition means, or that it's a crime. The general public not knowing or caring what "extraordinary rendition" means was even used as a joke in the tv show Archer.
Although one thing that is true of the movies that is lampooned in the spy parody show "Archer", is that Bond doesn't seem to understand how to be a secret agent. Secret agents shouldn't go around drawing attention to themselves the way that Bond (and his parody Sterling Archer) do. And they certainly shouldn't go around introducing themselves using their real names!
One of the best episodes of Archer touches on this topic - El Contador.
https://archer.fandom.com/wiki/El_Contador
Teambuilding, when it works, is usually something that just happens, and isn't scripted. Watercooler interactions, discussions after work, even maybe a company barbeque. Actual company sponsored teambuilding events, in my experience, have been total shams, never taken seriously by the participants. This Archer episode kind of sums it up. S6E5 Vision Quest, sorry I don't have a link to the full episode.
I recently watched 3615 code Père Noël, a film where Minitel had a small but key role [0]. It's from 1989, when Minitel was still very much ubiquitous. I've also heard mention of it on Archer [1].
I didn't realize the French got free Minitel terminals. I wonder if there were subscription fees associated with it, like you get the 1000 hours free AOL disk, but eventually you'll have to pay for the service and you gotta pay for the phone time regardless...
0 - https://filmxposure.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/3615-code-pc3a8re-noc3abl-3.png
1 - http://www.tzr.io/yarn-clip/217d0345-4b02-4b05-8d57-7753601532f4
> It is also something you call disabled people when you want to be really insulting
Is it? I know some folks will point to a dictionary, but we live in a post truth world. It's odd to me that I've seemingly encountered every other usage of gimp, either personally or in media, but never an offensive usage. A horse with a gimp leg in the wheel of time, gimp the string at summer camp arts and crafts, a gimp suit in the tv show Archer, and gimp the image editing program as a teen. Language fundamentally means what we think it means - if nobody uses gimp as an offensive word, it's not offensive.
Have you ever heard it used offensively? If personally so, can I ask where (what county / cultural context)? If in media, can you name the work?
The Archer TV show had a similar problem. (Minor spoilers ahead.) The show pre-dates Islamic State, and the heroes' spy organisation was named ISIS. I was a little disappointed by the way they escaped it, they just did away with the spy organisation as they mixed up the later seasons of the show. It would have been a bold move, but it could have been played for laughs.
>> One of the other big names he's enlisted is Yves Béhar, a name you might recognize from a variety of tech projects like One Laptop per Child. He and his company Fuzeproject designed the futuristic-looking station.
Um ... wasn't that the premise behind an Archer episode? Sea Tunt? The rich Tunt brother had backed both the sea base and one laptop per child. Is this the tail wagging the dog or at some personal level is there a link to the show?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine
I really like this idea, but it reminded me of the tontine episode of Archer.
You don’t have such laws in Washington DC?
Funny you should ask. A few years back my wife and I were stuck in Reagan (an airport in D. C.) for a super-long layover. As I'm watching my first ever episode of Archer, I notice the family a row over gets up and walks down the concourse, leaving their bags. Now, I've heard a bit of their conversations as I've sat there, and I gather they're American and probably self-centered and clueless. Or maybe that's what the terrorists that just walked away from their explosives want me to think. Regardless, we're sitting at the gate and there's a gate agent right there, so I put this in the "not my job anymore" bucket.
It's been a few years, but I'll bet it was at least ten minutes before the agent called security. It was long enough that I was about to get up and ask, "ya know, I'm not the super-paranoid type, but don't you think you ought to give the dog a little practice sniffing bags?" The dog and an agent or two show up, give the bags a sniff, and wait for the owners to return. I was disappointed that there wasn't at least a little ass-chewing. I mean, what U. S. resident doesn't know not to do that? And if they don't, how about driving that lesson home?
But anyway, we don't get too worked up about a random bag lying around. Because in the U. S., thus far it hasn't been shown that it stands much of a chance of blowing up. My sympathy to countries that have not been so lucky.
Something that worked for me was playing a TV show that I've watched to death (Archer, Community, Rick and Morty.) on my phone. Listening to a story that I already know occupies my brain just enough to let go of my own worries, and since I know the end of them all, I don't have the need to sit up and wonder what's going to happen next.
Kind of the opposite of what they recommend (completely silent and dark room) for so-called "sleep hygiene", which, when I practiced it, only served to keep me awake longer.
I had it trigger while watching an episode of Archer. I even went back and played it a few more times to double check it wasn’t a fluke.
So you would also recommend watching Archer and H. Jon Benjamin animated series? (Bob's Burgers) I'd certainly recommend them though I'm not sure he's a canonical example of the language.
By watching Archer you might also perhaps, better understand when things are phrased inappropriately?
If you want to learn to speak english well, watch those programs that use English properly. Blackadder. Archer. Sherlock. Even some of the marvel movies (GOTG) are very careful in how they pronounce and articulate words. Then watch every Brian Cox and Attenborough documentary. You might come out with a bit of a British accent but that is far far better than any youtube-derived accent. Better you sound like Stirling Archer than [insert random youtube person].
Used to do this until I stopped needing to. A consistent bed time plus Rick and Morty/Venture Bros./Archer, just going from season 1 episode 1 on down the list, and then restarting once I got to the last episode at some point.
Worked very well, but I think if I tried it now, I would have a more difficult time sleeping with television playing in the background now that I no longer sleep this way.
I read that these were going to be used for cargo in hard to reach places. However, if there is a need for alot of cargo then an airport usually already exists, and drones would probabally be more economical for smaller packages. Other than that? I think niche cruises like in that one episode of Archer.
...maybe it's just that storytelling is like a magic trick which requires the wholehearted participation of writer and reader to be successful. If you're not interested, you should quit and find something else to do.
I'm the same with television - cannot watch The Wire too many times, cannot watch most other things even once.
Wholeheartedly agree. I can't stand movies and most TV shows but there is a relatively small set of shows that I will binge rewatch at an interval of every 2-4 years. A few are the great ones like The Wire or the Star Treks that make me rethink my place in the universe as I get older, but when I say the rest out loud they all sound so... banal. And yet, I love rewatching them every time, especially when it's with friends or family - when they don't know what's going to happen and you get to experience that again vicariously.
Arrested Development, Archer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Moral Orel, Xavier Renegade Angel... stupid stuff like that. It's especially great today with so many shows surviving for 5-10 seasons. I'll watch one or two seasons that are available and come back years later to something that combines elements of nostalgia with brand new never before seen seasons.
Edit: Also, to add, I have always been a voracious reader, especially of nonfiction. While I absorbed a lot of knowledge, I can't really remember any actual stories that I have read in my lifetime save for one. Some young adult book, House of the Scorpion, published in 2002 that was required reading for one of my kids so I read it to help them with their book report. For some reason, that book just resonated with me and it's still my favorite.
-Now, I know you're familiar with the honey pot.
-Seducing and blackmailing a hot female enemy agent. I love the honey pot.
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=archer&episode=s01e05
GP specifically mentioned movies, but I don't know that a good story would work with the pacing short-circuited like that (eg: comedic timing in a show like Archer, or the myriad pregnant pauses in Mad Men and the Wire). I'll give it a try, though.
Why would they keep releasing it, and release it in the first place, with such a simple kill-switch. Doesn't make much sense.
Reminds me of the Archer episode where Cyril plants the computer virus and was going to be the hero by "fixing" it.
It's... an extremely common accounting term? First day of Accounting 1 or so?
It's common enough that it's been used as the title for a pop animated sitcom episode -- Archer (S2E2).
I'm not sure it's an unsolvable problem, given enough data. Sure, a lot of people would recommend me Venture Bros (including my wife) since I enjoy both Archer and Bob's Burgers. But I have tried multiple times to get into it without success. Maybe it's just that those two data points aren't enough to pin down what it is I like about those shows that Venture Bros don't give me (at least in the first few episodes).
But you are right, I've scrobbled 100s of thousands of songs to last.fm, and those recommendations hit at best 50% of the time. I'm hoping machine learning could help here, as I'd always like a good recommendation, seeing as I seem to be picky.
There's a quote from the TV show Archer that I think reveals an aspect of the reptilian appeal that was missing in the article:
"Gee, I don't know, Cyril. Maybe deep down I'm afraid of any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction. Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it's the perfect killing machine. A half ton of cold-blooded fury, the bite force of 20,000 Newtons, and stomach acid so strong it can dissolve bones and hoofs."
The sense of fear that Archer has is also expressed in our pop cultural fascination with all things Dinosaur (Jurassic World/Park, etc.).
To be able to keep a miniature dinosaur as a pet seems like a great thing.
There was an episode of Archer recently that was a crossover with the old Sealab cartoon (2021, the "spoof" version to be specific) and Captain Murphy was holding the world hostage with "nukes" (he didn't have any nukes) in demand for a moratorium on fishing. It wasn't the first time I had heard demands for such a pause, but it was definitely a position I wasn't expecting to see echoed in Archer.
In some other cartoon as a wink and a nod to the parents, sure. But definitely not Archer.
This is a humorous complaint. I was using a VPN into England and had checked out Netflix and I thought the selection was great (finally, I can stream Battlestar Galactica. Archer's season 6 is finally out, etc.)...but I'm sure if I were using VPN regularly, and then checking Netflix...I'd have the same feeling of "it's the same ol shit on the front page"
The problem I have with Netflix recommendations is that while they understand genres, they're not good at recommending good shows.
Since I've watched Archer and Arrested Development, Netflix thinks I'd like every mediocre comedy show, since I've watched Sherlock and Luther, it thinks I'd like mediocre non-serialized detective shows, and anything made by the BBC. Watching all of BSG (which isn't even on Netflix anymore, RIP) has given me a permanent section of terrible sci-fi recommendations.
An episode of the show "Archer" covered this fairly hilariously.
The TV show Archer also had that problem.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/showbiz/tv/archer-isis-fx/
The comedy cartoon Archer, which is incredibly fast paced uses no improv what-so-ever, since the writer is apparently doing the script so tight.
I'm not sure what is most impressive. Writer such a tight script as Reed does for Archer, or assembling a movie from already shot pieces like White does.
Random Thoughts - Google Keep
Events / Anything with a date - Google Calendar, Not a huge fan but haven't found anything better.
Movies / TV - Combination of Letterboxd and episodecalendar
Random Files - Dropbox, Thinking of moving to Google drive though since I dont actually use the sync. Contains a copy of ~/documents and ~/code.
Code - Github / Gogs mirror on one of my servers.
Email - Yahoo. In the process of switching to self hosted though.
Passwords - Lastpass.
Everything Else - Just using logical folder structures. I.e
~/video/movies/unwatched/ or ~/video/tv/keep/Archer/1/Archer.S1E01.mkv
I love my AppleTV, and I would buy an Apple TV if one came out, for a few reasons. I actually only use my ATV to watch Netflix and buy Doctor Who and Archer off iTunes, but I'd buy a TV made by Apple because I feel like they would do a good job.
My TV, when I hit the power button on the remote, takes about 5 seconds to give me any indication that it heard me; I then get another 5 seconds of the LG logo before I get dumped onto whatever input I was last on.
In comparison, when I move my mouse on my computer, my Apple cinema display wakes up almost instantaneously (display), and my AppleTV goes from sleep mode to showing me the last menu I was on in less than a second (processing).
Thus, I expect an Apple television to be on and available to use within moments of my requesting it, and off as soon as I tell it I'm done.
The AppleTV 3rd Gen also maxes out at about 1W of power used[1], which means that there's no reason why the brains of a smart TV shouldn't be able to be on 100% of the time, ready at any moment to power on for incoming content, rather than having my television add 30s to the simple act of showing someone a YouTube video.
That said, Apple make their money by making high-quality, high-margin devices, and not by racing to the bottom of the price structure and selling out customers to make ends meet.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6834/apple-tv-2013-a1469-short-review-analysis-of-a-new-a5
I keep a lot of pictures and videos I've recorded on my phone, as well as music. In addition I like having TV shows stored on my phone, for instance, every season of Archer, because I love that show and I don't want to use up my battery by streaming it constantly(especially when I'm on 6hr runs). My 5s is the 64GB model so I'm still doing quite fine on space, but I can definitely say I've used more than half of it already.
I keep mistaking the headlines for ISIS as being about the spy agency from the tv show Archer..
Babou the ocelot was swiped from Archer the TV series: http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Babou
Anyone else instantly thinking of that Archer episode? So many classic lines....
That would just help redefine the term I first heard on season 2 of Archer: "rolling probable cause"
Awesome Sterling Archer reference! http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Sterling_Archer
Although it's unclear that Archer is set in the modern day and would have access to Google.
<< The characters wear 1960s clothing and hair styles and several episodes feature references to the Soviet Union as a current nation (the episode "Movie Star" hinges on the assassination of "the new Soviet Premier"). The technological sophistication within the series varies, with characters using computers that are dated i.e. reel-to-reel mainframe systems, dot-matrix printers and punchcards, yet also use cell phones, GPS devices, laser gunsights, and modern day insults (such as "suck it", "screw you", and "douche bag"). Adam Reed was asked about the conflicting style, and concluded, "I just think it's ill-defined." >>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_(TV_series)
I've love to ride a blimp, but it's hard to forget the imagery of the Hindenburg. Just like Adolf isn't exactly a popular name for kids.
I'm reminded of the Archer episode "Skytanic" and the main character's failure to grasp that the blimp they're on isn't going to explode from every little spark:
---SNIP---
Sterling Archer: Jesus! You want to blow us all to shit, Sherlock?
[Archer slaps the face of a man attempting to light a cigarette]
Malory Archer: Sterling!
Capt. Lammers: For the last time, the Excelsior is filled with non-flamable helium!
---END SNIP---
While Archer is a silly comedy, in the end, that's the mentality we'd have to face to get something like this mainstream again.
Oh man, this stuff is frustrating. Two stories:
A girl and I wanted to watch a movie on a spare evening. We had been talking a few days before about how we'd never seen Scott Pilgrim[1], and so we decided to actually go down to Blockbuster, because it'd be quaint. I was surprised it was still around...
Anyway, so we get there, and we wander around, looking for it. We didn't see it, but we did see that they had 35 new copies of some other release, which seemed kind of ridiculous. So we ended up asking the people who worked there, and they said that it came out on DVD the next day. So we just went home, and about 15 minutes later, we were watching it in full high def. "Well, we tried to do it the right way, and all it did was waste an hour." Silly rules about waiting on physical products meant that they missed out on my $2.
Last week, I was with some friends. I mentioned how I'd just seen the premier of Archer[2], and how I was surprised it was as good as Season 1. My friends hadn't seen it, but were interested. So I told them to bring up Netflix, because all of Season 1 was on it. So we looked... and now that Season 2 was on TV, Season 1 was back to 'DVD only.' Ten minutes later, the first episode was torrented, and by the time we'd finished watching episode 1, the entire rest of the season was done. I was specifically trying to get my friends hooked on their product, yet they wanted to make it harder for me to do so. It's so dumb.
99% of my media consumption is legal, because most of the time, I don't mind what I'm watching or listening to. But when I'm trying to find something specific, it always seems really hard to actually get, and there's also this[3]. But torrents have everything, and it's fast, and no-bullshit.
1: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/
2: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486217/
3: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4085/5008519733_757bc53e18_z.jpg
I actually dislike the zero-click data. I think it's impressive from a technical standpoint, but ultimately it just gets in the way of my searches. When I'm searching, I already have a general idea of what I'm searching for, so the zero-click info isn't very useful, and also leaves less room on the page for search results.
To give a concrete example: I was following a discussion online about a show called Archer, and someone said it was basically Frisky Dingo except not as good. So when I do a search on DDG for Frisky Dingo, the zero-click results didn't do me any good. I already figured it was a cartoon show on Adult Swim, I wasn't interested in "American animated television series distributed by Madman Entertainment Category" or "More related topics", I wanted something more relevant. I have to wonder how often people click on any of the links in the zero-click box.
Edit: you called it a "decision engine", which is both accurate and why I don't like DDG as much as Google. I want a search engine that reads my mind. When I do a search for "django", I want the framework, I don't want films/musicians/etc. Google reads my mind and DDG doesn't.