We Take Entertainment WAY Too Seriously

We’ve all heard it. Most of us have probably said it — I know I have. We spend a ton of thought, time and effort on our entertainment products. And even more than that, we love to talk about it.

Worship

I love Peter Jackson movies. I’ll go see anything he touches in IMAX 3D on opening weekend every time!

Everyone loves that sensation of finding something they love. As soon as an artist or producer gets a good couple hits in a row, we tend to become devoted fans. We anxiously anticipate the next big thing they’re working on, and heaven help them if it takes too long.

[Fallout 4 Reference]

Then, when that producer finally announces that they’re working on it, the hype train leaves the station. People go ballistic on social media. Pre-orders roll into stores before most people even know what the product will be like. Tickets sell out in advance after one trailer is released. And most of us don’t even realize what we’ve done at that point.

Buyer’s Remorse

Oh great. Another Call of Duty game with barely any improvements, and they actually removed some features! I hate Activision!

Because we bought into the hype and spent our money up front, the company producing these products no longer have anywhere near as much risk to concern themselves with. This may sound like a good thing at first — the company doesn’t have to worry about money so they can concentrate on the product, right?

But if you’re like me, and you’ve spent a few years waiting tables, you know that paying up front rarely gets you the best your money can buy. Sure, sometimes you get lucky. Instacart asks you to tip up front for their grocery delivery service and we’ve had a great experience with them most of the time. But for entertainment media, it sets a troubling trend. If companies are incentivized to spend a majority of their effort on a compelling, hype-generating trailer or demo, the rest of the product will suffer.

Kickstarters have a similar problem.

Disapproval

Did you guys see what’s been going on with Bill Cosby? I hope it’s not true because I love his comedy!

The Solution: Stop Paying Them

Sure, if you dig long and hard enough you’ll find a scumbag in nearly every entertainment product. I’ve just made it a practice not to seek it out. If they make their way into my feeds (Facebook, email, news sites, Reddit, etc.), that’s when someone is either being loud and proud about being homophobic or misogynist or racist or some other non-trivial (to me) negative. That’s when I’ll stop paying for their work.

That doesn’t mean I don’t consume it of course. It just means I have to watch it at a friend’s house, or I’ll wait for it to come out on Netflix.

 

The Solution (Part 2): Start Paying The Right Ones

And then we have the people that do an excellent job. They produce entertainment we enjoy wholeheartedly and don’t stand on soapboxes and shout about controversial topics on the side we disagree with. Those are the producers and artists we should be handing our money to.

When my wife and I canceled our cable television account, it was mostly to stop feeding Comcast. What we do now is much more direct, and [we hope] our money is finding its way to the people we actually want it to.

Sometimes we purchase our entertainment one piece at a time. When I watch Archer, it’s because I went on Amazon Instant Video and subscribed to the season. Amazon emails me whenever a new episode comes out (usually shortly after it airs on FX) and charges me the $2.99 for that episode. I can watch it whenever I feel like it, and I can cancel the subscription if I don’t like the show anymore at some point.

We subscribe to Amazon Instant Video (Prime), Netflix, Crunchyroll, Spotify, and other services that offer great content regularly at a decent value. We can’t wait for HBO Go to start letting us subscribe to them too (as long as it isn’t too expensive).

We also watch ads. Now before you say “What? Don’t you guys have AdBlock?” I’ll say yes we do. But we have it turned off for sites we really like and regularly use. We watch ads on YouTube and Twitch channels we love. We don’t subscribe to Hulu Plus, but we do watch the ads when we watch MasterChef or Bob’s Burgers on it. These ads are how these services make money without us paying them directly.

Ads are actually one of the fairest ways to fund entertainment, since you only see them if you’re using the service. You don’t get pop-up ads from The Daily Show website when you’re not using their site, but you will pay Comcast (and by extension all their shitty channels you don’t even watch) regardless of whether you turn your television on at all. Time is money, but so is attention. Entertainers get paid by grabbing your attention and putting their sponsored content in front of you. Choose what ads you watch and where you’re watching them wisely.

And finally, we directly contribute money. We buy a TON of skins for League of Legends. We buy $0-$20 indie games instead of most of the big $60 ones. I buy every album Nine Inch Nails produce directly from their website for $5. Kati buys makeup directly from the Youtubers she watches so they get their kickback. I donate $1 per month to the guy that creates my favorite webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) on Patreon. You’ve probably seen several of his comics on this blog over the years.

And after all that buying and donating, we still spend less money per month on our entertainment than what our old Comcast bill was. 

Entertainment is Voluntary

The point of this essay is to point out to everyone that entertainment is voluntary. Many of us seem to have forgotten this in recent years. We don’t have to go see the new superhero movie that’s just a reboot of a reboot. We don’t have to pay over $100 a month for cable TV when we only watch maybe 3 or 4 channels regularly. We don’t have to pre-order that new game that had the coolest trailer at PAX.

So even if all your co-workers are talking about that latest episode of MasterChef Junior, you don’t have to keep up unless you want to. Hulu Plus lets you see the episodes right away, but otherwise it’s still the same service. You have to watch ads even while you’re paying monthly. I can wait a week or two to see who wins, and I use Unspoiler on my browser to prevent most social media spoilers for them.

If your buddies are all playing a game and saying how great it is… wait a week or two. *cough*Titanfall*cough* If they’re still playing it and raving about it then, it’s a safe bet you can buy it and catch up to them pretty quickly. I joined Destiny three weeks late and my friends helped me get caught up quick because I could ask them to help me with anything I got stuck on.

Don’t see movies in the theater at all unless you really really want to. I saw Gravity in IMAX because it was critically-acclaimed and the subject matter seemed like something that would be way cooler in a big IMAX theater than in my living room. That wasn’t the case for most other movies this year, so I just waited for them to release on video.

The crappiest elements of the entertainment industry rely on hype and passive purchasing. That’s why movie trailers have all the best parts of the entire story in them. That’s why the demos they give for new games always look better than the game we actually get on day of release. Stop paying upfront for anything (or at least anything that’s hyped) and you’ll save a lot of money while reducing the profitability of these misleading tactics.