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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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No, it's not an important part of my argument, though I think reactiveness does describe a lot of these incidents.

Then that's kind of lame. What's the point of bringing up the reactive nature of something, if proving it's not actually reactive won't change your mind in any significant way?

and indeed, the people screaming about "Woke Disney" probably aren't

They don't have to be representative to be right about why Disney's stuff fails to resonate with wider audiences.

Since we keep going back and forth about exactly what the other person is claiming, here's my claim

This is all fine, except, as you noted, it's just a claim. You shouldn't get call disagreement with this claim "ridiculous", and your portrayal of yourself as the more moderate and gracious, further down the chain, is in especially poor taste given your behavior.

They also like to make money. I submit they like to make money more than they like being woke.

This would be the crux of the disagreement. If this was true, we would routinely be seeing them sacrificing wokeness, for money, not the other way around. Sure, they need money, and there's a boundary on how much losses they can tolerate, but they're clearly willing to tolerate monetary losses, if it means more wokeness.

There might be an element of incompetence, in that they underestimate how much a given movie release will cost them, but the lack of significant colourse correction shows that they're not too bothered about it, this showing that they don't necessarily like to make money more that they like being woke.

Additionally, I think most of the people involved in making these things genuinely believe they are making a good product.

Yeah, but they think that what makes it good is the wokeness. And while I can't tell what's going on in their minds, my guess is that even when they think it's good, they are aware it's not going to be that popular, or a moneymaker.

Is that correct?

I already contradicted enough of the points you raised, that you should know that it isn't.

I already pointed out that "Oh, you liked that movie? Fuck you." is just one of the possibilities, and "made with little or no thought to profit" is a return to the kind of binary thinking I already criticized.

And that the money men signed off on this, because they were okay with shitty virtue-signaling that doesn't make money.

Whether these money men exist in the way you are implying, and if they do, do they have all that much influence over the creative process, is an open question.