They'll likely mostly turn into another studio with a streaming platform.

Features such as only using company generated ratings, aggressively cancelling shows, and the lack of ability to browse/sort/filter the catalog, in favor of Netflix pushing the recommendations they choose on users, is probably great for quarterly KPIs but bad for long term customer satisfaction.

Netflix is of course already a behemoth and not going anywhere but I expect their future to be much more of a generic media company than an elite tech company.

Ha, that is so true. Netflix is infamous for this. It’s to the extent that I cannot start watching a Netflix production unless I know it’s finished or if it’s a big hit from day one (so I know it won’t be cancelled, like The Witcher). It’s odd, because Netflix’s reputation for prematurely cancelling content without resolving their endings has extended to beyond just youth-dominated social media. For example, my parents of all people who cannot use a computer nor the internet, don’t like investing in new Netflix content because they’ve been burned too many times from incomplete series. That’s just like me. It’s sad because Netflix dared to create decent and interesting content, but now it would be hard to escape their infamy.

People don’t want to watch shows in case it gets cancelled early. Then Netflix cancels the show early because there wasn’t enough interest.

If they didn’t have the reputation people would watch the shows and if it’s good tell their friends. At this point it seems like everyone just stays away though.

They could always just keep making new seasons to add to their catalog and eventually people might watch it, but it seems risky to spend the money.

Following in the footsteps of that other company starting with the alphabet G where products are in perpetual beta?

I think all of those companies fall into common problem of falling deep into A/B test local maximum. It's impossible to rework entire site at once, especially for an A/B test.

Plus I hate their way of trying to soup up stale content by making various sexy versions of cover art. Like The Net with Sandra Bullock. A long forgotten, mediocre, and comically out-dated tech thriller. People were wandering right past it on Blockbuster Video shelves. That’s how old and stale it is. Yet Netflix goes and sources these sexy shots of Bullock in an attempt to get me to watch it. I find the whole thing very insulting.

- Disney has Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and a long tail of childhood classic films. - HBO has Warner Brothers, DC, Cartoon Network (including a nostalgia back catalog), the best TV shows made in the 00s, and a long tail of adult films. - Netflix's largest successes in the last two years are Tiger King, Squid Game, The Witcher, and a long tail of shows cancelled after Season 1 and short-run miniseries.

At this point, Netflix is a last-resort source of entertainment for me, even after (ad-riddled) YouTube. I mostly only use it to watch their weird reality shows (Blown Away, Sugar Rush) and check out shows friends recommend. I suspect even Paramount+ has a larger selection of TV shows I'd like to watch compared to Netflix.

Is it on the discoverability side or the watching side?

Watching is a seamless experience IMO - It really does just work, all the buttons and responses are perfect.

It constantly recommends the same stuff over and over despite the fact that I never click on it because I don't want to watch it.

It doesn't notify me when there's new episodes or seasons to a show I've previously watched (a year is a long time to wait for new episodes).

I'm not a fan of the UX.

Somethings are much better for everyone to have a common experience without it being unique.

Your second and third point though are accurate for me too. Thanks for explaining.

The UI constantly shuffles around, having to hunt for my list or currently watching shows is particularly annoying.

Incessant autoplay that couldn't be disabled for years, and still can't be in all cases.

Awful controls for browsing content. The categories are meaningless and constantly changing.

There's no way to find new shows I'm likely to like within the app. They refuse to have any sort of objective ratings and the custom ones are unbelievably bad, even after years of watching. I have to go to outside sources any time I want to find a new show.

I could go on. Prime gets a lot of criticism for their UX but I actually much prefer it to Netflix's. At least with Prime the ratings have some signal and the layout is simple and consistent. It's not pretty but at least it doesn't go out of the way to annoy me, which is just fine with me. Amazon has probably spent far less on their UX but has a better result.

Even so much so I can’t find shows I saw ads for in 2017 or 2018 even existing because they were so bad. It makes me feel the Mandela effect is happening.

Today, especially with Netflix being less unique technically (they did a lot of early out-of-the-box stuff like going all in on AWS and microservices), they're pretty much an outlier from the other companies although as far as I know they still pay very well. As they become more of a studio they'll become even more of an outlier.

Microsoft certainly has more in common with the others, but their stock (as well as the company generally) was out of favor when Cramer coined the term.

A poll about FAANG with netflix and excluding microsoft seems simply like a poll about a group of companies that a tv show host made a catchy acronym about, rather than a poll about which of the big tech companies today is likely to decline or not.

also, as they invest in developing proprietary production software they could get an advantage over other studios.

And Netflix themselves has released a fair bit of code as open source.

I regularly see comments like: "The public clouds providers like Amazon, Google, and I suppose even Oracle".

It's kind of hilarious to see people just skip over the second biggest company in the world like it doesn't even exist in their minds.

MAGMA: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon.

[0]. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29278804

(And TBH, it had been a surprise to be FANG, not FAMG to begin with)

Works for me.

Although back in 2013 the criteria was: "totally dominant in their markets". AFAIK, Microsoft dominates only two markets (OS and office suites) and it's only if we limit ourselves to desktop; even then, it's not a total domination.

> Cramer expanded FANG to FAANG in 2017, adding Apple to the other four companies due to its revenues placing it as a potential Fortune 50 company.

It's an acronym specifically for those companies, which is why Microsoft was excluded.

But I don't actually see Netflix programming as aiming to make, e.g. reality TV drek. Most of their programming does seem to be aiming for midbrow quality although it often doesn't hit it.

I dropped them in 2020.

Let this be a lesson. Data and fancy algorithms can NEVER replace a smart human who cares. Data and algorithms can enhance and expedite humans - but if your humans are stupid, you will just make stupid decisions faster

If the Netflix recommendation engine is the result of any data science then obviously they have no special knowledge from their mountain of data because the engine is worthless.

Netflix originals are available everywhere, the licensed content is far more restrictive. On Prime the only things available outside the US are Amazon Originals. Hulu won’t even let you log in if you’re outside the US. For whatever reason, legacy media decided they don’t want the rest of the world to be fans of their content and give them money for it. Disney is an exception since they’re starting to expand Disney+ overseas.

This is not always true, and it depends on the nature of the “Original”. There’s really two classes: Originals fully owned by Netflix, and ones produced in partnership with a traditional TV network. The latter are branded as Netflix Originals everywhere except their home country (where they are carried by the local network instead).

> On Prime the only things available outside the US are Amazon Originals.

This isn’t true; the UK also has a lot of licensed content, if you have Prime in the UK. My understanding is they do in other markets where they offer Prime as well, but you only get access to the full library when you’re in the region where you have Prime, unlike Netflix.

That may be part of their content licensing, but that could also be a commercial decision by Amazon. (eg I also don’t get other Prime benefits from Amazon.de with my .co.uk Prime subscription.)

No, legacy media has distribution issues which they address by licensing distribution geographically before release, and once those rights are divided it's very hard to reconsolidate them.

Movie theaters and broadcast/cable are still a thing, and still an important component of how legacy video makes money on content. And the geographic distribution issues there still exist. And for them to work, geographic exclusivity can't ignore streaming, either.

You can't convince me that, say, Warner Bros doesn't have sufficient leverage to wrest their online streaming rights away from some Bulgarian movie theater chain or whatever. I mean, come on.

But the main question is, why can't Netflix write a recommendation engine that actually shows me something I want to watch?

Even in music--where everyone actually has a pretty complete catalog--recommendation is pretty bad.

With big heavyweights like Disney that own a huge percentage of content having their own services, netflix is really going to struggle being anything more than niche media providers (anime) and their own inhouse media.

If they are lucky, they'll be an HBO style platform. However, the quality of their in-house content has left a lot to be desired. Some is good, but a lot is garbage.

That netflix has technical chops isn't going to be a saving grace. Rather, it will mean engineers from netflix will likely be able to secure jobs at other streaming providers.

This is poignant as even the shittiest streaming service can dominate with the right IP. Content is king, engineering quality is not a differentiator.

Because of this, Netflix is ripe for disruption, which we've been witnessing creep up slowly over the last decade.

Netflix is easily the first of my several subscriptions to hit the chopping block, should it come to that.

If netflix keeps producing content at the rate it is, it won't be long until it has a fairly large back catalogue itself. At the end of the day it's Netflix's core business, whereas for most of the other streaming services it's a side gig.

The reasons the networks cared about the Nielsens so much was that they directly translated into how much they could charge for a 30 second ad block.

Netflix obviously does care about how many people are watching its shows. If no one is watching licensed content they won't renew licenses on it or similar content. If a new show isn't doing well and doesn't have passionate fans, they'll cancel it. (Possibly faster than a network would have.)

But they only care about how many people are watching something to the degree it increases the number of people subscribing which is a correlation that is harder to measure.

Everyone else have been learning, slowly, the lessons Netflix learned years ago.

Is anyone else even doing a program like OpenConnect? https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

That's the sort of stuff that really sets netflix apart from the competition.

All that said, IMO, the average consumer doesn't really care about technical quality of the content, they care about the catalog.

And the first month pains were very clearly because it was rushed out to time it with the release of certain IPs during the pandemic.

I believe there are loads of production companies from all over the world willing to sell their productions to Netflix after those successes.

Producers in non English speaking countries will usually not have enough funding to promote all over the world or even in US.

I think Disney and HBO are quite stuck in approach where they sell rights and shows to other countries.

The thing is, they now pump out their own content quickly enough that they don't need anyone else's anymore, and as I understand it, that was always their goal. I imagine most of the TV-watching population (myself included) is okay with mediocre shows/movies, and Netflix has enough content that you're unlikely to completely run out of stuff to watch on their platform.

What Netflix is currently lacking is big blockbuster movies with well-known actors, but even that is changing. (See: Red Notice, Army of the Dead, Bird Box, etc.)

Presumably it also means that there's no reason for Netflix to be paying absolute top of the heap salaries for engineering talent. And I assume companies like Disney mostly don't and won't.

I'm not sure what you're comparing. Netflix's Jessica Jones, Daredevil, and Luke Cage were standouts. WandaVision and Loki are certainly flashier, but are they really better shows?

4 out for the top 5 grossing movies of all time for Disney (adjusted for inflation) are Marvel IP. By comparison none of the Marvel shows on Netflix have been a commercial hit for Netflix. Looking at the list of most watched Netflix shows none of those make the cut.

Basically Disney is well suited to turn Marvel IP into dollars and Netflix just wasn’t.

Oh. Well, I can't argue with that, especially since Netflix almost certainly never had the necessary rights to develop a revenue stream from merchandising. There is probably no other company on Earth better suited to turning IP into dollars than Disney, especially since they've acquired Pixar, Lucasfilm, Jim Henson, Marvel, etc. Netflix has only started trying to make tentpole 'blockbuster' (irony intended) movies in the past few years.

Probably not and that is why they didn’t bid, and the Netflix execs are in a better position to know than us… but I think the comparison is a little tilted against Netflix at least.

I imagine they had to pay for the IP for The Witcher and Altered Carbon.

I suspect that's WAI in their eyes, they're optimizing for eyeballs, not so much for quality.

As an example: the original Police Academy movie had both quality and a large audience. The rest of the franchise was increasingly cringy and saw, I assume, declining viewership.

The reason why Netflix should care about quality and not just eyeballs is that it's a leading indicator: Police Academy II may well have had a larger audience, surfing on the coattails of the first installment. But that's not a sustainable strategy, and unlike the producers of Police Academy XI, Netflix can't just leave the husk and find a new home if it ruins its brand.

So for Netflix, it's not just important to get many people to watch something. They also need to come away from the experience with a wish to repeat it. There may well be more to the experience than mere enjoyment, as well: I feel like there is a sense of "quality" I get when watching something that is distinct from my enjoyment, and that I am more likely to remember it, and fondly so, if I find that quality.

All that suggests a few ideas that mere viewership wouldn't: Netflix would try, for example, to keep me from watching something that I end up despising, and especially if I do so because I consider it "low-quality". You can do reality TV even if your audience has more Ivy League credentials than a New England Hospital, but you better make sure it has a chance to become a pop-cultural phenomenon, like, say, a show about interior decorating that neatly fits into a wider trend of minimalism.

This requires some combination of quality (whatever that means exactly), pop culture relevance (Squid Games), and good enough filler so that less selective viewers don't run out of stuff to watch. Of course, they can program for niches more than traditional broadcast TV did too.

But I actually like the fact that they do limited run or self contained shows.

Not only does it mean that the show doesn't drag on for 10 seasons slowly reducing in quality until it's axed due to waning viewership.

But I've found their limited series runs to be more engaging since the writers and director are able to tell a self contained and complete story since they know the duration of the series and can pace out the story from start to end.

Also on a personal note, seeing a show has more than 5 seasons just feels like an exhausting time commitment to me at this point.

I actually really like the fact that streaming helps allow for limited runs with episodes of the length that they want to be though one always hopes that a series ends at a natural point.

And YouTube has a lot of ad supported movies and shows they are starting to roll out.

Meanwhile Meta is very much trying to develop interactive VR content.

My money is on Netflix, Prime (because we want the free shipping) and Disney.

If they came out with a phone, office suite, cloud service, social network, or something of that ilk, then yeah they'd be more in "tech company" territory again. Until then their engineering is going to assist their content production, not the other way around.

Headwinds for sure (Disney, Amazon, Apple!) but they seem to have made the right calls so far.

With some of their big bets in custom SoCs, waymo, verily, and all of the research that comes out of it (especially in ML) are certainly interesting, I don't think any other companies are innovating at that level. Whether or not they will profit is another matter, of course.

Pixel has always lived in the shadow of Samsung and probably always will. Android hardware profit margins are slim. Chromebooks are doing well in education at the moment but they can’t break out of the low end of the market and each of their attempts to do so have failed. Devices overall are a mixed bag in my opinion.

Stadia isn’t very good, costs too much, has a mediocre game library, and given the massive development cost definitely hasn’t paid off and probably never will.

Nest is a business they acquired that’s continued to grow. This is definitely a win, but it’s a small one, and it definitely doesn’t pay for all the unsuccessful products they’ve built.

Custom SoCs are potentially promising, but it’s a specific niche and others are doing the same so that’s kind of a “wait and see” for me.

Their paid services don’t seem popular at all with the exception of gsuite & YouTube premium (which people mainly buy to get around annoyances like not being able to listen to audio from a video with your phone locked or switch apps on mobile while leaving a video running)

I expect a large chunk of that “other” revenue you mentioned is also Google Cloud which despite how hard they’ve tried is far behind it’s competitors and hasn’t seen nearly the growth that Azure in particular has had.

I don't think streaming games will ever quite work out for something like a first person shooter or competitive scenes, but I was really impressed otherwise. I didn't notice input lag nearly as much as I thought I would.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/with-skyrocketing-sales-yo...

Not only do they have publicly-usable self-driving vehicles on the road today, they are also testing autonomous trucks for freight. Both of these industries are worth multiple 10's of billions/year in the U.S. alone.

I agree this is definitely their biggest opportunity, but it may be more difficult to achieve mainstream success with it than it seems.

Which of Google, Facebook, Microsoft doesn't?

Everyone else are just making fancy spreadsheets.

However, if the app store were to open up, it could create a more vibrant ecosystem underneath and even create even more network effects within ios. Less direct money for apple but more vibrant developer economy.

iPhone usage is approaching 90% for the next generation in the us, so it will be ripe for regulation.

These companies will not fail, but could face existential headwinds that no amount of money will 'fix'.

...

"Netflix has some of the worlds brightest minds in data science"

Their data science is a 3rd tier issue. #1 is their incumbency, #2 is the content they produce.

-> Netflix 'problem' is increasing competition from HBO, Disney and others.

...

"Apple is one Supreme Court ruling away from ending their App Store monopoly that could disrupt the entire world"

No, their App Store will do just fine. They will reduce their 30% cut to something lower and companies will stay there because of the distribution opportunity: being in App Store will mean considerably more downloads.

-> Apples 'problem' is that their iPhone is slowly becoming a commodity - there's only so many ways to 'improve' upon it and those margins will probably come down.

...

"Google and Facebook both lost a key ability to micro-target on their ad platforms"

No, they have not, they have enough data.

-> Facebook's problem is that FB usage is going down, Insta is a bit stagnating and they have little to replace it with.

-> Google's problem is that they have no obvious new products on the horizon to grow and that it's possible DDG and others may actually start to eat away at them (probably not, but possible).

...

"Amazon is about to enter a decade of unionization all over the world."

Probably not so much, and, rules are entirely different around the world.

Amazon's problem is that it's never been profitable and there's only so many ways to make that business work.

As fast delivery and one-click purchase work out in regular retail, AMZN advantage is limited.

AWS however, the profit base doesn't show any signs of slowing down.

Apple will still have their hardware business.

Amazon's AWS business is unaffected by their online shopping platform business.

Facebook is facing a reputation crisis that is also causing regulators to come down on it hard, and beyond the many well-justified criticisms, many also use it as a scapegoat and a punching bag for politicians to show off. That's not a good position to be in.

Every outlet cancels underperforming shows. Netflix fires a lot of more against the wall than just about anyone else, so they end up with a lot more that doesn't stick.

World wide is probably too strong a claim, but I think here's something to this. However, I think this would work in Amazon's favor. It would make warehousing quite a bit more expensive and would be a significant barrier to competitors. AWS provides them with deep pockets, and the have a huge advantage in logistics so I think they could eat the cost and keep moving. It would also suck a lot of air out of the anti-amazon movement, such that it is. One day delivery with high labor standards might be the pitch that catapults them to real market dominance.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-21/inside-am...

Netflix's first free-cash-flow positive year was 2020. A measly $2B, less than 10% of Facebook's (the least cash flowing FAAMG).

Netflix is a big company, but not in the same league as FAAMG.

Consolidated statement of net income for each year (page 22 of the PDF):

2020: ~$2.7b on 200m members

2019: ~$1.8b on 167m members

2018: ~$1.2b on 139m members

2017: ~$0.5b on 110m members

2016: ~$0.2b on 89m members

Yes each of these has enough of a war chest that they could drift along for a decade + several have ownership structures where there wouldn't be market pressure to remove the C-level / board if that happened.

That said... each of these has weaknesses. I think about Microsoft (the one missing from the list that rightfully belongs there...)... they came out of their lost decade a very different company. Their stock price barely moved for that entire time, though has since rebounded. It's not that hard to imagine that Netflix is just one of many streaming studios in another 5-10 years, or that people might be just as willing to turn to another search provider than Google. Facebook seems to be acutely aware that its core big blue app is seen as a baby boomer thing and that it had better do things to stay relevant to another generation. So - too big to fail? Maybe, but then again we could ask GE, GM, and Ma Bell that same question once upon a time.

I just can't see putting netflix and google search in the same basket.

Note the discussion not just here on HN but across several channels over the past 48 hours about how bad Google Search results have become. Personally, apart from a Google Business page I don't use any other Google products and haven't in years. Their product track record is poor and their search quality has slipped. Given another 5-10 years, I don't find it difficult at all to believe that someone like Apple, if they wanted to replace Google entirely as the default search on their device, couldn't make significant headway in search market share.

Sure, Netflix and Google aren't the same here - that wasn't my point. My point was simply in reference to the previous poster's comment about "too big to fail." The past 100 years of the stock market is littered with companies that were deemed unstoppable leviathans.

Look at the Witcher for an example. Or if you want to see this kind of shift happening over the course of a show, look at Madam Secretary. Season 1 didn't feature any of this crap and showed a strong woman main character that wasn't shoehorned in, by the last season everything was about "hurr durr let's ban guns and white men suck".

I'm not even white and I can notice the excellent storylines being ruined. It's like the writers don't know how to write a story with woke concepts that's actually strong so instead they shove it into every successful show until the show isn't successful anymore. HBO and Disney are going to eat their lunch at this rate with more compelling content.

By DNC, do you mean the Democratic National Committee? Have you considered that your worldview may be heavily biased by right-wing propaganda?

And I actually consider myself a leftist I just strongly dislike corporate Democrats. So if I sound like right wing propaganda that comes mainly for our mutual distaste for certain aspects of “progressives” in the U.S. or whatever you’d like to call them.

That’s a pretty good example of popular media using racial antagonism to divide & conquer the working class.

[1] https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/build-back-bette...

Being a Democrat these days is like being in a “union” that your bosses set up just to try and convince you that you had representation when they were deciding what you were going to “win” from “organizing” ahead of time.

This is why I dislike propaganda aimed at supporting them in television etc. No matter how nice the individual thing sounds, it serves to reinforce this institution who’s only mission in life is to fuck you over and continue extracting wealth from you and your family.

The whole plot is based on "good natured people who are different are unjustly considered monsters because of prejudice, and have to do bad things because of it", and they'll make sure to mention this injustice every 2 minutes or so.

When it's not about "bigotry", it's about girls proving they are "strong independent women" by dressing boys etc...

Maybe the authors find a way to turn it all on its head, but considering the naiive seriousness in which all this is delivered, I don't think so.

From what I've seen, all this series is for people who are still amused by all the "antiestablishment" trope

This is what I mean by shoehorned in. HBO Rome did a great job of integrating racial diversity in a plausible way that made sense in the context of the story. Egypt/North Africa historically had Numidians in major leadership roles. The Witcher does not bother to write a story that makes sense with the replaced characters.

Again, I'm not white and even I can notice these changes.

That doesn't sound like wokeness, it sounds like a character change that you just don't like. Fair enough, but it's not wokeness.

> Fringilla magically changed to be black even though EVERY other Nilfgaardian is white. Side characters were changed to be black

I just finished watching this series. Some actors have dark skin but it's not part of their character or even mentioned. There's no reference to any sort of Black culture or even nation in-universe where people tend darker. There's no sense in which they are black except for the literal colour of their skin. And at that level, there's no sense in which the characters in the books aren't black. There's no "changed to be black" here.

I assumed you had some objection about the actual storyline which does in fact revolve around discrimination against Witchers, racism and genocide and slavery against Elves, culture wars between nations, and cultures domineering others through centuries of abuse and slavery. But really you're just annoyed that some actors are black?

That's the _point_. The writing is completely unrelated to the actors being black. They were casted as black people because the writers/producers wanted black people for the sake of having black people on screen. If there was reference to black culture or some sort of backstory then it would be a _justified casting_ and I wouldn't be complaining.

You don't cast a British person as a Hispanic character in Narcos. Why are random characters in the Witcher magically changed to be black when there's no story reason for them to be black?

> I assumed you had some objection about the actual storyline which does in fact revolve around discrimination against Witchers, racism and genocide and slavery against Elves, culture wars between nations, and cultures domineering others through centuries of abuse and slavery

I actually think the Witcher does a great job at showing the effects of discrimination and racial conflict in this sense.

But they aren't British nor Hispanic. They're Nilfgaardian and Elves. If you have some idea in your head about what that means for skin colour, it's clearly not the same idea that the writers do.

Right, but the show casts all other Nilfgaardians and elves as white people. If the show casted all Nilfgaardians as black people or gave a story reason for a mixed composition then it would be compelling. But they don't. That's why Fringilla's casting seems shoehorned in.

When I meet a new black person they don't spend a bunch of time explaining to me why they're black. That would be pretty weird. It sounds like you have some real hangups about race that just isn't shared by the writers.

I'm not saying the black character is supposed to explain why they're black. I'm saying the writers should have written some reason into the story for why out of all the Nilfgaardians, Fringilla is the only one that's black. The black character doesn't need to be the one explaining it. Otherwise it seems like a poor casting choice because it doesn't make sense within the story. Which makes it seem shoehorned.

> Maybe there's some historical war that caused the blahblahblah migration of the whoseits to the whatsits

And that would have been great backstory to flesh out the universe...

> It sounds like you have some real hangups about race that just isn't shared by the writers.

It sounds like you don't feel like one character that has a different ethnicity than their entire fantasy race seems out of place. If in Black Panther there was a singular white main character and everyone else in Wakanda was black would you feel the same way?

> Why are you assuming her blackness means she must have been shoehorned into the role?

Perhaps because every other Nilfgaardian is white. If Nilfgaardians were a mixture then it would be a good casting. Just like if all Nilfgaardians were black then casting a white person as Fringilla would also be garbage casting.

You are free to assume in your fantasy world that outside appearance has no impact on story telling in a TV show but I and many others in the Witcher fanbase have opinions to the contrary.

I would say Black Panther is a story about blackness. The blackness of the main character is kind of the point of the whole thing, it’s even in the title. This is not true for the Nilfgaardians. There is no race component here to that story, so why does race need to be explained? Why don’t any other characters have to explain what makes them unique from the rest?

There is a parallel here I would like to draw. Growing up my class was all white, except one black kid. In a whole school of almost 1000 kids. I noticed he had to justify his existence a lot. People would ask him why he was there — as if he was lost or something. He was there because he lived in our community, and that’s really all there is to it. Nevertheless he had to have a reason to be at the school, while none of us did. It wasn’t enough for him to just exist.

They do. Geralt has a huge back story that explains why he's ripped and has a bunch of scars and why every peasant is afraid of him. Yennefer has a huge back story that explains why she's beautiful. If they casted someone ugly as Yennefer then that backstory wouldn't exactly apply anymore would it?

> I would say Black Panther is a story about blackness

Let's use another example then. Narcos - if some Asian guy was the one who auditioned best as Pablo Escobar, would you think that's good casting? Narcos is clearly not about Colombian culture, it's about the War on Drugs. If all the random cartel members are casted as Latino but the leader is Asian you think that's good casting? Or if we look at House of Cards - what if you replaced Garret Walker with a Korean dude. You think that's good casting?

> why does race need to be explained

Because one character is different from all the other people in their supposed race (Nilfgaardian). If there was a character that was taller than everyone in their kingdom I'd expect that to be explained too. Or if the character was white and everyone else was not.

> Growing up my class was all white, except one black kid

That's great, but completely irrelevant in this case. You are trying to impose your own social justice values on a high fantasy TV show. Ironically I find it's always white dudes in their 20s and 30s that have this view of the world. I bet you're white, male, a millennial or Gen Z, you live in a big city, and you work in tech.

And is that strength relevant to the story, or is it apropos of nothing? Yennefer's beauty has no context in the story? Of course it does - these qualities bring these characters power that shapes the events as they unfold. Fringilla does not derive her power from her blackness because it's not relevant to her character's story. It doesn't need to be explained because it doesn't advance the story.

The very simple explanation is: she's fantastic and terrifying in the role, and that's why she has the part. The exact pigmentation of the actress' skin doesn't need to be explained in the story, no matter the skin pigmentation of her co-stars.

> You think that's good casting?

I mean, maybe it's just my bad taste, but I see nothing wrong with any of your suggestions. But I haven't seen either of those programs so I can't really give a good answer. Is Garret Walker anti-Korean? Is that why it would be a bad decision?

> If there was a character that was taller than everyone in their kingdom I'd expect that to be explained too.

Why? Some people are just taller than others. The explanation is: that guy is taller. We don't know why, he just is. We all grew to this height, and he just kept growing until he got to that height. The same thing goes for skin tone. For all you know this is a sampling issue. We're talking about a fantasy race here. If you really want some sort of satisfactory explanation, go write some fanfiction.

> You are trying to impose your own social justice values on a high fantasy TV show.

No, I'm actually projecting the experience of my youth onto this situation right now. I'm not trying to impose my view on anything -- quite the opposite; I'm saying things are fine the way they are.

I'm actually going to bookmark this conversation as a discussion piece because there's a lot to unpack here, you've been very candid.

> I bet you're white, male, a millennial or Gen Z, you live in a big city, and you work in tech.

Right on 3, wrong on 2 - I'll let you guess which!

Funny, you've got the same attitude of condescending moral superiority as the demographics I mentioned too. You act as if you speak for all people of color (as a white person), who need to be defended by you, the savior. You probably consciously think you're just trying to help. Unfortunately you're not the first person of this type I've encountered on HN.

YYou realize in Narcos they cast a Brazilian actor to play Pablo Escobar a famous Columbian. The actor had to literally learn Spanish for the role and despite his best spoke with an obvious Brazilian accent. Besides Pablo, numerous other characters were played by actors who, while native Spanish speakers are not from Columbia and you can tell by their accent. You literally couldn't have picked a worse example to make your point.A

It is just as unrelated to them being White where the actors chosen are White. “Black needs justification but White doesn't” is a recipe (long followed, btw) for White favoritism in casting.