Degeneracy is positioned as "tolerance" while traditional morality is repositioned as "hate".
"Reality TV" shows like "Ridiculousness" (hour upon hour of groin-shots) resemble what the movie "Idiocracy" portrayed in 2006 ("Ow! My Balls!").
When "hits" like "Jackass" are given platform and marketed toward youth who partially identify with Steve-O and his band of drop-outs, even though they aren't shown as heroes the emphasis is on the humor of their hijinks not the disastrous consequences of having given themselves wholly to wanton self-destruction.
"The Bachelor/Bachelorette", "Married at First Sight", "Real Housewives of [place]", etc - play on the commoditization of intimate relationships, reducing life partners down to nothing except the degree to which they approximate the standard as presented within the media - a status symbol: as either a Sex Object or a Success Object, and only to the degree that it fits with one's need for narcissistic validation.
I didn't see "Cocaine Bear" but I have heard of "Straw Man" - maybe it's the same thing.
> Even if regulators allow gambling, betting companies would have to decide if they're willing to place odds on WWE matches even if it's legalized.
Well, the betting companies have the most to lose (monetarily), but in Australia you've been able to bet on the Oscars and reality TV show outcomes for a while now (see https://www.tab.com.au/sports/betting/Entertainment)... so I guess they'll probably wear the risk and just ban any suspicious bets.
Somewhat related, a friend of a friend of a friend was a cameraman for The Bachelor a few years ago and through the chain I heard the winner ahead of time. I was doubtful but the result was as I was told. But in general they seem to keep a pretty tight lid on it all - the TV networks would be pretty cranky if their multi-month programs were spoiled early.
One aspect that you might want to consider is not to ask "why am I wasting my time" but "why am I not in control over how I waste my time". Or maybe "why I'm not happy with how I waste my time". Or, even less judgmental: "Why I'm not happy with how I spend my free time". If you look at the comments here, most people who don't have this problem just don't get it. "Just be less judgmental with yourself." But it's not about that, is it?
When you watch something like "The Bachelor" every day together with your girlfriend, some might consider that wasting time. And maybe it is, but I wouldn't consider it problematic. It's limited to one episode per day. And when you're watching it with someone else there's a social aspect to it. Ultimately it might not be valuable. It won't make you smarter, hustle harder, or improve your life. It's not a worthwhile endeavor. But I still wouldn't consider it problematic.
So that's one hypothetical situation. Another is when you open up Reddit because... well, that's what you always do while eating. And then keep scrolling /r/all for three or six hours, and go to bed at 3. What I consider problematic here is that the decision of what I feed my brain is deferred to a website. And that sometimes I have a hard time willing myself to stop.
So I don't think it should be about wasting time, because that derails the discussion into what is considered a waste of time and what isn't. That's a question everybody should find their own answers to. The issue is that you're not happy with how you spend your time. It becomes problematic once you can't control your usage, can't stop once you start using, and feel like you're no longer in control over what you're watching.
Wait until people hear about the person I know who was a contestant on "The Bachelor", who is in fact already happily married. Reality TV is fake? The ocean is wet! Sewage is smelly! and other shocking news, film at 11.
When I was first living on my own barely making rent, PBS documentaries were the most interesting thing on broadcast TV. Infinitely more entertaining than drivel like the Bachelor. Other than available time and offered free content I doubt preference of documentaries is different among income classes.
I thought about this as well but reality TV shows are still enough of a spectacle that it's clear that big money is involved.
Survivor placed the contestants on an island competing in elaborate challenges with camera's everywhere for a million dollar prize.
The Bachelor featured a wealthy suitor/suitress and a dozen attractive people of the opposite sex dressed in ridiculously expensive clothing again with camera's everywhere doing extravagant things.
Anyone can end up on YouTube, only certain people can end up on TV and viewers always have this in the back of their minds.
For some context, there are already dozens of Twitch talk shows, dating shows, Bachelor imitations etc. that are extremely popular on the platform - hosted by individual streamers, not the company itself.
For example “The Rajjchelor” (hosted by a popular streamer called Rajj) had 71,000 concurrent viewers during its most recent episode.
So this is Twitch looking at what is popular on their platform and thinking about how they can create that content themselves.
> How many hundreds of hours of entertainment for $167?
That's not relevant. The simple fact is that $167 for a season is well beyond the budget of the average person whose opinion you're considering. "Hours of entertainment" is (always) the wrong formula, by the way. Nobody needs to steal anything to enjoy hours of free entertainment doing a myriad of activities. Most TV shows simply make no effort at all to price either episodes or full seasons for a wide market.
Compare two ABC shows on Amazon Video, General Hospital and The Bachelor. General Hospital is a daily soap opera with 36 minute episodes and modest production value. The Bachelor has 2-hour episode with higher production values. A full season of The Bachelor is reasonably priced at $20. Individual episodes are $3.
Individual General Hospital episodes are also $3 each. This doesn't seem too crazy if you're talking about someone who might otherwise miss an episode because they are traveling or something. It's probably steeper than it should be, I imagine most soap fans will just read up on what they missed if they care enough rather than shelling out money to watch. But regardless, the full 241-episode season is $735.00. This is quite obviously not priced to sell as a package. No one would buy that. It is simply 241 episodes times $3.00 per episode, which is a generic Amazon price for an HD episode of anything. In fact you can buy the SD version for $15.00. It is clear that no real thought at all has gone into the pricing scheme.
Well, we can all agree that the word "love" is overloaded.
With my parents and my kids.. my love is truly unconditional.
No matter what they do or say, I will always love them.
Unconditional love has no place in romantic love. They shouldn't even be sharing the same words.
Romantic love is absurdly conditional. We need a different word. The word "lust" is also a temporary state, even with new couples.
Music, romantic movies and shows like "The Bachelor", have warped our cultural ideas around relationships.
However, sometimes media can explain it perfectly:
"Listen Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people calls 'love' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on science."
It's exactly the same concept as reality TV and that's nothing new. Even before that, soap operas and celebrity gossip. Screaming and yelling random stuff is simply a way of being "funny", especially when you target a younger audience.
I remember in the mid-to-late 90's when the internet was getting big I thought that would be the end of those low-effort TV shows because soon everybody could access niche content that would interest them more. Love the german baseball league? You can read, watch and discuss about it. Enjoy the Edo period of japanese history? Thousands of web pages are waiting for you. Anywhere. Any time. Who would even bother watching The Bachelor instead of pursuing their interests?
Of course in retrospect I was naive. Sometimes we just want to be entertained. Sometimes we want to watch The Bachelor. And apparently for some people "The Bachelor" is a twenty-something yelling in a microphone overlayed on top of some videogame footage.
I built this app using the third party React Native WkWebView component (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebview), but serving a mobile-optimized React website from it so that it can also be accessed on Android via https://www.theroseleague.com. The app itself is 4 MB as a result, yet still feels native due to modern webkit optimizations.
The back-end is .NET Core 2.0 from a docker image on DigitalOcean and SQL Server as the db. I am using .NET Core's memory cache heavily.
Of note, for the live scoring during the episodes, the latest CI dev package (last Friday) of SignalR Core is used. With over 1500 users at this point, so far so good (knock on wood).
App feedback in general, or any questions at all are welcome! And if you personally do not watch Bachelor in Paradise, but could share with people you know that watch the show that would be fantastic.
Maybe it isn't a tech problem or a lack of innovation but an uncomfortable conversation we need to have with "content creators" who think their blog post about last nights episode of "The Bachelor" is deserving of $100.
Wait - what? So voting is a waste of time; instead we should vote all the time?
OTOH any popular TV show is a worse waste of time, given that its on weekly and not once a year. I think we can give representative democracy at least as much effort as one episode of Bachelor.
It might be worthwhile to examine this phenomenon in a larger context. For example, I know a girl who is obsessed with watching sticky sweet romantic shows and movies like "twilight" and "the bachelor". The romance portrayed in these shows is extremely unrealistic and I feel it gives her unrealistic expectations of romantic relationships. Certainly there are no shortage of young men smoking too much marijuana and watching too much internet porn and generally not trying in life who wonder why they can't find a female partner, but likewise there are a lot women who are overweight, unclean, disorganized and generally not exciting (or even downright repulsive) watching romantic shows or reading sexy novels and thinking their world should be that way.
The larger phenomenon is, in my opinion, media substitutions for reality. It's like to much sugar and causes certain individuals problems. But it's not a problem isolated to porn and young men.
Method:
I got the idea for this when watching The Bachelor last week, when the only minority of the season was eliminated. Which made me wonder - what does the trend look like if we zoom out to other seasons? How do ‘token minorities’ do on reality TV?
I looked at contestant elimination data from past seasons of The Bachelor. The data was comprehensive from 2009 onwards (there’s a lot of information online on recent seasons). Prior to 2009, the data was spottier so I left those out altogether.
For races of the contestants, I did include people of mixed ethnicities (for example, I counted a half-Filippino and half-Italian contestant as a minority). Mostly I went based off the photos, and looked for bios where they were available to confirm ethnicities.
Data sources:
For elimination and callout order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_%28U.S._TV_series%29
For photos and ethnicities of the contestants:
http://sophienettejc.thedeadone.net
http://starcasm.net
http://www.wetpaint.com/the-bachelor/articles/do-you-care-that-the-bachelor-season-16-contestants-are-all-white-again
http://okhereisthesituation.com/2014/05/tasos-hernandez-bachelorette-2014-bio-photos-twitter/http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/960467/bachelorette-racism-lawsuit-emily-maynard-debuthttp://familyfriendlydaddyblog.com/2011/07/19/ethnically-diverse-hometown-dates-ashley-hebert-the-bachelorette-episode-8/http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2012/06/06/abcs-wants-roberto-martinez-as-bachelor-report-says/http://realitysteve.com/2012/04/19/the-bachelorette-emily-maynard-final-four-racial-discrimination-lawsui/http://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/the-bachelor-really-is-kinda-racist#.ye2xvgq2g
Hacker Cinema
16 comments on Hacker News
Degeneracy is positioned as "tolerance" while traditional morality is repositioned as "hate".
"Reality TV" shows like "Ridiculousness" (hour upon hour of groin-shots) resemble what the movie "Idiocracy" portrayed in 2006 ("Ow! My Balls!").
When "hits" like "Jackass" are given platform and marketed toward youth who partially identify with Steve-O and his band of drop-outs, even though they aren't shown as heroes the emphasis is on the humor of their hijinks not the disastrous consequences of having given themselves wholly to wanton self-destruction.
"The Bachelor/Bachelorette", "Married at First Sight", "Real Housewives of [place]", etc - play on the commoditization of intimate relationships, reducing life partners down to nothing except the degree to which they approximate the standard as presented within the media - a status symbol: as either a Sex Object or a Success Object, and only to the degree that it fits with one's need for narcissistic validation.
I didn't see "Cocaine Bear" but I have heard of "Straw Man" - maybe it's the same thing.
> Even if regulators allow gambling, betting companies would have to decide if they're willing to place odds on WWE matches even if it's legalized.
Well, the betting companies have the most to lose (monetarily), but in Australia you've been able to bet on the Oscars and reality TV show outcomes for a while now (see https://www.tab.com.au/sports/betting/Entertainment)... so I guess they'll probably wear the risk and just ban any suspicious bets.
Somewhat related, a friend of a friend of a friend was a cameraman for The Bachelor a few years ago and through the chain I heard the winner ahead of time. I was doubtful but the result was as I was told. But in general they seem to keep a pretty tight lid on it all - the TV networks would be pretty cranky if their multi-month programs were spoiled early.
One aspect that you might want to consider is not to ask "why am I wasting my time" but "why am I not in control over how I waste my time". Or maybe "why I'm not happy with how I waste my time". Or, even less judgmental: "Why I'm not happy with how I spend my free time". If you look at the comments here, most people who don't have this problem just don't get it. "Just be less judgmental with yourself." But it's not about that, is it?
When you watch something like "The Bachelor" every day together with your girlfriend, some might consider that wasting time. And maybe it is, but I wouldn't consider it problematic. It's limited to one episode per day. And when you're watching it with someone else there's a social aspect to it. Ultimately it might not be valuable. It won't make you smarter, hustle harder, or improve your life. It's not a worthwhile endeavor. But I still wouldn't consider it problematic.
So that's one hypothetical situation. Another is when you open up Reddit because... well, that's what you always do while eating. And then keep scrolling /r/all for three or six hours, and go to bed at 3. What I consider problematic here is that the decision of what I feed my brain is deferred to a website. And that sometimes I have a hard time willing myself to stop.
So I don't think it should be about wasting time, because that derails the discussion into what is considered a waste of time and what isn't. That's a question everybody should find their own answers to. The issue is that you're not happy with how you spend your time. It becomes problematic once you can't control your usage, can't stop once you start using, and feel like you're no longer in control over what you're watching.
Thank you for posting by the way.
Wait until people hear about the person I know who was a contestant on "The Bachelor", who is in fact already happily married. Reality TV is fake? The ocean is wet! Sewage is smelly! and other shocking news, film at 11.
When I was first living on my own barely making rent, PBS documentaries were the most interesting thing on broadcast TV. Infinitely more entertaining than drivel like the Bachelor. Other than available time and offered free content I doubt preference of documentaries is different among income classes.
I thought about this as well but reality TV shows are still enough of a spectacle that it's clear that big money is involved.
Survivor placed the contestants on an island competing in elaborate challenges with camera's everywhere for a million dollar prize.
The Bachelor featured a wealthy suitor/suitress and a dozen attractive people of the opposite sex dressed in ridiculously expensive clothing again with camera's everywhere doing extravagant things.
Anyone can end up on YouTube, only certain people can end up on TV and viewers always have this in the back of their minds.
For some context, there are already dozens of Twitch talk shows, dating shows, Bachelor imitations etc. that are extremely popular on the platform - hosted by individual streamers, not the company itself.
For example “The Rajjchelor” (hosted by a popular streamer called Rajj) had 71,000 concurrent viewers during its most recent episode.
So this is Twitch looking at what is popular on their platform and thinking about how they can create that content themselves.
Season 24 of the bachelor has some serious political effect.
> How many hundreds of hours of entertainment for $167?
That's not relevant. The simple fact is that $167 for a season is well beyond the budget of the average person whose opinion you're considering. "Hours of entertainment" is (always) the wrong formula, by the way. Nobody needs to steal anything to enjoy hours of free entertainment doing a myriad of activities. Most TV shows simply make no effort at all to price either episodes or full seasons for a wide market.
Compare two ABC shows on Amazon Video, General Hospital and The Bachelor. General Hospital is a daily soap opera with 36 minute episodes and modest production value. The Bachelor has 2-hour episode with higher production values. A full season of The Bachelor is reasonably priced at $20. Individual episodes are $3.
Individual General Hospital episodes are also $3 each. This doesn't seem too crazy if you're talking about someone who might otherwise miss an episode because they are traveling or something. It's probably steeper than it should be, I imagine most soap fans will just read up on what they missed if they care enough rather than shelling out money to watch. But regardless, the full 241-episode season is $735.00. This is quite obviously not priced to sell as a package. No one would buy that. It is simply 241 episodes times $3.00 per episode, which is a generic Amazon price for an HD episode of anything. In fact you can buy the SD version for $15.00. It is clear that no real thought at all has gone into the pricing scheme.
Well, we can all agree that the word "love" is overloaded. With my parents and my kids.. my love is truly unconditional.
No matter what they do or say, I will always love them.
Unconditional love has no place in romantic love. They shouldn't even be sharing the same words.
Romantic love is absurdly conditional. We need a different word. The word "lust" is also a temporary state, even with new couples.
Music, romantic movies and shows like "The Bachelor", have warped our cultural ideas around relationships.
However, sometimes media can explain it perfectly:
"Listen Morty, I hate to break it to you, but what people calls 'love' is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, Morty, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. I did it. Your parents are gonna do it. Break the cycle, Morty. Rise above. Focus on science."
It's exactly the same concept as reality TV and that's nothing new. Even before that, soap operas and celebrity gossip. Screaming and yelling random stuff is simply a way of being "funny", especially when you target a younger audience.
I remember in the mid-to-late 90's when the internet was getting big I thought that would be the end of those low-effort TV shows because soon everybody could access niche content that would interest them more. Love the german baseball league? You can read, watch and discuss about it. Enjoy the Edo period of japanese history? Thousands of web pages are waiting for you. Anywhere. Any time. Who would even bother watching The Bachelor instead of pursuing their interests?
Of course in retrospect I was naive. Sometimes we just want to be entertained. Sometimes we want to watch The Bachelor. And apparently for some people "The Bachelor" is a twenty-something yelling in a microphone overlayed on top of some videogame footage.
All,
I built this app using the third party React Native WkWebView component (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/wkwebview), but serving a mobile-optimized React website from it so that it can also be accessed on Android via https://www.theroseleague.com. The app itself is 4 MB as a result, yet still feels native due to modern webkit optimizations.
The back-end is .NET Core 2.0 from a docker image on DigitalOcean and SQL Server as the db. I am using .NET Core's memory cache heavily.
Of note, for the live scoring during the episodes, the latest CI dev package (last Friday) of SignalR Core is used. With over 1500 users at this point, so far so good (knock on wood).
App feedback in general, or any questions at all are welcome! And if you personally do not watch Bachelor in Paradise, but could share with people you know that watch the show that would be fantastic.
Maybe it isn't a tech problem or a lack of innovation but an uncomfortable conversation we need to have with "content creators" who think their blog post about last nights episode of "The Bachelor" is deserving of $100.
Wait - what? So voting is a waste of time; instead we should vote all the time?
OTOH any popular TV show is a worse waste of time, given that its on weekly and not once a year. I think we can give representative democracy at least as much effort as one episode of Bachelor.
It might be worthwhile to examine this phenomenon in a larger context. For example, I know a girl who is obsessed with watching sticky sweet romantic shows and movies like "twilight" and "the bachelor". The romance portrayed in these shows is extremely unrealistic and I feel it gives her unrealistic expectations of romantic relationships. Certainly there are no shortage of young men smoking too much marijuana and watching too much internet porn and generally not trying in life who wonder why they can't find a female partner, but likewise there are a lot women who are overweight, unclean, disorganized and generally not exciting (or even downright repulsive) watching romantic shows or reading sexy novels and thinking their world should be that way.
The larger phenomenon is, in my opinion, media substitutions for reality. It's like to much sugar and causes certain individuals problems. But it's not a problem isolated to porn and young men.
Method: I got the idea for this when watching The Bachelor last week, when the only minority of the season was eliminated. Which made me wonder - what does the trend look like if we zoom out to other seasons? How do ‘token minorities’ do on reality TV?
I looked at contestant elimination data from past seasons of The Bachelor. The data was comprehensive from 2009 onwards (there’s a lot of information online on recent seasons). Prior to 2009, the data was spottier so I left those out altogether.
For races of the contestants, I did include people of mixed ethnicities (for example, I counted a half-Filippino and half-Italian contestant as a minority). Mostly I went based off the photos, and looked for bios where they were available to confirm ethnicities.
Data sources: For elimination and callout order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_%28U.S._TV_series%29
For photos and ethnicities of the contestants: http://sophienettejc.thedeadone.net http://starcasm.net http://www.wetpaint.com/the-bachelor/articles/do-you-care-that-the-bachelor-season-16-contestants-are-all-white-again http://okhereisthesituation.com/2014/05/tasos-hernandez-bachelorette-2014-bio-photos-twitter/http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/960467/bachelorette-racism-lawsuit-emily-maynard-debuthttp://familyfriendlydaddyblog.com/2011/07/19/ethnically-diverse-hometown-dates-ashley-hebert-the-bachelorette-episode-8/http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/entertainment/2012/06/06/abcs-wants-roberto-martinez-as-bachelor-report-says/http://realitysteve.com/2012/04/19/the-bachelorette-emily-maynard-final-four-racial-discrimination-lawsui/http://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/the-bachelor-really-is-kinda-racist#.ye2xvgq2g