M25.

I was starting to think you'd never get round to making the new thread.

The M62 is God's own motorway. What other arterial road has a national sport? If only Liverpool City Council could sort out the shitshow at the end of J4.

>>454646
The M62 is too much of a ballache, particularly around IKEA, Huddersfield and near Manchester. If I had a commute that regularly involved going past J24 I'd probably off myself.

>>454646

I don't think it rains anywhere on Earth like it rains going over that bit sometimes.

>>454647

I've no idea why it's always so busy on the bit between Bradford and Birstall, because who the fuck in their right mind ever needs or wants to go to Bradford? Especially now they have their own "congestion charge" so you have to pay for the privilege, as if people needed any further excuse to avoid the place.

>>454643
I never like driving on the M1 - you can tell its "old". I also really hate that bit of the M40 going west before Blenheim Palace way where everyone seems to drive like a nutter. I use the M3 most often, but damn its variable-speed-limit and no-hardshoulder eyes.

The only good thing about motorways nowadays is that the Tesla does all the driving for me.

>>454649

>The only good thing about motorways nowadays is that the Tesla does all the driving for me.

That's why I will never take Teslas seriously. Or EVs in general that take you as the driver out of the loop. Maybe it's just too sci fi for me as an oldlad, but I still need to feel like I'm in control of the car.

I usually end up on the A1(M) which I hate but it's so familiar it makes the journey quicker. However I'm posting this from the bogs in Rivington services as my day has been Stansted - Manchester - Newcastle, and I've decided to treat myself to the northern part of the M6 route.

>>454650
>Maybe it's just too sci fi for me as an oldlad, but I still need to feel like I'm in control of the car.

The first couple of times on full Autopilot are fucking scary, I won't lie. I also notice a lot of things that happen on UK roads that make me think "it will never cope with that, thank fuck I am driving" - but it works a lot lot better than I was expecting and on a long motorway stint it makes everything a lot lot easier - I drove to Bordeaux recently and most of the journey was on auto. It works fantastically when stuck in traffic too, overall its a net plus plus over driving yourself - I actually enjoy driving again.

Stephen Mangan is doing Pointless in the Richard Osman role and it's weird.

>>454653

How automated is it, exactly? Having cruise control on my current car still feels like something of a luxury to me, but I barely use it. It's only really useful when you're driving at night or really early in the morning and the road is reasonably clear. On the occasions I have used it though, it is very relaxing just to fly along without having to worry about watching the speedo or keeping your foot in the right position.

>>454655
Driving the Tesla generally is very relaxing. The regenerative braking is absolutely fucking amazing - it means I hardly ever use the brake pedal unless an emergency - one foot driving. Difficult to describe how much easier it is to drive, but way easier - lift off the accelerator and it starts braking.

In autopilot mode, it is handling steering and speed (you can set the distance you want to the car in front of you), but it's traffic aware so if someone cuts in front of you, or the traffic slows right down, the car handles it all perfectly well. To overtake, you simply indicate and as long as the car thinks its clear, it executes the whole move for you. Although this is very clever, to be honest I usually overtake in manual as you get incredible fucking torque on the thing, and can accelerate from 40 -> 70 in a heartbeat, which makes overtaking fun/very safe.

It has its quirks for sure, it is really a computer with wheels attached, than a car, but I am in total love with it and will never go back to an ICE car. It's very expensive, it will probably end up being the priciest car I ever own, but it is excellent at what it does. It's exactly like the first time seeing an iPhone and thinking "yep, old is dead and soon everything will be like this one".

I can't sleep. Had too much coffee again tonight.

Fuck.

>>454657
Hi.

>>454657
I had the same thing last night, and tonight.

Sorry about the economy shitting the bed lads. It's happened because I've bought a house finally...

>>454660
Not to worry. The lad who's very angry that he can't afford a house will be along in a minute to whinge.

I didn't think this was worthy of a new thread on /beat/ but how often do you listen to new music?

My girlfriend's started working from home one day a week and when she has Spotify or whatever on she listens almost exclusively to her favourite bands from her mid/late teens; Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse, Eels, Supergrass, that sort of thing. She has no interest in trying to discover new artists.

I'm more of a mixed bag. I do listen to new music now and then, but I tend to find that it's liking the occasional song by an artist rather than having the deep connection I felt with bands when I was a teenlad. A lot of the music I listen to is from my teenage years, although I guess it's kind of interesting which ones have stood the test of time as my favourites were Placebo and RATM but I have no idea when the last time I properly listened to them was.

>>454657

You think that's bad, what about if you've been on coke all night and then your girlfriend decides she wants to go to bed (while presenting you with another line). Then she complains that she can't sleep and you have to have sex for another hour to tire her out. 3am. Working at 8.

I'm not in my 20s any more and I need to stop all this, but she's a bad influence.

>>454663

Your life is truly shit as it goes, lad.

>>454662
I'd hear music on TV or in films or get it recommended to me by friends, and I'd add my favourite songs to a playlist on Spotify, and then all I'd listen to on my commute would be that playlist. So 80% of my music consumption in the last couple of years was the same 800 or so songs. I moved to Apple Music, where I don't have that self curated playlist, but now I'm actually listening to full albums instead of Now That's What I Call My Shit Taste, which is quite nice.

One of the cats passed away today at 13.
Had a good life, lots of antics to remember him by but I will miss the little git.

>>454666

Our last cat made it to approximately 17. We never knew for sure, because somebody picked her up as a stray and brought her to the shelter. And the shelter then told us they were guessing she was about six months old.

It's fascinating how cat personalities change as they age, just as they do with humans. The older our cat got, the more demanding she would get when she wanted food or wanted to go outside. She developed a few peculiar traits, and at some point the vet told us it might be onset feline dementia. Which is actually a thing, although it blew our minds at the time.

Anyway, she died of feline leukemia virus before the dementia really got her. Not a nice way to go, it causes a cat to waste away till it's just skin and bones. Just before she died, I could lift her up just with the palm of my hand and she barely weighed three or four pounds.

>>454667

EDIT: We decided against having her put to sleep, because the vet told us our cat only had weeks to live either way, and apparently feline leukemia is relatively painless. A cat will just gradually get weaker till one day it passes away. So we tried to enjoy the remaining time together and then one morning she was just dead in her basket.

>>454662

Reflexively, I want to say "nah, I don't listen to anything new and haven't listened to anything new since about 2013", but when I stop to think about it that's just not true. In spirit it's true, I do very much have that attitude where if it's something I don't already like I'm predisposed to assume it's shit new zoomer music for children, but in reality it's not. I do still listen to and explore new music, the important difference is that I rarely bond with it in anything like the same way. It's certainly true that I don't keep up with new releases by my "favourite" bands or anything like that these days though.

Thing is, while I do pretty frequently find new stuff I like, I can't remember hearing a new album or finding a new band that I've got really attached to since I was a late teens/early 20s lad. I was just getting into metal and electronic music, rather than the common garden vaguely alternative rock you got on MTV2 in the mid-late 00s. I was still open to making new friends and learning what music they liked, taking recommendations off them, and influencing each other that way. Going to gigs and club nights and going home with a sense of awe (and discovering the recreational drugs that go with these types of music).

What's changed is that I've grown out of all that stuff, I will still hear something I've not heard before when I put my phone on shuffle and be pleasantly surprised (video related, total banger I stumbled on the other week) but I'll never immediately jump on the internet and start looking for a t-shirt to buy or gig tickets. Most times I'll forget about it after a couple of listens, because frankly, there's so much music out there, it's sort of stopped making sense to me to re-listen to the same thing over and over. I'll probably find something similar in another couple of weeks and briefly enjoy that too. Frankly though it's all much of a muchness after some point.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-dnjbNdkIk

There are albums I've listened to hundreds of times, and will likely listen to hundreds more times, you understand- Black Sabbath's eponymous debut, Dark Side of the Moon, Sodom's Agent Orange, Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Daft Punk's Discovery, The Prodigy's Fat of the Land... But they're the ones I formed a bond with. There's a reason to listen to those over and over, because they were the important ones, they were the influential ones, and everything else I listen to is just an endless search for variations on that theme. But they'll never top the originals.

I'm beginning to think that ancestry web sites are a piss take. I'm now supposedly able to trace my ancestry back to 9th century Wessex nobility, as per the latest matches with other users.

Where do people get that kind of information from which enables them to draw a reliable connection to a person who lived 1200 years ago.

>>454670
My dad did a bunch of work on ancestry.something and lent me the account - I found the same thing as you, many of the connections were specious at best. It was obvious to me that they're "interesting" social media platforms like any other.

>>454671

What I did find out with enough credibility for me to believe it is that one of my 19th century ancestors was an illegitimate daughter of some small-time member of the gentry in the East Midlands. And it kind of snowballed from there. I know that nobility keep extensive family records, but it still seems a stretch that a lot of them would be able to provide proof going back twelve centuries.

ITZ(?) Anybody else had a message like this come through in their area?

>>454673
Probably for works rather than ITZ.

>>454673
I've had ones like that for unplanned power outages in my area. URL seems legit.

It's probably a daft question, but if I've done an Ocado order for about £55 why have they taken just over £60 from my account?

>>454676
Because of "payment regulations" (that they can't seem to explain when challenged) some supermarkets say they "have to" add 5-10% to the preauth amount. Supposedly it's PSD2 but I can't find any reference to it containing anything like that anywhere.

Is there a link between legumes and libido? I have started to notice a bit of a correlation that I am at my randiest when I've had a lot of Mexican full of kidney beans, or a full English with a mountain of baked beans on.

It's noticeable because as I approach my mid 30s, my lad tends to need a good reason to get going usually. It's very much an exception rather than the norm when I get one of those sudden stonking stiffies seemingly out of nowhere; or at least, with very little provocation.

>>454678

The gas is probably putting pressure on your prostate. The quickest route to a rock hard erection is up your arse. Not what most lads want to hear, I know.

>>454679

Nah, if it was just that I'd know, I'm more than familiar with the wonders of the gentleman's walnut.

>>454680

Penny Trayshun, is that you?

>>454681
This is a neutral review but it's borderline negative.

I first discovered Penny a good 10-15 years ago back when I was intrigued by trans but both too scared and too poor to go and see one. I was spellbound by her (then) detailed explanation as to how she is a specialist in breaking guys in and how most others don't know what they're doing and so the guy doesn't have a mind-blowing experience. Plus, she looked very hot in her pics. Slim and with a kind of beehivey hair do.

Fast forward to 2016 and, after many positive reviews, I finally decide to take the plunge. When she answered the door I knew I was in trouble. The girl standing in front of me didn't so much look like Penny but looked like she ate Penny. She was big. And I'm not talking about inside her knickers. When I rechecked her profile after our session I could see how some of her pics were the same from when I first saw her and some were taken from flattering angles to hide the chub.

It's not that I don't appreciate curvy women, I do, it's just that on a woman the fat is distributed over her hips and arse so she still maintains a womanly figure but on a man (and Penny is a TV not a TS - hence she is a man) the fat just goes on the gut. Like a trucker. So here was this 5' 10-ish person with a wider chest than me (and I'm 42") a belly Big Daddy would be proud of and, in comparison, skinny legs.

The other glaring problem was that she is a lot older than she made out and several of her pics were still from a decade earlier. She's also not as feminine as her pics made out. Very thick and cakey foundation, too. She was pleasant enough if going through the motions and not really interested. We went into a tastefully-decorated bedroom, I gave her £100 that I was immediately regretting, and we got down to it.

Now, Penny advertised at the time that she has real boobs but what she failed to mention is that this is because she probably likes to consume her bodyweight in pizza and the occasional small child. She had moobs, not boobs, and whilst she was quick to pull them out of her basque/corset I was horrified to be gazing at man nipples. And then I was distraught when she pushed my head down, wanting me to suck her man nipples.

We kiss and fondle and I wonder what I'll say in my acceptance speech for winning Best Performance by a Male Actor but beyond light groping she wasn't doing anything or showing interest. Considering she prized herself on being a champion top, I found her indifference confusing. I expected her to be taking the lead, showing me how horny she was, teasing me with hints of upcoming anal ecstasy. I played with her averagely-endowed cock and after several more minutes of stasis, asked her to fuck me. Ding, ding! Here comes the main attraction!

She duly did but no special technique to break guys in, no magic touch, no spellbinding, life-changing experience like she described in her profile. She does me doggy and then on my back, both of which were 'okay' but not 'good'. Either out of boredom or because she lost her erection, she gets off and sits on the bed and instructs me to wank off, saying it turns her on. I did, she fake-cooed throughout, I squeezed one out, and that was that. £100 (a month's disposable income!) for a date with a gorgeous feminine top yet having experienced the biggest Trade Descriptions Act breach of the modern era.

This review is almost a negative because of the misrepresentation of her photos, description and of calling herself a TS.
However she gets a neutral because she was pleasant and did as requested.

In conclusion:
Either she was really good back in the day or her rep was built on a naive customer-base at a time when the Manchester trans-escort scene was just a handful of WG.

>>454682

Never meet your heroes.

Standing desk arrived. Wonder if it's tall enough hang myself from.

>>454684

Maybe if you stay in your chair, and press the button to drop it at the same time as the one to lift the desk, you could achieve approximately the same thing. Be a lot slower and more painful though, I don't think you'd actually want to.

>>454685
I'm sure there was an episode of CSI where someone in a wheelchair offed another wheelchair user like that.

Would you pay to watch a YouTuber live? I've had a look at tickets to see Jimmy Ng (Uncle Roger) for his show in Manchester but it'd work out at just over £50 for a pair.

The cost is putting me off, but I'm also a bit wary that the audience may be full of meme spouters.

>>454690
That's a bit much for who he is.

>>454690

I can't really imagine what a live show of his would look like. How do you translate that to the stage?

RIP ARE ROBBIE
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63261204

>>454693
He was a stand-up before doing the Uncle Roger character, so I believe it's split between taking the piss out of the audience/white people/vegetarians as Uncle Roger and then performing his own routine.

[Yt)cx_y3uHnnaY[/yt]


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD_6rZNZo9U

>>454690

No idea who this cunt is, but I think we're well past the point where someone being "from the internet" automatically makes them weird and embarrassing, or somehow different to other low-tier celebrities. YouTube and TikTok are really just the equivalent of TV for anyone under 30ish.

I think it's more like you want to be worried that the audience will be full of people 10-15 years younger than you, than them being meme spouters. It's not like you're going to a Tay Zonday feat Chris Hansen gig.

>>454696
>No idea who this cunt is, but I think we're well past the point where someone being "from the internet" automatically makes them weird and embarrassing, or somehow different to other low-tier celebrities. YouTube and TikTok are really just the equivalent of TV for anyone under 30ish.

It's not a question of it being weird, it's more a question of it being potentially shit. People on the internet, particularly those with full control over the content they release, generally don't translate well into other mediums.

>I think it's more like you want to be worried that the audience will be full of people 10-15 years younger than you, than them being meme spouters.

It might be more an issue with Americans than anything else, but there's certainly been several instances of podcasts deciding to do an episode in front of a live audience which have turned out to be absolutely terrible because of the interactions from the crowd. The excessive cheering, people spouting lines and in-jokes from previous shows; it's more about proving to everyone you understand the references and 'get' the show above anything else.

>>454697

>People on the internet, particularly those with full control over the content they release, generally don't translate well into other mediums.

I don't know what you mean.

I've had sourdough crumpets and I don't think they're any better than regular crumpets.

>>454703

Bet that left you feeling bitter.

Sarah Z wears a Liz Collar too.

Politicians and pop culture essayist YouTubers do strike me as having similar predilections.

>>454761
It's not fair. I could easily beat up her boyfriend, what more do women want?

>>454761
It's a ring on a necklace. You lot have gone mental. Absolutely mental.

Was Frodo heavily in the kink scene?

>>454763

You joking mate?

Him and Sam were a full on lifestyle kink couple. Frodo was ostensibly Sam's social better and employer in public life, so there was a lot of role reversal going on in the bedroom.

Destroying the ring was what caused Sam to lose interest and go after that homely bird from the local boozer.

>>454763

>It's a ring on a necklace.

It's pretty specific to be honest. The way it's attached to the chain by two different links like that is very uncommon in other "ring on a necklace" type jewellery, and the people who wear them tend to always wear them, which is again uncommon for women's jewellery.

I'm not saying it's 100%, we'll never know, and admittedly some other kink-adjacent jewellery has gone mainstream, like chokers, and wearing keys on necklaces. But this specific example does not seem nearly as common. Fight it all you want, are Liz is are property.

>>454765

I meant to add that the way they're constructed is deliberately supposed to mimic the look of an actual chain collar.

Calling this "The Current Weekday Thread" is really going to fuck things up when someone makes a new one.

I’m staying up to find out why that Star Wars film was so loathed. Love a shit a film.

Didn’t take me long to find out, lol.

>>454768
Which one? All the new ones lack charm but were otherwise fine, at least in my opinion. My favourite bit of the new ones was when they flew a spaceship into another spaceship, and my least favourite bit was whichever one had that white planet at the end after the film should already have ended.

My grandma's lost some teeth in a way that means she cannot keep her dentures in and thus I need go go shopping for as many soft foods as I can find to tide her over until the dentist's appointment. She likes sweet stuff and definitely still eats likes it's 1950, so I'm not entirely sure what I'll end up with other than chocolate mousse and suckable eggs.

>>454770
Episode IX. I’ve not seen VIII since it came out, but I’m dead certain the breakneck backfill that’s happening in this film is because nothing J J Abrams wanted to make a film about wasn’t mentioned once before now. It’s so shit.

God, I want to blow up CP3O so badly.

I'm pretty sure it's intentional by this point. They intentionally make shit they know nobody will like, because a) they know people will buy it anyway and b) it gets them off.

Seriously. Hear me out for a bit here.

It's not about inserting loads of token minorities and women and what have you for ideological reasons. They don't give a fuck, they just like to do it because it pisses people off. It's not about subverting expectations or any of that kind of pretentious shite, they just like to do it because it pisses people off. It's not about just pure laziness and incompetence either, because clearly there's a lot of effort goes into all this tripe, they just like to do it because it pisses people off.

These films sand TV shows and games nowadays are made by spoilt people who are the sons and daughters of spoilt people, who grew up knowing that they would be allowed to make their mark on the world and popular culture. No doors have ever been closed to them. They have never wanted for anything. And they have grown up wrong as a result. They're all that sadistic 13 year old king out of Game of Thrones. And this is what they invariably choose to do when they are handed the reins of their first major franchise. They get their knob out and wipe smegma all over it. They wipe it in their period juice, and smear their shit down the sides. Then they use their soiled, feculent paws to rub themselves off right in front of everyone. Because they can.

It's a power play thing. They all go to the kind of parties where they piss and shit on each other. They're probably all paedos too. They don't give a fuck about any of the politics or art or anything like that behind it all, they just get off on knowing they've spoiled something people liked. The pure juvenile fetishistic kick a toddler gets when they throw their spaghetti hoops at the wall.

I made my mind up about this seeing the new Scooby Doo character designs. Who the fuck is this? Who the actual fuck is this?

>>454773
Yes, it’s true, this man has no dick.

>>454773
>Who the fuck is this? Who the actual fuck is this?

That's Mr. Boombastic.

>>454773

Nah m8, that's not what's going on. They aren't deliberately making shit things because they're arrogant, they're deliberately making things you don't like specifically to piss you off. The media is being controlled by a shadowy cabal and their sole objective is to ruin your life. The entire world revolves around destroying your mental wellbeing.

>>454773
Triggered! Don't be such a snowflake.

Alright then, so what's you smart-arses theory as to why the entire media has just decided to stop doing things people like in favour of things people nobody likes? Because it's pretty objectively true- Nobody likes this stuff. Nobody likes the Lord of the Rings thing. Nobody likes the new Star Warses. Nobody likes Latest Marvel Movie this year.

You don't have to be invested in this stuff at all to notice it. It makes no difference to me, I wasn't about to watch a Scooby Doo remake, I haven't watched a Marvel movie since 2005. I have never been a Star Wars nerd. It just puzzles me why they have abandoned popularity in favour of basically antagonising the audience.

As a casual observer, that's the only rationalisation I can think of. They just like pissing people off. The petit-bourgois media establishment has become depraved and this is its recourse, like the decadent last days of the Weimar Republic before fascism took over. They actively make decisions that it should be obvious to anyone are going to result in a negative reception, but that's why they do it. They love the flex of getting a roundly negative reception while still making money hand over fist. They are teabagging the audience. They are giving the middle finger to the people who do care.

You can make smarmy remarks all you like, but you know I have a point here. You're only putting on a front of cool detachment because you are scared that if you did have an opinion on these things, you would come off like this spod, and girls would have even less sex with you than they already do. But let me assure you, you lads have nothing to lose on that front, so come on. What do you reckon.

>>454779

Mainstream entertainment has always been, by and large, mild lukewarm vanilla brain stodge. There is no theory other than every now and then someone manages to slip something actually interesting through the net, people go nuts for it, then the corpos drain that property dry by churning out watered down mass appeal versions to make the most money possible.

There is no political thinking. Social justice only factors in to the production of media like anything else - as a metric for how many dollars can be gained or lost by marketing towards it.

>>454779

Your definition of "everybody" appears to be 'the people in my small internet echo chamber' - that might be your issue.

>>454780

>There is no political thinking. Social justice only factors in to the production of media like anything else - as a metric for how many dollars can be gained or lost by marketing towards it.

There is though. They love the political stuff because it cuts both ways- The 4chan chronic masturbating toxic muscularity brigade hate it because it puts browns and womans into their beloved comic book franchises, but the wokie vegan gay mafia types hate it too because it puts them in the position of having to defend absolute garbage. They take a noble political cause, and subvert it so that the main thing people associate it with is not the basic dignity and humanity it affords, but the fact it's responsible for ruining Star Wars.

You have misunderstood if you think I am merely some neckbeard railing against the woke conspiracy. That's not what I am saying. Think about it.

>>454781

It's really not though. The stuff I am talking about is stuff that has been universally panned, by people in basically all corners of internet echo chamberdom. I can't find anyone who actually wants to defend Rings of Power, and I can't find anyone who doesn't think it's a bizarre and kind of racist move to make the most generic stereotypical stoner from Scooby Doo into the most generic "we needed a black character" stereotype instead.

>>454779
You're not thinking hard enough. You're trying to figure out what the motivation of individuals is, rather than looking at the structure they're working under. Here's the corner of a theory I'm fond of: Goodhart's Law. Any measure that becomes a target stops being a good measure.
Now, imagine that you're an investor who funds media production. Imagine that you made "high social media engagement" one of your targets for measuring success. When one of the most effective ways to generate engagement is to piss people off, it's not surprising that starts happening. It doesn't even have to be intentional - everyone through the entire industry can be trying to make a good product, and yet thanks the way we've set up this hypothetical, 95% of what gets funded will piss people off - since that's what's getting engagement, the target we use to decide what gets funded.
And let's say you make a profit on this more often than not - why would you change your target? You're an investor, your job is to get a return on investment, not to create good movies. You're getting good returns, why stop a good thing just because to an outside observer the results of the system are as absurd as anything you'd find in the late USSR?

Obviously there's more to it than that, but it's the kind of general pattern i find fascinating.

>>454779
>why the entire media has just decided to stop doing things people like in favour of things people nobody likes?

It makes them a shitload of money. A bunch of vocal fan fanboys on the internet is a fart against a thunderclap.

If opinions on the internet reflected reality then Labour would have won every general election by a landslide. Take it with a pinch of salt.

>>454779

There's no business imperative to make quality content if you know that people will pay for any old shit that you churn out. It doesn't matter if nobody likes Latest Marvel Movie, because it'll still earn hundreds of millions of dollars.

The people making this joyless landfill fodder aren't spoiled, they're ashamed. Actual spoiled people in the entertainment industry go off and spend Daddy's money on making arty independent films that win awards at Cannes. The people making this stuff are mostly just trying to pay the bills and hoping that one day they might be successful enough to work on something that's worth caring about.

Craig Mazin wrote the mini-series Chernobyl, which is to my mind one of the best pieces of TV in the last decade. He conceived of the project, spent three years doing research and relentlessly hustled to get it funded. He had previously written Scary Movie 3 and 4, both sequels to The Hangover and some generic fantasy bollocks with Chris Hemsworth. He's currently working on a movie based on the Borderlands video game franchise and Untitled Pirates of the Caribbean Project. Do you think that any of that brings him joy? Do you think that he wants to be writing shit for scum?

>>454783

I had considered "feed the almighty algorithm" s a motivating factor. Even in the pre-social media age, I've always considered that the main marketing strategy behind shit like, I dunno, that Yorkie "not for girls" ad campaign. It was designed to get fisherpeople indignant and thus amplify the brand by yapping on about it. People are very easily manipulated like that.

But the main difference is that usually, the "generate controversy for free marketing" angle doesn't come at the direct expense of the end product. Or at least, rationally it shouldn't, because it's harmful to the product's image in the long run. Traditionally we're used to seeing non-troversy whipped up over one scene in a film, or like, one instance of stunt casting that briefly gets people up in arms and is then forgotten about it. But lately, it seems like they've decided fuck that, let's go the whole hog and make the entire thing shite.

If we've really reached the point of subservience to metrics and hyperconsumerism that making shite movies on purpose is a sound commercial strategy then yeah, fair enough, but you know. Fucking shite that innit.

>>454785

>It doesn't matter if nobody likes Latest Marvel Movie, because it'll still earn hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, I agree, but the part that doesn't explain is why they still make decisions that are obviously and avoidably unpopular. Why do they still do things that would have required active, concious decision making in order to be bad? There's no motivation to make things good when it still makes a profit, that's true; but that's not the same as an incentive to make things bad.

Largely you're right, and I agree, but it's not the full story, and I believe there's an element of fetishism behind it.

>>454785
>Craig Mazin wrote the mini-series Chernobyl, which is to my mind one of the best pieces of TV in the last decade. He conceived of the project, spent three years doing research and relentlessly hustled to get it funded.

What you may not recall is that the kind of people who are getting mad about black Shaggy also got very mad about Emily Watson's character because she was a fictitious composite; a manifestation of numerous scientists investigating what happened, but most of those scientists was a boy and she was a girl! A Mary Sue! A strong independent woman who knows everything and is always in the right place at the right time! REEEEEEE!

These people will never be happy because they'll always have a chip on their shoulder.

>>454782

>I can't find anyone who actually wants to defend Rings of Power

This is it though. For every one person on the internet angry enough to make the effort to whinge about a show, there are ten thousand sat on their sofas watching it and enjoying it, or even just finding it OK enough to mindlessly binge.

Yes, everybody is on the internet now. But entering the discourse about a TV show on the internet is still a massively niche thing to do.

>>454788

There's a reason nobody remembers that, and that's because the show itself was actually good. It wasn't a harmful decision to the artistic integrity of the finished work, so nobody remembers it except for terminally online losers and that small vocal group with chips on their shoulders.

I think with the stuff we're talking about here, it's more that the end result is trash, and so whenever anybody talks about it in future, it's always in the context of "what went wrong?" and thus inevitably, questions around the writer's motivations and what specific kind of neuroses influenced their decision making when creating the work come up.

>>454790
>There's a reason nobody remembers that, and that's because the show itself was actually good. It wasn't a harmful decision to the artistic integrity of the finished work, so nobody remembers it except for terminally online losers and that small vocal group with chips on their shoulders.

Subjective, innit.

Is Doctor Who shit because they cast a woman or because of bad writing? Is casting a woman emblematic of the wider malaise around Doctor Who?

Plenty of people are not best pleased that the live action Little Mermaid is black and that's not even out yet to cast judgement over the quality, although it's a given it'll be shit because all of the Disney live action remakes are shit. Will that be shit because Ariel is black or is having a black Ariel emblematic of Disney's live action remakes showing they're out of ideas?

You can interpret things however you want to suit your argument.

>>454787

I think you're overestimating the amount of thought that goes into this sort of thing. It's just product. 99% of conversations in Hollywood aren't about films, they're about distribution and marketing. What goes on the screen is an afterthought; all the effort goes into getting bums on seats. What you might consider obviously and unavoidably unpopular may not register as such to someone living and working in Los Angeles.

>>454791

Bit of both. Doctor Who is shit because they gave the head writing gig to the kind of limp dicked white knight simp sissy who would think it was a good idea to cast a woman.

I'm being very intentionally hyperbolic here and intentionally using those kind of words that typically bait a response out of the resident vegan wimps, but I don't know how else to get the point across- There's no problem with doctor who being a woman, it's just that the only kind of people who care enough about it to actually make Doctor Who into a woman are mentally defective spastics like Chris Chibnall. As such, the quality of the writing reflects the priorities of that kind of person.

Russel T. Davies inserted plenty of his own personal fetishes into the show. What was with the big fat farting aliens I ask you? But he was a good enough writer that it didn't matter. He wanted to subtly push a bit of homoeroticism into the show but he wasn't a mentalist. He may have been a bumder but he was still a normal person, he wasn't riddled with the mind worms.

It's correlation, not causation, but the mind-worm husks who want to diversify everything are more often than not totally devoid of creative skill; so in the end the only actually noteworthy aspect of the stuff they create is the diversity itself. It's the only memorable part, it's the only thing that sticks out, the only thing that's even worth discussing about it, and here we are.

Doctor Who has always been shit.

Shut the fuck up. I know last night I posted in this thread I was watching a film I knew was bad just to find out why it was bad, but shut the fuck up. Why are you dedicating your clearly very limited mental capacity to watching shit? You know Stephan Moffat isn't a very good writer, you know Scooby Doo is a show for children, but apparently it's all you can muster the energy to have an opinion on. Did you go to watch Crimes of the Future in the cinema? Got your tickets for The Banshees of Inisherin booked? Maybe you were too busy steaming I Will Destroy You or Better Call Saul? No, no, no, you're tied up engaging with the dumbest popular media you can find, there's only one-hundred-and-twenty-plus years of cinema and television to discover, you need to know what Nicktoons or CITV are up to right now!

I have a theory that behind the scenes, there has been some psychological research which has found a way to manipulate people into being better consumers, and none of us have heard of this research but we'll kick ourselves when we find out about it.

There's also the problem of market saturation: I firmly believe that everyone is really into women's football now because there is nowhere left for men's football to go. Everyone who's going to watch men's football already watches as much of it as they ever will. The only way to make the profitability graphs keep trending upwards is to get the football-haters to watch it too. This is why the most important thing in football, inexplicably, is to massively hype a new type of football made especially for eight-year-old girls who like to dress as Snow White every day. Women's football is fine and I really enjoy the international tournaments, but there's also blind football and Down Syndrome football and the really amazing one where everyone has one leg and leaps about on crutches, and there's no hype about those even though covering those would be woke too. So I don't think wokeness is the real reason that women's football is so forcibly inserted into everything.

And when wokeness is good, it's fantastic and you can't deny that. Filling Strictly Come Dancing with the most odious tremendo-benders imaginable is annoying, but that deaf woman was great. Interrupting a sitcom to lecture the audience on why they should be ashamed to be white is infuriating, but The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was great and The Boondocks is absolutely phenomenal. It appears colossally likely to me that the people who fund what gets made just have no ability whatsoever to know when they're funding another Boondocks or another Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which is okay, but it really disappeared into Twitter bollocks later on and I could no longer recommend it).

>>454795

We've already established before that that's a rubbish argument, lad. You did post in this thread about a film you didn't like, didn't you, so why don't you give yourself a slap for being enough of a febrile cretin to watch it in the first place, if you're that far above it all?

>>454796

>There's also the problem of market saturation: I firmly believe that everyone is really into women's football now because there is nowhere left for men's football to go.

Not sure I agree with this one. It's not totally implausible, but it's mainly the Beeb that have been pushing women's football and I think that's mainly because the broadcast rights are really cheap. The BBC want to cover sport, but they'll get outbid for the rights for anything that's already popular. The gender equality angle might have sold the idea to senior management, but I think the basic motivation was the BBC Sport team trying to keep themselves in work.

>>454797
But I was finding out why and how Episode IX was a pile of piss, and there was of course a chance it wasn't (it was though). You're just whinging because there's a black Shaggy now. It's fucking Scooby Doo, mate, get a life.

>>454801
I think there is an element of that, but I don't think it's the main factor because the rights to wheelchair basketball are probably very cheap as well, and wheelchair basketball is fantastic.

>>454802

Nobody gives a fuck about Scooby Doo you lemon. But it's a very illustrative example. Who on earth is it for? It's not about the fact they made him black, it's about the fact they felt the need to change something for... What, exactly? You can't say "it's just a kids show" either because apparently the new one is expressly adult oriented.

Someone somewhere wants us to like this shit. The question is why. What kind of crack are they smoking that they think anyone will.

>>454805
>Someone somewhere wants us to like this shit. The question is why. What kind of crack are they smoking that they think anyone will.

Perhaps Mystery Inc. should investigate.

My bank has sent me my new debit card, to replace the one that expires at the end of the month. It has no numbers or anything on the front. It looks awful. I hate it.

>>454807
I hate how my new one is portrait. And its not embossed. Feels cheap and crap. Halifax btw. Which banks dont give shit cards?

>>454807
>>454808
Oh I love the new style cards without the embossed numbers, they slide in and out of my £120 Porsche Design wallet like butter.

>>454810

It's not really a concern for me very often now, but when I got my first non embossed card I did think "at least I won't get any powder stuck between the numbers"

>>454808
Barclays let you put your own picture on your card.

>>454810
I personally have a JCB wallet. You will notice that the logo is embossed rather than trying to catch your eye with their well known yellow branding; although it isn't relying on the premium JCB name, this leather wallet is 'built to last' in line with their industrial heritage. For the more discerning gentlemen this comes with RFID blocking technology and matching socks. It was the pick of all the leather wares in TKMaxx.