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@ 79d783e8:3b888a6d
2024-12-11 05:33:08
The "Netflix Hypothesis" is a name which is intended to illustrate one of the simple mechanisms through which our attention spans have been reduced, our anxiety spiked and our wallets drained. I cannot take full credit for the name, and will give due credit to my close friend in the book surrounding this topic which I am busy working on.
The purpose of this read is to pose that inflation itself has had a profoundly negative impact on the nature of society and our brains. It differs from the general narrative, because yes it touches on inflation's impact on our time preference, but it also discusses the global phenomenon of "Brain-rot" affecting not only my generation, but all of those alive today.
Although the name suggests it, this essay is not focused specifically on Netflix, but rather most of the highly successful companies that operate and thrive today in an inflationary environment. I also would like to add that I am not explicitly and corporatist; I am a staunch anarcho-capitalist. I have contempt for the effects for what these companies have done over the past four decades, however, I view this more from the perspective that they were doing what they could to be successful in an inflationary environment, caused by the US, and other governments globally.
If you have a melting ice cube, would you continue holding it, or rather put it to use to cool down your drink? As, I can assume that the majority of those that will read this are already Bitcoiners, I don't particularly need to explain inflation, but I use the ice cube analogy to highlight the change in time preference. We are more likely to spend our money immediately, rather than saving it and putting it to better use later (hence why I love the term "cold storage" to refer to certain bitcoin wallets).
This phenomenon of spending, rather than saving, means that our natural endless consumption cycle accelerates. In order for companies to be successful in an environment like that benefit from producing cheap, quick and easy solutions as places where we can shove our money. Netflix is one such example, in that the TV industry once produced pilot episodes to gauge interest in any series, but Netflix began the trend of paying to produce a whole season at once, releasing the whole season immediately, instead of taking time with production and staggering the release to one episode per week. This means that the viewer is a lot more likely to watch an entire show in one, or two sittings, regardless of whether it is high quality or not; if they didn't do this, most viewer would likely forget about most of the shows that Netflix pumps out, because frankly most of them are mildly entertaining at best.
The same phenomenon is observed in the fashion industry, with the bulk of the world's population today wearing fast fashion clothing made from low-grade materials in third-world nations under near slave-labour conditions. Companies like Stein, H&M, Cotton:on, Zara and the like, produce clothes that you might wear only once, or at best for a year before they begin to fall apart. This is contrasted to the trades of tailors, seamstresses, cobblers and the like, who would once produce high quality garb which would last for years, and provide mending services in case of damage. Fast fashion has by now been discussed at length by many people, but no campaigns to end it have borne any fruit - because simply, it's fast, easy and convenient.