But for the niche, the weird, and the patient, a golden age is coming. The low cost of digital distribution means that a slow-burn documentary about medieval calligraphy can find its 100,000 true fans on Patreon. A three-hour director’s cut can live on a hard drive sold at a convention.
In the summer of 2013, Netflix released all 13 episodes of House of Cards on the same day. It felt like a gift. No commercials. No waiting. Just pure, unadulterated binging. A decade later, that gift has turned into a contract dispute. Deeper.24.08.08.Aubrey.Lovelace.Interlude.XXX.1...
Welcome to the Great Unwinding—the strange, chaotic era where the entertainment industry is frantically trying to figure out what we actually want, and we are too busy scrolling to tell them. If you have watched a movie recently, there is a 50% chance you watched it while also looking at your phone. This is not a moral failing; it is the new normal. Popular media is no longer competing against other shows. It is competing against the infinite scroll of TikTok, the dopamine drip of Instagram Reels, and the algorithmic trance of YouTube Shorts. But for the niche, the weird, and the
Vinyl records outsold CDs for the second year running. Book sales are up, especially of “chunky” fantasy novels over 500 pages long. And in a move that shocked Silicon Valley, the podcast The Rest Is History —two British men talking about the Punic Wars for two hours without a single sound effect—topped the global charts. In the summer of 2013, Netflix released all
The numbers are stark. According to a recent Nielsen report, the average American adult now spends over 34 hours a month on short-form video apps. That is nearly an entire day of looking at 15-second clips.