> Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting

I can not stand how every "documentary" on netflix is actually an extremely opinionated political piece or true crime. And I usually agree with the political opinion, it's just incredibly annoying and divisive, and really it mostly feels dishonest.

Just suffered through their Three Mile Island "documentary" yesterday while working on something else. Apparently Bechtel operates a hit squad in Pennsylvania and everyone in a 5 mile radius got severe cancer. Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident; the rest is headline rehash you can get on the first page of a Google search, emotional personal stories and a lot of self promotion.

All the true crime stuff is retired officers cashing in. So much for books.

> Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident

Most documentaries have always been very low on information density. Even universally loved ones like something from David Attenborough are mostly a collection of disconnected (yet amazing) film snippets with a bit of commentary over the top. It's only gotten worse as narrative has become more of the focus.

There are exceptions, but when it comes to conveying meaningful information and detailed analysis youtube is far superior than mainstream documentaries.

Nature documentaries are a different beast from other documentaries. They are primarily about showing great nature footage. If you happen to learn something from it, that’s just a happy side effect.

>> Most documentaries have always been very low on information density.

Except everything done by the BBC. I am so sick of slow-paced american docs that inevitably swing into conspiracy rants and crying interviews. If there is a BBC doc availible on a subject, that is the one i will risk my hour of free time watching.

I too watched the 3 Mile Island netflix thing. The only fact i trust is the coincidence of The China Syndrome hitting theaters the week prior the accident, and only after i verified through imdb.

I want more historical documentaries like BBC's amazing The Death of Yugoslavia [1], a minute-by-minute breakdown of the collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent civil war. It tackles a complex subject in a refreshingly dispassionate and informative way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Yugoslavia

To be fair, they did interview a cartoon villain for balance.

There was no real attempt to compare the enormous toll of deaths and environmental damage of fossil fuels compared to nuclear. I kept thinking "did Shell commission this?".

I feel this is just true for every non-Ken Burns documentary I've ever seen and I find it kind of annoying. They always seem to have some axe to grind and just do anything they can to support that biased thesis with no room for caveats or shades of gray.

while I think most documentarists have a specific point of view which comes through, some of what netflix has been peddling is way over the top.

To name one, Seaspiracy[0] is not like your friend who's from the opposite side of he political spectrum, it's more the crazy guy with "moon nazis are coming" sign.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaspiracy

I think this is more a feature of people flocking to more shallow documentaries, which pushes them up the recommendation funnel.

Icarus was fantastic, for instance, but of potentially limited appeal (which is a shame, as it touches on a lot of topics of broad interest from doping in sport to political intrigue).

Icarus was absolutely amazing. I expected a subversive feel-good investigation of doping in cycling, but got something even more fascinating and disturbing.

There are myriad fascinating documentaries that aren’t about hammering home a point of view about recent political or social issues. For a very accessible list of recommendations, check out this CineFix video: https://youtu.be/0nisJRrsNmc

Have you watched his Vietnam series?

BBC documentaries are really high quality and not so biased as American documentaries.

I'm currently watching the Andy Warhol documentary series. 20% of the documentary is about his art and 80% of it is about who he slept with.

Sounds like many of the things Vox produces--ideological content ostensibly labeled as "explainers".

I hate to break this to you but that's all documentaries in general. Every documentary has the goal of convincing you of something.

This is quite literally not true. Source: I have a film degree, took classes on documentary film. I posted this elsewhere but here’s a nice video with a ton of documentary recommendations. https://youtu.be/0nisJRrsNmc

You are watching the wrong ones.

Watch some that are on film festivals, on quality tv channels (in Europe public tv broadcasting channels) etc.

Usually someone just wants to show interesting stuff without a political agenda.

Unless they are doing it the opposite way - have and agenda and want to support it with their documentary film.

Ever watch Modern Marvels on the History Channel? The only point of those is “look at this cool shit!”

Both the “look at cool shit” and the “here’s how this simple looking thing actually is really complex and how it works” type of documentaries seem to mainly be on YouTube now.

YouTube is perfect for 10 minutes of content without having to try to stretch it to an hour.

> YouTube is perfect for 10 minutes of content without having to try to stretch it to an hour.

10 minutes has no relation to the complexity of the subject matter; 10 minutes is derived from the attention span of youtube viewers (and it varies a bit, but sub-15 seems to be the most common). An hour of content may be pruned until only 10 minutes are left, or two minutes of content may be stretched to 10.

Example chosen from the videos they're recommending to me now: Two documentaries from the same channel. One is about the Bob Semple tank, a wacky prototype from New Zealand designed by an amateur and never mass produced and never used. The other is about the 1960 U-2 spyplane shootdown over the Soviet Union, a serious diplomatic incident. One is 9:08 long, the other is 9:20 seconds long. What are the odds that both subjects just happen to have almost exactly the same amount of content to say about them?

Zero chance of that. Compare the articles on wikipedia, the U-2 shootdown article is 5x longer than the article for the tank. The two documentaries are the same length because this guy always makes his documentaries roughly this length because this is what the system rewards.

I likewise would like to watch a nature documentary once in a while which didn’t feel obligated to mention impending doom at least once every five minutes. If anybody had anything to say about said doom above a fifth grade level, I might watch that too.

I was surprised how hard it was to find nature documentaries that mostly showed nature and animals and not talking heads very concerned about the planet. I'm all aboard but it wasn't what I wanted to show my 1.5 year-old. I wanted her to see cool animals.

This was across a few platforms, had to really dig.

I would also like to see a Nike documentary that focuses on the cool shoes and doesn’t mention anything about the child labor used to make them.

Not covering a recant and pertinent fact is also an agenda.

What would be the agenda of, say, talking about birds while not mentioning climate doomerism constantly? Is there some bird lobby we should be aware of?

Destruction of natural habitat is a problem, pretty much everywhere on earth. If you're watching a show about birds, it probably covers where they live. If you like seeing birds, you probably care about them being around in the next 50 years.

There is more to environmentalism than just climate change. I am obligated to point out that climate change will also change habitats, which will negatively impact many bird populations.

It's true but it just doesn't need to be interjected into every conversation, every film, every time something even moderately related comes up.

You can come up with negativity about how X is being ruined or is awful in some way or another for every X.

The almond milk in your coffee uses scarce California water supplies, cows are mistreated and use water and produce methane, coffee farmers are threatened by global warming and have these other environmental concerns, Starbucks employees are mistreated and have these union issues, you drove a car to get coffee and emitted this much carbon, coffee is addictive and has these awful side effects, strip malls and big corporations ruin local economies... and on and on and on. Pick a topic and you can ramble on about awful things as though being "woke" about it and mentioning it at every opportunity makes anything better.

It's cheap proselytizing for a certain morality and doubtful actual impact of mentioning it over and over in shallow ways that don't actually explain much to people who mostly already know. It's pointless and should be avoided. If you want to make a documentary about destruction of habitat, go do that, people will watch. But maybe stop trying to shoehorn it in at every possible opportunity.

To each their own. I think the whole context is relevant on a subject and would prefer understanding habitat and human impact when I’m trying to learn about something. To me, the habitat destruction is a crucial part of the story, and if you left it out it would be like teaching about life in America during ww2 without mentioning Japanese internments. Or discussing the 1960s without mentioning civil rights.

These things are critical topics necessary in order to understand a topic. It honestly feels a bit like you would prefer a space where the downsides or costs are not mentioned - I prefer to not elide the uncomfortable.

Edit - maybe it’s like a dinosaur documentary not mentioning their extinction? I could understand that, if it were a matter of prioritizing based on available time. Still, it does seem like the meteor event is pretty important when talking about dinosaurs. I guess we just see things differently.

If we want that nature to still exist in 50 years, then yeah, it's probably good to remind folks that they should care about fixing that doom. You could argue it were unethical to pretend the environment isn't in danger, or should we just be happy we got some video footage while it lasted?

I'll never be able to find it, but I remember watching an interesting clip from a nature documentary about cuckoo's breaking eggs or something. The narrator was talking through the scene, then abruptly "How could an all-loving God possibly..." It was narrated by Richard Dawkins.

> Searching is a chore

While my Siri remote thing makes it a little nicer, the thing that drives me bonkers is searching for an exact title that I know is in their library and getting other results instead of it as the first few results items. Ridiculous.

I guess this is the classic attention economy dark pattern: we know that you already know about this title you are looking for, therefore we want you to take a look at these other things first, just to make you stick to the platform for one more title.

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on

:(

I know this is a tangent but it’s always sad to see representation treated as inherently political. Like this is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen mainstream shows portray wlw relationships. Or shows portray the reality of how common and casual sexual assault is. Or characters that that struggle with depression as more than just an emo/goth archetype.

I get that in some ways people tune into media to escape from all that but they become a comfort when they show your struggles and it turns out okay in the end.

It becomes a problem though when shows are catering to what 1% (or less) of the population looks like or is diagnosed with. This is what people are getting upset with. Representation is fine. But when every new show you turn on has half of the cast as a trans person, a non-binary person, and a whatever else it gets old. It gets old when historical shows and films have distorted facts or figures to, again, fill some quota. Having people in key roles where they would have never been introduced to those parts of the world at that time. Or, shoehorning some form of sexuality into a historical figure for no reason other than to check a quota box.

Gen-z identifies as 20% queer. Each new generation is more willing/able to live their truth. Wouldn't surprise me if we land somewhere around 25-30%.

In large part thanks to representation in shows and movies.

The us is rapidly diversifying too in terms of race, yet still even more under represented in media.

Glaad says only ~10% queer characters on broadcast, and was a decline from previous study.

Specifically comparing streaming netflix had 155 queer characters and HBO max 71. You do the math on the massive amount of original content on netflix compared to hbomax.

The world doesn't look like HN's demo.

[1] https://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/GLAAD%20202122%20W...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/arts/television/tv-lgbtq-...

Is it truth or is it being force fed down children’s throats? How can the Western world go from a ~2% homosexuality rate to 20% in two generations? It appears we both have a different perspective on how we got here.

The parent is probably referring to the Gallup poll in February which found a significant uptick in Americans who identify as LGBT+.

Gallup doesn't make any bones about it, the bulk of the uptick was in Gen Z women identifying as bisexual. They also didn't hesitate to observe that the bulk of bisexual-identifying people eventually settle into a heterosexual relationship.

So in point of fact we haven't had a 10x increase in homosexuality, we have had a surge in young women who are statistically likely to settle into hetero relationships declaring themselves as bi.

In my opinion it helps nobody to muddle or politicize the statistics. For me it's hard to not draw the conclusion that heterosexual young people want to be allies and are declaring themselves as bisexual and perhaps experimenting a bit as a show of support. Seems more likely than the idea that a full fifth of the human population that has been sexually oppressed since the dawn of history, but it's open to interpretation I suppose.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

> For me it's hard to not draw the conclusion that heterosexual young people want to be allies and are declaring themselves as bisexual and perhaps experimenting a bit as a show of support.

This makes sense until you understand the realities of the dating scene for bisexual women.

1. If you're young and have the highest rates of wlw your dating pool it's only 20% of women but 95% of men. So supposing bisexual women are choosing randomly among their dating pool it's not at all shocking they end up with way more men on average.

But it's not random and made even worse by

2. Women aren't taught how to approach other women and initiate a romantic relationship -- this is where the memes of "we've been best friends for years who are obviously pining over one another" and "useless lesbians" come from.

3. Women, having basically all experienced the discomfort (to put it lightly) of unwanted sexual attention from men, don't want to inflict that on others and so are more apprehensive hitting on other women.

4. And even if a woman does have the confidence she has to face the reality that 4/5 women she hits on will be straight and in general wlw are super apprehensive about hitting on people they don't already know are wlw. The rejection of confessing to your crush who turns out to be straight it mortifying and getting as is getting an "ew no" at a bar. It's fine, I'm fine.

5. Bisexuals in general tend to not hang around queer spaces as much.

6. Bisexuals tend to not have as much of a "gay aesthetic" as lesbians and so are harder to identify in social settings.

7. There are lesbians that wont date bisexual women because they have the same biphobia the rest of the world does, that they're straight women experimenting and will end up with a man.

Source: Am a bisexual woman.

This is a great comment, thanks. I can't find any fault with the logic of point #1 especially. Since there are a lot more heterosexual men out there than there are bi or lesbian women, bi women will be more likely to settle down with a man due to sheer numbers (and probably men are more aggressive at pursuing partnerships as well). Makes sense.

I still feel like there's something weird going on with the recent surge specifically in bisexuals. Most other LGBT identities are in the low single digits as a percent of US population and have ticked up slowly over time (L and G roughly doubled going from Gen X to Gen Z). But with bisexuals you have a 9x increase in the same time period. If it was just a matter of people in previous generations keeping their mouths shut because of discriminatory attitudes in society, you would think that bisexual identification would tick up at about the same rate as the other identities. Something else must be going on.

Good, and concise write up. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree.

I went from being a straight guy with kids in a monogamous relationship to a woman, to an openly bisexual one with a family (that woman and our two kids) and a boyfriend. In large part I didn’t explore that other part of my life because I grew up in an era where things like my (very closeted, self-hating) dad talking about how faggots all deserved what they got and what happened to Matthew Shepard were basically unremarkable.

It’s amazing how far that kind of emotional and physical violence will go toward suppressing honest self-reporting of sexuality.

By having homosexuality violently oppressed, ostracized and ridiculed in the past, and slowly reversing that attitude towards it? People were literally criminals for loving people of the same sex...

20-40 years turnaround in a civilization is anything but slow in my opinion.

A lot can happen in 20-40 years, and has happened in 20-40 years throughout history. Industrial Revolution, being a prime example.

We've also become far more interconnected in the last 20 years, which plays a large part - whereas before people may have kept quiet because they thought they were the odd one out they now know they aren't.

I do not agree that the industrial revolution is equivalent to changing sexuality within a society.

I could agree that modern technology and the industrial revolution are very similar. But even with that it has taken 60+yrs for our society to have a computer in the majority of homes after the Manchester Baby was created (and I think this change happened extremely quickly). And, analog and electromechanical computers go back even further. So, again, I think even these things have been a very gradual change happening over many decades once the leading technology was invented.

To further expand on my thoughts, to imply everyone was using ‘industrial revolution’ technology overnight would be heresy. I’m sure it took factories many decades to build and retrofit equipment including a technology run up to the revolution itself. With this said, you peaked my interest in this area and I have some researching to do this weekend.

> changing sexuality

The sexuality is not "changing" significantly, what changed is that it's getting less dangerous to 1. realize that you are not straight 2. not be straight 3. tell people (including polls) that you are not straight...

Yeah it's kind of shocking how fast gay marriage turned around. Obama was against it start of first term.

I think that's part of why we are seeing such insane comments on here.

But tough. I wouldn't slow down progress just to placate or somehow reduce hate.

And if you go way back in history, homosexuality was totally accepted in places like ancient Greece. It's good that TV series show homosexuality as something normal, because it is. And if it helps to encourage more people to openly come out as either homo- or bi-sexual all the better.

> With this sentiment why is Saudi Arabia not more accepting of homosexuality then?

Because Saudi Arabia is a religiously fundamentalist theocracy and literally punishes people engaging in any activities perceived to suggest homosexuality with physical violence or death.

> Or, did their media push it down their citizens throats until accepted as is being done today.

You're using a metaphor that implies violent coersion. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "pushing it down their throats"? If you're referring to "overrepresentation"[0], can you elaborate who is doing it, why you think they're doing it (i.e. to what ultimate cause beyond "normalizing minorities") and why that is bad or objectionable?

It reads like you're trying to say a lot of things you don't want to spell out but I'm not sure what they are. Just to be sure: I'm a white European heterosexual man, you don't have to worry about offending me.

[0]: If you strictly mean demographic proportions, I guess is fair when applied to shows and films individually, though I'd like to see some numbers if you want to claim that this applies to Netflix's entire offering as a whole.

Because it was always 20%, but 18% of these 20 were in the closet.

I think people wouldn't have so many issues with this if it didn't feel so patronizing. Sometimes castings feel more like HR checking all the boxes than representing a demographic, and on top of that the marketing will still typically put the white character's head front and center with the token characters on the sides. Los Angeles County where most stuff is filmed and produced is majority latino now. Let's see some movies where the cast is entirely that demographic vs. just one character in the swiss army knife of a cast demography for a change.

I think people object to the bad faith with which these actions are done:

- sharply criticizing the US on race, but hiding black characters in Chinese movie posters (eg, Star Wars)

- sharply criticizing the US on sexuality, but removing gay scenes from Chinese and ME versions (eg, Harry Potter)

To me, it’s like men who beat their wife because they’re angry someone at the bar was rude — but are too cowardly to confront him, so they take out that aggression at home.

Similarly, movie companies aren’t standing up to real bigotry in China or the ME — they’re coming home to abuse us domestically, over things we don’t even do.

I think that abuser mentality is abundant among the “Wokerati”.

Gen Z isn’t the world. US lgbt pop is 7% according to Wikipedia and that sounds high to me, maybe college kids experimenting with their identity in response to woke culture. I’d guess it’s more like 3-4%

Being gay or trans or non binary or whatever is not contagious. There is no reason for differing %, except the trend is very clear: The older the generation the fewer % are out.

It's because people are more supported and more able to come out.

More people aren't gay. More people are able to live their truth publicly.

* and based on your comment I will leap that you aren't a part of this community. The ugly truth is it is still very hard to come out for way too many. And dangerous. Look at the attacks on trans kids and talking about gender in schools.

How do you have any idea what's socially determined (a more neutral phrasing than "contagious") and what's not? It's not as if anyone's doing randomised controlled trials of RuPauls Drag Race exposure and gender self-identification.

I don't care why people do anything and I'm generally happy to let them do it, but come on. We have no idea what causes any given person's sexuality or identity to develop in the way it does. The most you can do is point to some correlations. Definitive statements like that are overconfident.

ROGD is a invention by an adjunct who asked parents on transphobic websites. It was never intended to represent the reality of transgender people. Please don't spread lies and misinformation -- you just have to perform a cursory glance online to find that out.

> Lisa Littman, as an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created the term based on an online survey of parents on three anti-transgender websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria...

Have a read of this, it's a first-hand account of a detransitioner who says that Littman's description of ROGD fit her to a tee: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name

She was captured by the ideology as a teenager and took testosterone for a year and a half before realising what had happened to her. And there are many others just like her.

I urge you to be more open-minded about this issue, and not baselessly accuse others of lies and misinformation, just for disagreeing with your opinion and having concerns about how children are being so negatively affected by this trend.

From context, I don't think they mean the phrase literally, it's really just a shibboleth of the progressive political movement in the US, with connotations of a person going public about a facet of themselves they had previously kept private due to fear of judgement from others or similar negative repercussions.

Did you just actually compare coming out as LGBTQ and sexual identity to conspiracy theories? Come on, you can do better.

No, I did not. I am saying using language improperly invites the wrong kind of conclusions. Please respond to the strongest possible interpretation of my comment.

I have trans friends. We get along. I do not hate people for choosing an identity. That is silly.

I could get into the futility of binding ourselves to an identity (any identity) and how it perpetuates suffering but this is not the time or place.

I think it's important to also point out that comments like yours, drive-by tweet-sized derision, directly feed the outrage culture humanity faces today.

Oh come on, are you really going to look up data about populations expecting it to be low, and then because it doesn’t conform to your world view make up some reason why it must be wrong?

And the point about Gen Z is that this is where we’re heading. Millennials are 10% lgbt and growing, Gen Z is around lgbt 20% and growing. My all time favorite concert was Girl in Red who sold out a 5000 person venue in less than 30 minutes packed with young queer women in a red state. This is way way bigger than casual experimenting in college.

All social justice movements have a trend phase, unfortunately this one is leading to life altering surgeries and suicides.

This shit is exhausting, no it isn't. It feels like it is because it's being talked about more.

1. You cannot just decide you want GRS. Not only is the process itself expensive and long, even starting the process requires two separate psych evals and a doctor sign off and you have be fully socially transitioned for at least a year.

2. The people who make it through the process commit suicide less.

> Those who wanted, and subsequently received, hormone therapy and/or surgical care had a substantially lower prevalence of past-year suicide thoughts and attempts than those who wanted hormone therapy and surgical care and did not receive them.

> Those who had “de-transitioned” at some point, meaning having gone back to living according to their sex assigned at birth, were significantly more likely to report suicide thoughts and attempts, both past-year and lifetime, than those who had never “de-transitioned.” Nearly 12 percent of those who “de-transitioned” attempted suicide in the past year compared to 6.7 percent of those who have not “de-transitioned.”

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/suicidal...

What about this then: https://4w.pub/tiktok-gender-doctor-per-breast-removal-on-13...

Or this: https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/12/u-s-doctors-performing-...

And this: https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/27768/in-the-usa-kids-wi...

You're describing how this process used to work, not how it is now. It's morphed into a large-scale medical experiment on vulnerable children.

This is so backwards, wrong, dangerous. And crazy that it is a comment on this forum.

>This is so backwards, wrong, dangerous.

We have differing standards of backwards, wrong , and dangerous. Are either of us right? I think we are right in our own heads because we are individually seeing different perspectives. But the important part is to not silence one’s ability to discuss such ideas.

Good concert!?

Look, I like music and just used it as an example of something that simply couldn’t happen two generations ago. The idea that artists like her can sell out shows in every city to a fanbase of queer women used to be unheard of.

If you want a less niche example my hometown’s pride used to be less than 1000 people in the 80’s and now is half a million.

I'm with you. I was genuinely asking.

In that case, hell yeah! She’s really funny and down to earth live. The whole crowd going nuts screaming “they’re so pretty it hurts” gave me so much life.

Sorry this thread is swinging so hard between folks who clearly have an axe to grind with the lgbt community and people who are shocked it’s still this bad in 2022 that I’m just defensive by default.

Nice!

Yeah I just went to read comments (of course more crazy replies) after posting in the ACLU thread.

I was shocked again at the crap people on this forum are writing in that thread too.

Maybe you're right I shouldn't be shocked anymore. I've always known, but ben lucky enough not to have to experience very much, of the hate.

But it just feels so much worse. Not just on queer ness but on anything not white-male christian.

Or at least it's more vocal. Like why do these people feel the need to write this stream of crap on hacker news....

I can't decide which or both of these: - Emboldened by leaders & media to allow them to speak out already held beliefs (the silent majority except that's a euphemism). - This craziness has actually shifted, been created, and or amplified. Not just on LGBTQ issues. look at the ACLU thread (re lots of white males talking about overt discrimination because of diversity inclusion training and even more crazy q stuff like fbi false flagged jan 6 wth).

I think it's both.

On this topic for instance I very much doubt people knew let alone cared about trans girls playing on their high school sports team before we made progress to the point there were out trans high school girls and then it became a political punching bag. And now as a result some states and politicians are emboldened to pass dangerous laws that will cost even more lives.

As well as still being used as an offensive slur against gay people and thus not really an appropriate term to use in these sorts of discussions, 'queer' is so ill-defined that it could include pretty much anyone if they feel like it, regardless of actual sexual orientation.

For example, 'demisexual' people are included in this categorization, even though all it means is that a person prefers to form an emotional bond with their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Not only is there nothing particularly unusual about that, this includes people who are heterosexual. Who are not a marginalized sexuality by any means.

> Who are not a marginalized sexuality by any means.

Heterosexual couples are underrepresented on TV due to institutional bias against them.

That’s the definition of “marginalized”.

Are they really though? People are generally considered heterosexual by default if not stated otherwise, and most TV shows don't reveal this aspect for most of their characters or performers.

Hi. I'm queer. I can use the term however I want. It is an umbrella term of inclusion and any bias you have that it is somehow an insult is on you.

Gen X might be large Netflix consumers, however, they are not yet a large percentage of Netflix subscription payers. One problem for Netflix seems to be that their algorithms are favouring Gen-z content, however, Gen-z are not yet having much influence if the subscription gets cancelled or not

Why are you focusing on LGBTQ+ which, as some other posters have noted, appear over-represented in media (relative to their occurrence in the population), and not transracial people who receive effectively zero representation in media? Do you think it's acceptable to punch down like this?

The culture is more accepting of LGBTQ these days, so people are more likely to admit it. It's that simple - there's no need to try and psychoanalyze millions of people based on your political ideology.

But you've just done that. The answer is that it's obviously not that simple.

What we know is that there has been a large percentage increase in the number of people identifying as queer.

One hypothesis is that this is because there was previously a certain percentage of the population who was queer, but the societal cost for identifying as such was sufficiently high so as to prevent them from doing so. It is therefore the lowering of the societal cost for identifying as such that has allowed this percentage of the population that was always queer to freely identify as such. Your explanation is that that is the only factor and it is as simple as that.

The hypothesis that you're dismissing is that not only has the societal cost for identifying as queer diminished, but that it has actually transitioned well into a net benefit in many communities (i.e. woke Gen Z, and others). Therefore, many of the people identifying as queer are doing so not because they are inherently queer and now free to identify as such, but rather that they are not actually queer, but see social advantages from identifying as such. The claim here is purportedly substantiated by the fact that the largest increase has been in those low stakes identities such as bisexual or demisexual, wherein the person can basically continue to operate normally as a heterosexual while claiming the social advantages of being queer.

Now, as I said, the answer is that this is definitely both. I don't, however, expect you to discuss something like this in good faith, because you seem quite keen on reducing it to your pet conclusion. I'm especially not interested in what I'm anticipating, which are a myriad of claims as to how being queer is still a marked disadvantage. I'm sorry, but within the circles for which we've seen explosive growth in identification, it very much is not.

I agree that your hypothesis is a possibility. But, what type of advantage does identifying as LGBTQ provide that is not in being a heterosexual?

Over representation and privilege, eg, easier admissions to college or hiring. We haven’t ended bigotry, but under the guidance of Democrats and Leftists, created a new system of bigotry — using euphemisms like “equity”.

Which is the same reason White students lie about their race.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/57...

The underlying principle of equity is a decent one though. The problem is in how it's implemented: using a person's self-declared identity as an indicator of disadvantage, rather than their actual material conditions.

For example if universities would take factors like poverty and access to educational resources into account, rather than using racial identity as a inaccurate proxy for this, they'd likely achieve more equitable outcomes, in helping talented but disadvantaged individuals gain access to higher education.

> The underlying principle of equity is a decent one though.

> For example if universities would take factors like poverty and access to educational resources into account, rather than using racial identity as a inaccurate proxy for this

That’s equality — as in “equal opportunity” and we had that before “equity” was introduced.

By contrast, equity is a fundamentally racist idea which emerged from a collectivist authoritarian view of the world which tries to fix past wrongs between purported “racial groups” by introducing present discrimination to “correct” past discrimination.

I identify as white and demand the accompanying privileges.

This has been studied for decades. The number of people who have had some kind of sexual experience with the opposite sex is far higher than many expect. I recommend doing some more reading on this subject before coming to the (ridiculous) conclusion that people are claiming to be bisexual because they somehow enjoy feeling oppressed. https://kinseyinstitute.org/research/publications/historical...

Actually, if you go to /r/teenagers many teens complain that LGBTQ+ has become a mark of status such that teens who proclaim loudest their bonafides as trans/bi/whatever are those who reap status.

Teenagers have always pushed against the prevailing narrative, it's how we get new ideas into the world. It becomes problematic when viral vectors of trends are disseminated at the speed of thought globally. Humans aren't hardwired for this. See also the recent HN post that more teens are depressed than ever. It has nothing to do with actual geopolitics: remember that the Cold War was extremely bleak for Americans and go back just a little earlier and you have World War II and the Great Depression.

I get your point but I’m unclear how the last bit ties in. Can you elaborate?

The commons was once scoped, even in the early days of the internet because the world wasn't turned on. Now the world is the commons. So you have a million impressions and they trend toward the apocalyptic, even though the life of an American today (I will scope my observations to Americans because it's the US and Denmark I know natively) is vastly improved from, say, an American GI drafted into Vietnam or the kind of character portrayed in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Teens are feeding on this firehose and thinking the world is ending and it's not just geopolitics. Now their memetic competition is global. The whole world's customs must be cast off and wholly rejected. Sex and identity too turn apocalyptic.

I think it's interesting that in a time where most of our deliberation is being mediated through disembodied media we are becoming disembodied, quite literally. We no longer identify as Male/Female/Human because the activities we take part in are physically formless. Our Internet identities are fungible, easily swapped unlike those in the embodied world. From this vantage, it's easy to sympathize with the desire to recontextualize identity in sex and gender to match the inner experience.

But from a Buddhist perspective, taking refuge inside another identity holds the same promise of suffering as the identity previous. And that's primarily what I'm seeing: self-immolation all across the Net. All of us burning privately and publicly to become the empresses and emperors of our own identity mountains. It's a race to the bottom and it's divisive. We are abandoning strata that are more inclusive ("we are all workers") for strata which are more exclusive ("we are black but you aren't black enough", "we are queer but you aren't queer enough”, "we are women", "no we are women", etc.)

I have more to say on a grand unified theory scale but I wouldn't be answering your question any more if I continued so I will stop here.

I think you're looking at it somewhat backwards. Teens are welcome to experiment with identity - that's what teens do and have always done - but I know a shocking number of adults who didn't truly understand their own gender identity until well into their 30s, 40s, even 50s. Part of the reason for that is that without the internet, there was no place to find discussion about it beyond the typical binaries.

I remember many peers going HARD into goth or punk territory as teens, and most went on to become a much more whole and complex version of themselves as adults with that goth or punk side informing but not dominating their identity. They cherish it though, for what it gives them emotionally, psychologically, and aesthetically.

With a richer available expression of gender and sexuality now available, I suspect it's reasonable to expect that many teens will lean into it to the same degree, but in this case understanding that gender and sexuality are both spectrums will help them feel like more complete versions of themselves later in life.

I wish my peers (and older generations) had access to this when they were younger, because it would have saved them decades of confusion and suffering.

The conclusion I tried to shine a light on is that the hunt for an identity is ultimately fruitless, unsatisfactory, without end. I "was a punk" insofar as one can be what was a dynamic process in the 80s.

The richest expression of identity, one that doesn't fit into the cookie cutters of music genre enthusiast or political firebrand (and the path of least resistance) is ultimately where one drops labels and responds naturally to the world as it is, moment by moment.

If we're all going to be turned on to the world and co-exist peacefully, equitably, well that's a world that stops drawing party lines and starts opening to an experience that isn't a scorecard of labels under your Twitter bio.

If that's going at it backwards, bring on the retrograde.

I think you're suggesting that the hunt for identity never ends so why bother? That's ridiculous. Just because we can always be trying to find ourselves doesn't mean we can't do things that get us closer to the ideal version. The point of gravitating towards extremes during our youth gives us experience and context for what those things can offer us for identities later in life.

> Any idea why so many would be bisexual vs fully homosexual?

Note that the 20% gen-z study also said "Gen Z women are roughly 3 times more likely than men to identify as LGBTQ", so a 5% : 15% split. And, you know, bisexual woman age 20-25 being LGBT is technically correct, the best kind of correct.

Like most things in biology, sexual attraction is a spectrum. It's not binary.

Given wider acknowledgement and acceptance of that I can see more folks coming out as bi.

Seriously?

Someone is bi because of 'woke' politics? And because they desperately want to be victims?!?!?!

What, did the math textbook on CRT in 2nd grade turn them gay!?!

How can this shit exist on a forum like this. Insane.

I have zero confidence in the future of this country. how are we going to fight climate change or a number of other things when 40% of the country and a couple southern GOP Governors are spending all their efforts digging deeper into this drivel and actively legislating these viewpoints.

just insane to me that this kind of absolute crap has such widespread support. especially on a forum of hackers, highly educated, "smart" people

How is being woke related to a desire to part of a group or garner sympathy by playing the victim?

Being part of the lgbt crowd is still cast as being part of an oppressed group. Therefore garnering attention or victim status.

> Any idea why so many would be bisexual vs fully homosexual? This number is really what makes me believe it is more of the ‘woke’ politics being pushed. I view this as (potentially) individuals who have no group and who are desperate to cling to something that makes them a victim in this world.

Biphobia is a thing and it is a thing in gay/lesbian communities just as it is among straight people and your statement demonstrates why that is: straight people just see bisexuals as gay or lesbian and gay or lesbian people see them as traitors or cowards, especially if they live in a stable "straight passing" relationship.

Bisexuals aren't just "homosexuals who aren't committed enough". Research dating all the way back to Kinsey demonstrates that most people aren't fully hetero- or homosexual in whom they find sexually attractive regardless of what they identify as. If anything, "fully" homosexual or heterosexual people would be expected to be the exception if there were no hangups around these labels and identities.

> desperate to cling to something that makes them a victim in this world

There's a grain of truth in this perception but sadly it's tainted by American culture war bullshit. Teens and young adults have always experimented with identity and social roles so it's unsurprising they'll "try on" identities relating to themselves and that some of them will be whatever gets hotly debated today.

But this is very much a "now that we have stopped physically punishing children for using their left hand all of a sudden everybody is left-handed" dynamic to this, too. Social acceptance of left handed people led to a sharp increase in the number of left handed people followed by a period of stabilization leading to a steady proportional demographic because there were already left handed people living "in the closet" (knowingly or not) and they were finally able to "come out" once being left handed became socially acceptable. There were probably also some people unsure if they may have been left handed all along and giving it a try to see what felt more natural and then settling one way or the other, but left-handedness wasn't a "trend" or a "social contagion" or an "epidemic", just a way of being human that was previously suppressed and now normalizing.

And even today left-handed people encounter some discrimination or bias (intentional or not) in their daily lives. Utensils may still be needlessly tailored to right-handed people or left-handed alternatives may be unavailable simply because nobody considered the need for them or left-handed people are just expected to make do because they're a minority and shouldn't cause a fuss (and they can just try to use their right hand anway, right?).

But it would probably sound ridiculous to you if I said "I think kids these days are just claiming they're left-handed because they want to be victims" -- and I don't think it would have sounded as ridiculous when left-handedness was only just gaining acceptance and there was a sudden massive spike in the number of people claiming to be left-handed.

So here's a thought: why are identities like being bisexual (which if we can trust Kinsey mostly just means not making any assumptions about who you might find attractive by gender alone) considered "victim" roles? If it's because they're being treated badly, why don't we just stop treating them that way? So what if it means some kids who were "only doing it to be the victim" end up being caught in the crossfire and end up being victimized less?

I agree with your train of thought on most of your post. Though disagree with the below segment.

>And even today left-handed people encounter some discrimination or bias (intentional or not) in their daily lives. Utensils may still be needlessly tailored to right-handed people or left-handed alternatives may be unavailable simply because nobody considered the need for them or left-handed people are just expected to make do because they're a minority and shouldn't cause a fuss (and they can just try to use their right hand anway, right?).

Right handed people are roughly 90% of the world population. So, as a business owner, why would you cater half your production to something that only 10% of the population finds appealing? Which brings me back to my original point. Why over represent people so drastically?

> Right handed people are roughly 90% of the world population. So, as a business owner, why would you cater half your production to something that only 10% of the population finds appealing?

Wheelchair users only make up an estimated 1% of the US population. Would you argue businesses shouldn't try to make their storefronts wheelchair user accessible, e.g. installing ramps or wider pathways were applicable?

The point isn't just that left-handed people hardly find any products that actively cater to them, it's that many products explicitly exclude them by design. And alternatives are often hard to find and/or more expensive.

I'm not accusing any business of making a deliberate decision to be inaccessible. Inaccessibility is the default because the group is in the minority. But through statistical bias alone left-handedness effectively acts as a disability.

The question is ultimately one of equality of opportunity. Do you think that society should be shaped in such a way that statistical bias is compensated or do you think that society should reflect the statistical bias of its makeup (or option C: that society should be shaped by the biases of those with the political power and capital to shape it). If you think statistical biases should be compensated, you will necessarily end up with "dramatic overrepresentation" because the status quo is the consequence of many lifetimes of statistical bias shaping our society.

Note that there is no objectively "right or wrong answer" as this is a question about your values. And this is also what makes the question so polarizing as there's simply no way to pave over values that are the polar opposite of each other.

BTW this is ultimately the value difference that underpins the distinction between the political left and right, progressivism and conservatism, anarchism and statism: one proposes that hierarchies (i.e. power imbalances) are undesirable and should be avoided, the other believes in a (in Christian conservatism literally divinely ordained) "natural order" that is self-justified and desirable, and that any deviation from it or correction for it is a step towards societal decay (or literal "evil"). Most people tend to not use such an explicit language as they've never analyzed their own opinions (or "vibes" as the kids call it these days) in such detail but if pushed on it they usually steer one way or the other, though often with reservations that tend to be more pragmatic than ideological.

That's part of why we watched almost exclusively Korean and Japanese series and movies for the last two years. Got bored of the representation as a substitute for interesting content bs. They are fighting against different issues such as school and workplace bulying, arranged marriages or the cover up culture. The actors are also very good. On the minus side, they almost never use older actors in lead roles. Or actors who represent what most regular middle aged Korean men or women actually look like (hint: Park Jae-sang or Psy of Gangnam Style fame). I've even seen a show with a trans person and a black guy who spoke fluent Korean. Yet it all made sense, it was not just there to satisfy a representaion requirement.

Like when in decades past they'd make pre-historic films but characters had American accents or even just spoke English. Or a sword and sandals epic with very white actors, etc? Productions cater to an audience because they're ultimately commercial ventures. Streaming is more global than ever so it seems shrewd to incorporate a diverse range of actors to me.

So if representation is fine what do you want it to look like?

Because by your rules black people aren’t allowed to have fun fantasizing about being a pirate sailing the high seas in colonial England, a trans man can’t be in a WWII fiction fighting nazis, a woman can’t be in a medical drama about stopping the cholera outbreak.

So if they can’t be key roles (i.e. important at all to the plot) minorities should be relegated to background characters even in historical fiction?

Also what show has half the cast being trans or non-binary or whatever? I could use something interesting to watch.

Historical fictions set in Africa and Asia?

Pre-Columbian Exchange historical fictions?

If you want fantasy, make fantasy worlds. Don't call it historical at all.

Signed, a fan of Japanese fictions where they put random races in the worlds as they like.

I agree with the other poster. It’s not relatable. No offence to the minorities. It feels like forced messaging to the rest of us. Why represent only minorities in race, ethnicity and sexuality? Why not represent people such as war widows, people with skin diseases, mental disabilities, people with above average heights, obese people, etc.? For those of us not living in the USA, it feels like cultural imperialism. “We think this is the most important thing, so everyone should also think this is the most important thing.”

Shows produced outside of the US are generally better on the diversity of appearance front. UK content particular is much more watchable for me, as actors are closer to regular people you'd see on the street vs the very thin, athletic, impossibly white toothed American casting ideal.

I approve of the use of talented non-white actors in British period dramas, such as David Copperfield. It is obvious that the person's skin colour is ahistorical for the role. But it doesn't matter. We the audience are tacitly invited to look past this detail. It seems a little incongruous for about ten seconds, then just disappears into their fine performance.

See also Chernobyl being full of actors with British accents ... jarring for about 30 seconds, and then you don't even realise for the rest of the show, because it's just that good.

I've seen a making of commentary of Chernobyl, and the reasoning behind having non-accent actors was that a) it was Western production with Western casting and b) they wanted to avoid the old habit of portraying Russians as speaking bad English. I get both points, and it helped the immersion, because I speak English without a Russian accent.

And yes, Chernobyl is among the best shows ever produced. Only exception is the last episode, they could have focused more on the international reaction to it, and the fact that everybody wanted the total cost and impact of the disaster to be low. It was a choice, so, to focus on the Soviet perspective. Taking the Soviet trial for the last episode made perfect sense.

UK produced shows are going the same way though. Inter-racial families, asian/black detectives and police chiefs, people living in million pound homes despite having average income jobs, etc.

Maybe it's me but this doesn't represent regular people I see on the street?

I should clarify, I meant diversity of appearance in all aspects, not just race/orientation.

Casting in non-US tv shows, to my eyes, seems to give a better mix of ordinary looking people (fat, ugly, disabled, scarred, plain, old, teens-actually-cast-as-teens etc). This is just as important for representation, not everyone can be insta-perfect.

You can tell if someone’s spouse is another race just by looking at a single person on the street? This is amazing, tell me more!

I think you've over reached here. 'regular people I see on the street' is a general term and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Inter-ethnic relationships in England and Wales rose by two percentage points between 2001 and 2011 (7% in 2001 to 9% in 2011).

Ten years later, I expect the figure to be much higher but nowhere near as portrayed on TV. Let's be generous and say the increase has been 50% - and is still a minority.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

“Rest of us”

Who is “us” and who is not worthy to be represented?

You realize you’re free not to watch if seeing people that look or live differently than you is upsetting, right?

You seem triggered to me. Sorry about that. Not my intention.

Pointing out the triggering does not reduce the triggering. Nor does apologizing from a position of ethnotechnological privilege.

We are in a time when winning is enraging even to the winner https://mobile.twitter.com/ShannonTheDude/status/15230781188...

Everybody is triggered, all the time, including the unborn, who morn their forced births as sacrifices on the alter of rule of law.

What a bizarre response.

They increasingly do. As one very convenient fictional example ticking off most of those, Game of Thrones had a tall warrior woman, a dwarf, an overweight bookish sort, wheelchair-bound kid, dude missing an arm, a bastard or two, skin issues, etc. ;)

the ironic thing is that manga solved this problem decades ago by simply creating genres for every possible niche.

Funny enough there were black people on pirate ships and black people were around in Victorian England. Black people did serve in WWII as well. White people have a long history of white washing roles for Asian people e.g. in Kung Fu, Dr. Strange, Last Air Bender, etc. And inserting themselves in a ahistorical movies e.g. Last Samurai. Mocking black people in vaudeville minstrel roles (e.g. Mickey Mouse). I am not moved by these sudden appeals for accuracy in fiction.

tldr; I shed crocodile tears when I hear that white people are offended by race switching in modern period films.

The implication being that anything outside of the anodyne mainstream of cable TV must be a concerted effort to brainwash the public.

Netflix has many problems, the big ones being that they lost old shows like The Office and Friends, which hurts retention. And they also kill off promising new shows after 2 seasons to save money on renegotiating cast contracts.

If you read comment sections however, you'll get a very different idea. The problem is that Netflix is "too woke" and consumers are revolting. Never mind the fact that Netflix is a global network with millions of customers around the world, and thousands of shows from multiple countries.

There may be some truth in the "too woke for normie crowd" allegation. Earlier this year, much before the bad news went global for Netflix, Reed Hastings said this about experience in India during an earnings call:

"The great news is in every single other major market, we've got the flywheel spinning. The thing that frustrates us is why we haven't been as successful in India. But we're definitely leaning in there,"

The general opinion in India is that unlike Prime Video India and Disney Hotstar (Disney Plus' Indian avatar) which created a lot of good local content which served the interest of masses and hence achieved success, a lot of Netflix' local content mostly served the tastes of a sub-segment of the well earning, well traveled elite crowd (read "woke") from the bigger cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Apparently this was because the local producers came from the same group and were not tuned to the tastes of the country at large (or even the affluent segment at large). Many of them have since been fired and Netflix India has also gone ahead and reduced monthly subscription for the standard plan to only INR 199 and a new mobile only plan for only INR 149 (~ USD 2). Has not made much of a difference in the past few months though.

Ref :

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60108294

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/netflix-slashes-i...

There's only so many times you can rewatch The Office and Friends. It can't be a major ongoing revenue source.

> brainwash

This has been going on forever. Check out "The Brady Bunch". Every episode revolves around a heavy-handed moral lesson. Go back even further and you've got the Hayes Code. Hollywood has always seen itself as morally superior to the rest of us, and hence entitled to preach to us.

Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority.

You'd be surprised (or not). Personally I find it utterly bizarre but a few people I know literally do just watch the office and friends on a loop.

Quality (UK) Vs quantity (US) eh.

Bizarre, true. When I want moving wallpaper, I'll put on a "cab ride" from yootoob.

>>> Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority

They all seem to have their own personal Reality Distortion fields

The whole idea of representation was that minorities were unable to enjoy media because it didn't contain characters that looked like them or that had life experiences that they could relate to.

So Hollywood bent over backwards to shoehorn in representation everywhere they could and now they find that the majority of people don't like these shows and movies that are all about people who don't look like them and have experiences they can't relate to. This is surprising somehow?

Personally, I never had a problem enjoying a good story regardless of how different the characters are from me, but it seems a lot of people only want to watch things about themselves. The studios also seem to put a lot more emphasis on checking the correct boxes rather than telling a good story.

> So Hollywood bent over backwards to shoehorn in representation everywhere they could

> The studios also seem to put a lot more emphasis on checking the correct boxes rather than telling a good story.

What you’re describing is the paternalistic racism that Democrats have never confronted, in Northern and Coastal cities.

A charitable interpretation is that people don’t like racism:

- anime is popular; Korean TV and films are popular; Chinese movies are popular; Bollywood movies are popular; etc

- treating race as a defining characteristic is not, as in Hollywood

People want a good story where the culture and people are faithfully represented in a reasonable way. They detest products which treat the race of the person as defining or which “paint by numbers” with race.

That is, people on average are rejecting Hollywood because it is more bigoted than they are.

I’m willing to bet, however, that most people that have ever been on tv look just like you, though. Even in the last 5 years, most people on tv look just like you.

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on

People said the same thing in the 60s when Star Trek had the nerve to have a representative crew aboard the Enterprise and when they showed an interracial kiss.

It's different these days though. Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer.

Whereas in Star Trek, it made sense that a future spacefaring crew would be made up of people with origins from all different parts of the world. This was entirely consistent with the overall storyline.

Complain about terrible storylines all you want but now isn't must different from what it was in the past. People considered interracial relationships and being gay in the past the same way you consider "fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now".

> Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer.

People were been just as dismissive about interracial kiss in the 60s. About gay relationships in the 70s and 80s.

Evolve or become a dinosaur.

What if the societal trends were in the opposite direction? Should you evolve or become a dinosaur then too? If so, why bother caring at all?

Unless you're corrupted by archaic religious morals, generally it's pretty obvious to tell when society is progressing or regressing.

It did not “make sense”. It was a concerted effort to include women and other races, which was controversial at the time.

If it made sense, why was it so groundbreaking?

So it’s not consistent that show set in America be multi-racial and have people with different sexual orientations?

Back in the 90s, they showed Jadzia Dax as being interested in men and women on Star Trek DS9.

Not to mention X-men has always been a allegory of prejudice against minorities.

I think it's more that Netflix just has poor execution on a lot of shows.

When telling a story on TV, you often want to cut the story to the bone such that it can be understood quickly and entertain without confusing the viewer with side tangents that aren't central to the story. If a non-story-essential element is too prominent then the viewer might feel it's boring

This happened to Doctor Who. Too much emphasis on LGBTQ rather than good stories.

Sad, really; Whitaker nailed the role as the Doctor. At least the most recent season made up for it. The previous season's attempt at giving everything a woke angle simply turned out to be really, really boring sci-fi.

That's good to hear, I might it up again.

They forgot the golden rule of tv, make a good show first.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, when exactly did that happen? Most people who enjoyed the new show and dropped out did so with the Thirteenth Doctor (Whittaker). There were some episodes that made me roll my eyes (e.g. the Rosa Parks one) but personally I mostly I lost interest because of the pacing and the IMO blandness of the characters and the lack of chemistry between them (again, this is just me).

But the show was pretty much about identity for most of its first ten series, not to mention that you could say that there is an inherent aspect of transness to the character of the Doctor (especially their experience with other characters familiar with past incarnations of the Doctor). The show plays a lot with gender, especially around the timelords.

Heck, even on a purely literal textual level the show is extremely LGBTQ from the start. Captain Jack Harkness is openly bisexual (or pansexual) and flirts with the (male presenting) Doctor who is clearly intrigued. The "love triangle" subplots largely play out more as depictions of polyromantic relationships rather than sources for drama. Even without featuring any clearly trans characters, the show is fundamentally queer if you even barely scratch the surface of it.

I guess if you want to consider the show overly "woke", that started as early as when Martha Jones became a companion because her race became relevant to the plot. The only thing that changed with the newer series is that the writing IMO got sloppier.

I don’t remember Harkness, love triangles, or sexuality pre-reboot Doctor Who. I don’t recall any Doctor having relationships with companions pre-reboot, yet the opportunity to showcase that was always possible. It was a sci-fi kids show that didn’t include love, but still had great stories.

So you dislike the entire new show starting with the Ninth Doctor, not just the more recent series. That's important context. FWIW I'd argue that the Eight Doctor also had a heavy romance subplot, so I guess your cut-off is 1989.

That's all percectly reasonable but I don't see how this has anything to do with the discussion related to the article, given that the new Doctor Who show started in 2010, Netflix only started doing its own productions in 2013 and most complaints about "too much politics" tend to be about media produced in the mid-2010s onwards (the Ghostbusters reboot was released in 2016).

Would anyone say that a show emphasized heterosexuality too much?

Yes. Even before the source material for GOT dried up it was borderline unwatchable due to the constant nudity.

I’m really not a prude, I hope, but I prefer to keep my intriguing and backstabbing separate from my softcore pornography.

Do you have an example of this preaching from Netflix? I'm having a hard time figuring out what you're referring to, but maybe I just haven't seen it

People are saying that right now about the new Star Treks. And I don't think most disagree with the politics/social commentary, it's just so in your face/contrived that it ruins the show for many.

Right, folks are totally cool with gays and blacks and whatnot as long as they don’t have to see them. “So in your face”!

Good grief, no need to take the comments of others in bad faith. What folks mean by "in your face", is the fact that these shows will throw in a bunch of woke characters as a substitute for actually writing a good show. Instead, they'll say something like "Look, we have a disabled multiracial transsexual lesbian as a character, isn't our show great?".

The reason all the Star Trek comparisons in this comments section are so wildly off base is that Star Trek was actually a well-written show with interesting plot lines and interesting characters, that happened to have a diverse cast. Most of what's on Netflix now is just junk that that thinks if it pushes the cultural envelope far enough, no one will notice that most of the shows are little more than clumsy preaching.

They have one gay character and a non binary character. The one character has (had) a trill symbiont. The trill host has always been shown as not being heterosexual in TNG in the 80s and Deep Space Nine in the 80s.

Again even back in the 60s with the original Trek “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, they showed two races fighting because one was black on the left side and white on the right side and the other race was just to opposite - to show just how dumb racism was.

They considered the kiss in your face too at the time.

As was Ellen’s episode when she came out.

Even more recently there was an uproar about “wokeness” when they decided to cast a Black woman to play an orange alien from Tamaran on Titans.

Strangely enough, there was not such an uproar about lily White shows like Friends and Seinfeild.

You’re comparing a reaction to something that was common but only recently televised to something that’s extremely uncommon and over-represented in their programming 20x compared with reality.

I think you underestimate how much things have changed to make that claim: it wasn't until 1996 that the majority of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Below 20% of Americans approved of it when the Star Trek kiss aired.

A larger percentage of Republicans support transgender rights today than Americans supported interracial marriage when in 1969. More Americans support transgender rights today than supported it 20 years after the Trek kiss aired.

Interracial relationships weren’t that realistic in the 60s and there were laws in the south against interracial marriage. It wasn’t until the 80s that laws against “sodomy” - ie homosexual relationships - were overturned. It was always those “liberal Hollywood types” pushing an agenda…

Uh, sodomy was legalized in many southern states as late as 2003.

But netflix is making historically white characters black for no good reason.

If some ruler in middle age europe was white then why do they have to change that just to showe more black people into the show or whatever. They should make original shows and stories where they can do whatever they want

I wasn’t aware white, straight was the default choice for characters, and you need a reason to differ from this norm!

What are the rules for allowing black characters on tv?

And if some movie is set in 2000s, why do they have to show Norse Gods, men that turn green when in angry and an alien from Krypton?

The hippie Star Trek episode remains ludicrously terrible 60 years later.

Star Trek was actually good though. Netflix pulp is completely devoid of content other than politics. Nobody wants to pay to watch propaganda.

From what I can tell Netflix's catalog includes Stal Trek so you are just backing up his point.

Owning streaming right =/= producing content.

Only good (original) thing coming out of NF is the first season of House of Cards and Bojack Horseman. Definitely never been worth a monthly subscription.

CMV

Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were both good. Dark, Katla, Frontera Verde. I guess those are all non-English speaking, or in Narcos' case, mixed language. As long as you don't hate subtitles, there's been good stuff. Russian Doll, Big Mouth, and Arcane were all pretty terrific among English speaking. Brand New Cherry Flavor wasn't mind-blowing, but more than worth watching. Same with Stranger Things. That's just content from the last couple years.

Netflix honestly has plenty of good content. You just have to not use the in-app recommendation system at all and find content through traditional sources, i.e. word of mouth, professional critics, and industry publications, then search directly. As long as they allow you to find a title by name when you already know the name, they're fine.

I'd add the following to the list myself.

* Russian Doll S01 * Stranger Things S01 * Squid Game S01 * Glow S01-02 * American Vandal S01 * I Think You Should Leave S01 * Mindhunter S01-02

There's also a lot of content aimed at different audiences that is considered good, but not for me (Gilmore Girls reunion show, Shadow and Bone, many romantic-oriented shows, etc.).

I'm not saying that's exclusively the good content, and I have also canceled my sub, but I think you're underselling it a little bit. Bojack is, without question, my favorite thing that's come out of Netflix.

I like Stranger Things and the Chef’s Table series is wonderful. Castlevania is good.

I don’t want to defend Netflix though, lots of crap too.

I like it, but Chef's Table uses "that one simple trick" 5x an episode where 18th century orchestral music is overlaid in a montage using all the available camera and editing tricks, showing someone literally is just making a cookie.

Chef's Table is mostly just food porn overlaid with chefs potentially musing about freshness of ingredients. It has nothing insightful to say about running a restaurant, about making food, or anything else. Which is a shame, because I think a more naturalistic, less pretentious view into the daily workings of restaurants could make for a nice show.

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on

This is exactly why I stopped watching Netflix.

The only thing I would add to that list is the phenomenon where they list the same movie in 5 or 6 different categories.

So the rest of the reply chain here is...certainly something. I won't comment on most of the points, but I will just point out - you can now disable automatic previews; I believe it's in your profile settings.

As for whether Netflix is still worth it...I honestly don't know, might need to discuss with my family.

God the tone of your comment just set me off. What's the ugly sentiment and uglier mind? Just put it out there, whatever -ism you're about to accuse the parent poster of. Let's hear it without your cute little innuendo.

This is the exact kind of bullshit they're calling out. Netflix stuffs pop politics into every show they can and is relentless with it. They want to make sure their viewers are getting the "correct" politics, and not the "ugly sentiments".

Maybe, just maybe, some of us want to just watch some TV and not have whatever today's stupid social battle is shoved down our throats.

There are some good ways to have a political message in your content, and there are terrible ways, especially if it feels "shoe-horned". I'm not GP and am not precisely sure what was meant by pop, but I took it to mean "un-nuanced, insincerely-held".

There are people such as yourself who seem eager to label "ugly minded" any questions about the quality of content that promotes A Message even if the Message is simplistic. If a mob like that arises, now we have a ratcheting-up of bad content and simplistic politics.

I hope that's not the case here.

If pop politics is something considered "insincerely-held" then how can the viewer/audience decide if something is pop politics.

I got into an argument once with a few people a while back about gay rights and they dismissed my points as pop politics but it's hard to argue that you're being sincere when they don't believe you. And there isn't much nuance that you can give to the topic.

There's always nuance, irrespective of whether some position is right. Gay rights, for instance: what are you talking about, exactly?

I don't know what happened in your conversation to make your interlocutors doubt your sincerity, but perhaps it had something to do with being unable to inhabit the point of view of someone with whom you disagree? Did you listen to them, or sputter and get angry?

For me, it's hard to overstate how much I support the right of people to be gay and have homosexual relationships (which are not the same thing, but I support them both). My perspective is that full social acceptance about homosexuality is a no-brainer. An ideal world would place no special emphasis on it, any more than a straight relationship. To my mind, having any negative opinion about it at all is reactionary and ignorant. And yet, there's nuance.

The State should have no opinion on nor legal category of marriage at all, either, IMO. "Gay marriage" should not be something that's legal or illegal, because neither should "straight marriage" be. Strictly, I don't support "gay marriage", not because of the "gay" but because of the "marriage". Imagine someone who agrees with my stance on "gay rights" but without nuance screaming at me because I don't support "gay marriage".

My support of homosexuality is part of a broader support for consent in general: just as no one ideally should have a say about whether 2 men have a homosexual relationship, no one ideally should have a say on whether sexual or romantic consent involves exchange of money. Every argument for homosexuality (or marriage) can also apply to prostitution, and it's unprincipled not to recognize that. Imagine someone without nuance screaming at me because I'm comparing homosexuality to prostitution.

Let's see how far down the rabbit hole goes.

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is a small sect that gets a lot of publicity in the United States for holding protests against homosexuality, involving holding up signs that say "God hates <homosexual slur>". It's hard to overstate how much I disagree with them about homosexuality, or anything, really, as an atheist. But what is the deal, there? Are they just homophobes? Is there rampant, latent desires amongst the congregation? There are lots and lots of articles talking about what they believe, and their Wikipedia page labels them as a hate group. But what do they say themselves about what they believe? Let us use them as an object lesson, to see how one might come, not to agreement, but at least to understanding, one's political opposition.

They are a modern church, living in the 21st century, and they have a website. I won't link to it, because the URL has a slur, but I spent quite a lot of time on their website, inhabiting their beliefs, laying aside judgment, just to really understand what's going on. It's hard to summarize it all, but a single quote from their FAQ is instructive:

  Q: I was taught that the Bible says that God loves everyone. Why do you say that God hates people?

  A: The Bible teaches that God hates people. The notion that "God hates the sin but loves the sinner" is unbiblical. For example: “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.” (Psalm 5:5). Here is a list of additional Bible examples of the hatred of God towards people....

To understand - and remember, this is not about understanding WBC per se, but about exploring this concept of nuance even about something we both agree fervently - to understand what the WBC is saying, here, it's necessary to really inhabit this idea that: a) The Bible is a guidebook on how to get into Heaven. b) God, not humanity, defines what is good and wholesome c) The consequences for misinterpreting this guidebook are literally catastrophic.

That you and I do not share these beliefs is not the point. That we might find them abhorrent misses the point. This is the world that these people inhabit: God is a real and terrifying force that will torment you for all eternity for even slight transgressions of a cryptic, contradictory set of rules. To their mind, these protests are a kindly, generous act, to literally save people from eternal torment.

These congregants live their lives under the thumb of a cruel, capricious, supernatural tyrant. I, personally, cannot bring myself to feel anger towards them. Only genuine horror and pity, that they inhabit such a world view.

Now, circling back to the beginning, a rhetorical question: Can you, yourself, describe why you support "gay rights"? If you cannot get beyond "there is no nuance, it's just right", it could be that you come off as insincere because you accept no challenges to your perspective. Are you afraid that you might hear something that would change your mind? If not, be generous to your opposition, hear them out. Inhabit their perspective. Mull it over. There's really nothing to be afraid of.

It's telling that the comments calling out people complaining about representation are all greyed out. Sorry.

HN has been surprisingly me lately in the viewpoints people are willing to say out loud on a public forum. or at least minimally a few vocal commenters.

IDK if it's just feeling empowered not to hide anymore or perhaps progress we've made is creating stronger 'protective' reactions. It's scary though.

If it scares you that people are willing to air their discontent about not liking preachy political messages in their entertainment, I'm not sure what to take from that. Personally I think having a diverse set of views in a public forum was the whole point of having public forums.

>Personally I think having a diverse set of views in a public forum was the whole point of having public forums.

The comment you responded to had a view that was diverse enough for you to comment on it.

That person said they were scared by other's views. And implication I took from that: those scary views should not be aired.

I'm not interested in having one-way discussions, especially if it's run by "the most scared wins". Clearly there's bounds to that, but the view expressed above was not something I'm interested in, and I don't think I'm alone.

No, the complaints are about seeing black people and gay people on tv. That somehow makes people sad, maybe because they’re secretly gay?

The comment in question is: "Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on." It's right here, please go have a read: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31278073

They absolutely did not mention of black or gay people. You are straight-up wrong about that.

It's nearly impossible to take the content of your message seriously, given the way you mischaracterize their actual statement.

Yeah literally no one complained about representation.

What we have instead are people astoundingly willing to see ugliness everywhere, even in the most innocuous comment or gesture.

Admit it, you care less about "representation" than you like to indulge in sadistic performative outrage. We see you.

Kinda weird to complain about being "scared" when the subtext in your own post is that other people should be scared of voicing their opinions on a public forum.

Is this a bit of DARVO?

> HN has been surprisingly me lately in the viewpoints people are willing to say out loud on a public forum. or at least minimally a few vocal commenters.

Me too, except I conclude that HN has finally managed to somewhat pull their heads out of their asses.

Telling, huh? In what way? I'd love for you to expand on that.

I’m frankly surprised that there is no moderation of this bullshit.

If you take a look at that person's comments, they appear to have started trolling hard in the last few months. Seemed pretty sane prior to that.

The irony is that my karma has actually increased since I began.

Sure. Comments can only go to iirc -4 before they get killed and stop taking downvotes, and flagkills don't affect karma directly at all. So it makes sense that, from your relatively few comments that remain visible to the vast majority who don't turn on showdead, you'd see a signal that's skewed artificially high. I expect that'll remain the case right up till the ban.

We've banned this account for using HN for political battle. Not what this site is for—regardless of your politics.

Also, the trolling was seriously uncool. That's arson.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html