Hey there, !

Look, today's a bit of a quick one but I'm kinda sick of people using box office as a measure of success for a movie and/or using that as information to decide whether they want to go to see a movie or not.

Like, look at this:

I feel like it's measuring the wrong thing - a movie isn't necessarily 'good' because it's made a lot of money, it's probably just showing how well it got marketed! But the headlines are always about 'wow it's blown up at the box office' or 'it hasn't done well on its first weekend so that's proof it's a shit movie' like come on man.

How many times have we had cult films flop when they first came out, but they're actually bangers? The Shawshank Redemption, Fight Club, It's a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz - these were all considered flops and dead on arrival when they came out in cinema, but are now iconic films that everyone should watch at least once.

And also, I'm sure there's a baseline 'goodness' to a movie in terms of whether a wide variety of people are going to enjoy it, but that isn't necessarily correlated to whether you are going to like it or not!

People do this with so many other things as well - is it a capitalist thing? Or just a human thing? There are so many things we conflate as 'good', for example:

• Is the book on the NYT Bestsellers List? Or on the Amazon top lists? 'Cos that's the only way that I'll know if it's a good book or not - rather than, y'know, reading the book ourselves.

• What's the hype for this restaurant? Wow - it sold out of soup at 10am so that means it must be good (or, well, they just didn't make enough soup). I should go and wait in a line for 2 hours so I can also try this soup!!

• Wow this artist on Spotify's new album hit 1m streams in one day!! It must be so popular and not at all anything to do with their existing fans or bots trying to pump numbers to tell other people that it's good rather than let 'em work that out for themselves!!!

Perhaps it's a way to more easily reduce the decision set; someone else has curated the stuff I should read and watch and listen to and eat, to a more manageable level, and I, as a social creature, will partake in what others have said is 'good', so that I also can say it is 'good' and be accepted into the tribe.

Also, so that I can feel better about myself, the reason I think that these things are different to me scrubbing through every Letterboxd rating and review to find a movie is that in all these above cases, some corporation or invested 3rd party is trying to determine what you'll consume. It feels so inorganic. It's marketing that it's trying to push you to consume something. It's not about what other human beings have discovered and gone 'wow this is really cool I want to share with others' - it's an algorithm.

But y'know, in a capitalistic society, money is power...so I guess money does determine if something is good?

Damn.

Chat soon :)

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✔️Real Life Recommendations

1. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come - 4 stars - imagine Knives Out, but it's about a satanic cult trying to sacrifice a woman to the devil, and there's lots of blood. No idea why I love this franchise so much (maybe because Samara Weaving looks like Margot Robbie?) but it's campy slasher thriller goodness, bloody but not disgusting, and super fun to watch. Great use of covers - I found 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow' covered by Amy Winehouse in one of the first scenes and it is so brilliant. Watch the first one if you haven't, and then this one for more fun times if you liked the first one!

2. Pappa Laksa - finally made it here; the laksa's really good! The soup is so flavorful and rich, the vibes are very homely - exactly what you want for some nice Malaysian food. Also tried the char kway teow which was also on par with some of the other popular ones like Lulu's or Kakilang. Yum yum yum!

🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway

1. The map that keeps Burning Man honest - this is a pretty cool breakdown of how they make sure Burning Man stays clean!

2. I accidentally made law enforcement shut down their fake honeypot - whoopsie, made an oopsie, found a government honeypot and made them loopy.

3. How I Won a Championship that Doesn't Exist - nice stuff, a fun way (probably now patched) to trick the LLMs.