site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

They actually renewed it and then spent 5 million dollars on pre-production of the second season and then cancelled it. I mean it's not HBOmax renewing Minx and filming the entire second season and then cancelling it but it's clearly an executive decision-making problem. I wouldn't call any show that they've ever made an organic "hit" besides The Boys.

If you look at the Nielsen weeklies of time watched and compare A League of Their Own to Reacher it's probable that the entirety of minutes watched up until for for A League of Their Own was probably equal to the first couple weeks of Reacher. And Reacher is a mild hit for Amazon and Amazon in general has a much lower bar for being a hit than Netflix.

For a comparison Reacher had around 1500 million minutes watched in its first week and A League of the Their Own had around 500 million minutes. Reacher stayed on the charts for a couple more weeks but League was gone after its initial appearance.

Another, more sad comparison is that Friends/Seinfield/The Big Bang Theory/Gilmore Girls/Supernatural routinely get around 500 million minutes weekly, they pop in and out of the top ten but they're pretty consistent and usually come back. For whatever reason the show failed spectacularly but nobody noticed because nobody probably knew it existed (a wonder how that works).

Though all of this is moot. A League of Their Own is a clout chasing prestige show made to show off diversity or be artistic and maybe nab awards. It's competition is never going to be Reacher or Jack Ryan but maybe something like the Night Sky which premiered even lower than League and was promptly cancelled. It seems pretty clear that Amazon, like every other network and streamer makes a few clout/award shows and doesn't stick with them if they're not successful.

The fact that they're getting a second season and complaining about it is just a stupid way to bite the hand that feeds. Aside from writing for the Onion, and Movie 43 Will Graham has two episodes on a sitcom for Bravo which I'd never heard of and wasn't aware that Bravo made sitcoms, and his other two shows were both Amazon shows. The guy wrote for the Amazon show Alpha House, executive produced and wrote for Mozart in the Jungle and then created and wrote for A League of Their Own. And then he shits on Amazon, I hope that shield of saying "diversity" can keep them from noticing/remembering this when they want to offer him another show to make. It's funny how it's the white guy complaining about this and the other creator who has a career outside of that show isn't instigating diversity investigations into Amazon because her show was only renewed for a second and final season.