Media

Oogieloves experience Oogiehate and Oogieindifference

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I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear that the Oogieloves film has tanked terribly.  This may be record tankitude.

I of course don’t follow children’s television much, unless it’s about Hasbro’s marketing departiment going “WTF” over brightly colored pony fandom.  However I had seen the posters for this film when I went to watch a Rifftrax and figured it was some other franchise I’d ignored.

Turns out as I dug deeper it was an independent kid’s film, best summarized by a commenter at gawker as trying to look like a franchse.  I thought it was a franchise and am kind of surprised to discover it’s bounced around for 3 years before coming to theaters to fail.

So I’m getting the impression this little failure is an example of trying to create “insta-franchise” that didn’t work.  Can I understand why it was tried?  Sure – if people think it’s a franchise they may feel it’s reliable or predictable – franchises don’t even have to be “good” per se to succeed.  The thing is that a franchise builds on a series of past experiences, of which people had none to go on.

I also think a lesson can be taken in the internet age, the one of instant fame and viral effects.  Yes those things can build a franchise, yes you can create something fast, yes you can get attention.  But you can’t pretend you have something you don’t have.

The Oogieloves could learn a lot from the Kardashians and Honey Boo-Boo.  This, by the way, is probably something I’ll never type again.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

50 Shades Of Shut The Hell Up

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So, yes, we all know the story.  Woman writes Twilight fanfic.  Twilight fanfic gets repurposed as erotica series known as “50 Shades Of Grey”.  Woman makes money.  People make fun of situation.

Really the only problem as a progeek for me is the latter one – the mockery.

From what I hear about “50 Shades of Grey” is, to put it mildly, is rather purple and the content is may disturb some.  It’s not Shakespeare or Pratchett, and there’s elements that sound rather squicky.  But really the only criticism that seems relevant to me may be some of these quality issues, and even then there’s only so much I can say because I actually watch films like “2 Headed Shark Attack.”*

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HBO, Netflix, And Bad Relationships

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Well the whole “Twimance” causing a stir on the internet isn’t the only confusing relationship.  Closer to less good-looking is the fact that HBO won’t be partnering with Netflix.  Considering they have some major properties, this isn’t good for Netflix, which is having it’s own problems as of late – and though I have confidence in them, they are in a rather rocky industry.

But hey, HBO has their own streaming, right?  And then there’s Crackle.  And Hulu, and . . . well we’re up to our armpits in various streaming services all of a sudden.  Of course they don’t all carry each other’s stuff, or in the case of some anime, everyone carries it (Really, do THIS many services need to carry “Queen’s Blade?” Wait, nevermind.)

So it’s some not-quite-walled gardens, battling it out.  This misses a larger factor near and dear to this cable-cutter’s heart.

Namely, after awhile, some people may not give a damn about series if they have to go through a lot of rigamarole to get them, or get a specialty service they don’t want, or watch something drop off of a service.  It’s like taking all the annoyances about cable and adding brand new ones.

So at some point do people stop caring about The Hot Thing?  Or waiting for the DVDs?  Or pursuing alternate media (I can just read Game Of Thrones, even if it lacks the awesome of Dinklage).

I see this as a possible danger because in trying to keep up with big things, you have to face all these service annoyances.  If you get cable, you face cable annoyances.  Really, at some point people may just not care and buy eps on iTunes, get DVDs, or just give the hell up (which in a way I kind of did). There’s enough media out there that the Big Thing is only big because others say so.

I see this re-dilution of media access actually being bad for the media companies.  It looks bad, creates ill will, and diminishes interest.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach for professional and potentially professional geeks, fans, and otaku. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/