"As the analytics overtook decision making, the quality of everything declined sharply."
Pretty much. I'm sure Hollywood execs have always wanted to make as much money as they could, but they also (formerly) didn't want to be known as guys who only made terrible movies. Prestige, vanity, relationships, reputation...unanalyzable human factors are really important for the production of human-centric products like art and entertainment.
The business philosophy of "maximize shareholder value above all else" is going to eviscerate our society until there's nothing of quality left.
Hollywood has always been a dirty and money-focused business, but it seems like the latest crop of execs are hellbent on entirely divorcing the creative enterprise from its human elements. Now studios are just exotic financial instruments that seek to turn "content" into stock prices.
Sapporo's "innovations" for the Anchor brand were to pick a fight with labor, tinker with the recipe of their most historic beer, and green-light of the most infamously eye-searing rebrands in recent memory.
It's a good idea to target your product to the sensibilities of your consumer.
American Millenials and Gen Z are having less sex than the generations before them.
They've also grown up with frequent mass school shootings and the "tactical", "everyday carry", amateur-soldier, military worship culture that really got rolling after 9/11.
No wonder sex scenes squick them out -- it's a world that's distant, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable for them.
Violence, though? Pile it on. Now you're speaking their language.
True. I guess it's pretty much just product (or should I say "content") that we're discussing, despite all the lip service given to the idea that it's this really creative endeavor.
People act like the only point of narrative work is to tell a story and advance a plot, forgetting that some of the greatest novels, plays, and movies of all time have creaky plots and barely-there stories, and plenty of "unnecessary" stuff.
Religion, at least the dominant Evangelical Christian kind, has gotten increasingly politicized, to the point where religious == conservative (note I'm using JS-style "truthy" here, I know that this isn't a blanket case).
So it's not surprising that young Americans, who are generally liberal, don't consider themselves religious.
And as for having kids? Not only is it more expensive and stressful than ever before, but we're slowly moving away from the mindset that a woman's primary purpose is to raise children.
That, and I think a lot of folks have started to reflect on how having kids didn't seem to make their unhappy parents any more fulfilled.
The poll mentions "patriotism", not "nationalism", and I think those are two different things. "Nationalism" increasingly refers to an exclusivist mindset, whereas "patriotism" at least used to be more "pride in one's country".
Older people grew up during the Cold War, when the USA perceived itself as a bulwark of freedom and democracy in a world of opaque, totalitarian regimes, and when the country was further ahead than most of the rest of the world in development.
These days, a lot of the rest of the world has caught up, and a lot of younger Americans feel discouraged about the state of democracy in their own country. We aren't at the vanguard of freedom and functional government anymore.
Plus, over the past few decades, "patriotism" has been increasingly associated with flag/anthem worship, military boosting, and a kind of rah-rah "USA! USA!" attitude that has little to do with freedom and democracy. It's been turned into a marketing tool and a cudgel that right-wing political groups have used against their opponents since the Vietnam War.
Pretty much. I'm sure Hollywood execs have always wanted to make as much money as they could, but they also (formerly) didn't want to be known as guys who only made terrible movies. Prestige, vanity, relationships, reputation...unanalyzable human factors are really important for the production of human-centric products like art and entertainment.