yeah, I feel like they're going to use ai to permanently shift creative work to the reserve army of labor, with the exception of the rare failchild that just puts their name on ai homework
ChatGPT isn’t yet at that point where it can write coherent enough scripts. I know they only care enough to have generic bad scripts, but ChatGPT can’t makes basic logical and factual errors. It can’t yet write scripts that make any sense.
Chatbots assisted with a much smaller group of precariously placed hirelings can probably do the job. Having a "fact checker" paid less than a team of script writers is probably the way it will go. :doomer:
I think you're underestimating the amount of skill it takes to write a coherent two hour script. There's a reason why even the worst hollywood action flicks, or bottom of the barrel network TV are still much better than one of those low budget Christian movies. I genuinely don't think it's something you can do with 3 interns and chatgpt.
coherent two hour script
That's what I'm getting at. Even coherence might not actually matter if it chatbot produced slop has enough front billing, publicity, and a Pavlovian-trained audience to nod along to it. The novelty of it may even excuse as well as sell it the first few times around the way that "Reality TV" trashiness and dishonesty about its own premise was its draw for many people, the flaws turned into novelties.
"Another Life" was worse than shit I read (and wrote, I confess) during high school Creative Writing classes and significantly less coherent and it got greenlit for a second season anyway.
basic logical and factual errors.
Insert laugh track. Slap 50% more ass cancer and depression double plus ads. Bed ridden boomers zombified by cable TV still got 20 years to milk before they're all gone.
I really don't want to be cynical/pessimistic about this because there's so much of that in the world already, but it's very hard to see an outcome that isn't "pander to the hogs with chatbot produced slop, hogs are fine with it because it means more :awooga: :libertarian-alert: :hypersus: and that's all they care about."
I think :matt: called it when he predicted a return to the early 2000s era of really nasty reality shows. We didn't go 100% The Running Man, but damn we got fukken close before the rise of Prestige TV took over for a bit, and this is the perfect chance to charge straight back to the precipice and leap off of it.
I expect the return of reality tv's prominence to have a very similar toxic and defensive fandom as prestige tv. This show where precariously exploited poor people are exploited isn't condoning it, actually it's raising awareness and can be seen as a leftist critique/satire of exploitation. It doesn't matter that it's hog feed that is feeding hogs, you're a scold if you don't like it, touch grass :morshupls:
But once the well runs dry and there’s no new production besides the talk shows which turn to absolute shit without writers… it’ll get done.
The "auteur" jerkoffs will consolidate their power like they did during the last writer strike and do their own material, and many hogs will just shrug and continue eating it. :doomer:
I strongly disagree with this position, with strong unions and good strike funds, the capitalists not only risk their more precarious members folding, but contagion as strikes spread to other areas. The film industry, with multiple interlinked unions that themselves sometimes bleed into other industries, is particularly vulnerable to this.
If the strike is supported, organised, and disciplined, it can last longer than the industry can stay in business, at which point they'll have to bring the state in. Heck, for the rail strike they had to start with "we'll twist the Government's arm so we can fire you, sue you, and shoot you if you strike, and not necessarily in that order". And once they resort to that they're in real trouble, because it shows weakness.
Strikes and Unions have threatened Capital in the past even without those. I remember skimming her book in an org library once and thinking "This is a great case for the impossibility of every actually successful strike and revolution."
Capital isn't a monolith where everyone sits down at the table of Evil to discuss how to most effectively crush the working classes. It's a bunch of squabbling factions that hate each other, and successful strikes win by hitting cracks in those factions until the coalition to protect capital starts to break apart from its internal contradictions. The WGA is historically very, very good at doing this. They did it in 2007 and I see no reason that they can't repeat the victory.
Also at this point, if we had the power to get those concessions from Capital why aren't we going for the Big Communism Button? You're not going to get it by doing a few protests and making AOC president.
You need successful industry strikes building to successful general strikes to get those concessions from Capital in the first place, you need the actual, real threat that we'll send them broke and put their heads on a spike and maybe not in that order. And once you have that...why not go through with it?
It depends on what counts as success.
I think even with any plausible "success" :porky-happy: will continue making workers have increasingly precarious situations because churning out more pink slime writing is cheaper and more profitable even if it makes the long term prospects of fiction scripts even bleaker.
It will succeed and then fail via mergers and acquisitions layoffs.
This is the sad truth. One step forward, two steps back. I hope I'm proven wrong.
Fail, 100%
They might actually do computer-generated scripts first, or just have some interns throw shit together based on what the director and producers say.
bigtime succeed at making a few marginally worse written shows a reality
Succeed. The Writers Guild is in a slightly weaker position now, due to streaming, but ultimately if they can last 6 months they'll win as new shows dry up. This is shockingly expensive for the networks and they risk other unions striking if their contracts come up.
The Networks are hoping they'll be starved out and that streaming, already in trouble, can hold on with stuff already finished for long enough.
