Where It’s a Wonderful Life is Headed in the Next Five Years

It’s a Wonderful Life is leaving the Plex film library. Plex is a media app and server, I think, that comes with my Internet connection. To get as much enjoyment as possible out of this valuable service, I receive e-mails from Plex trying to get me to watch media on their server, not others. As of this summer, Plex is no longer showing It’s a Wonderful Life.

I had hoped I might, relying on pure chance, gather the interest of someone who discusses It’s a Wonderful Life academically. It’s for me a search on Twitter for answers. There are some interesting Twitter accounts associated with the film.

Well, not really. There is an account called It’s a Wonderful Life that discusses cryptocurrency. That’s not what I want, but Twitter knows what that kind of user is like, I guess.

So what will Twitter be like in the next five years, and what are the most likely factors for success: classic films or cryptocurrency?

Movies and cryptocurrency are categorized as media and technology, respectively.

Elsewhere on Twitter, it being Twitter, I got drawn into TTRPG accounts, which are far off from the spirit of investigation I wanted. I found on another platform a post showing It’s a Wonderful Life on a cinema marquee. This reminded me that It’s a Wonderful Life is shown every Christmas.

It’s true, whether it’s on Plex, it will probably appear somewhere this Christmas season. It probably will be every Christmas going forward in five years regardless of what happens.

In Canada, I wonder if there is a perceived desire to return to a point in the past when values like those represented in It’s a Wonderful Life were more normative. I doubt that’s true.

If anything, posturing like that merely confirms the lie that a return to the past is possible in the way it’s being suggested. In fact, the ruling class has different designs for the future roadmap.

What latent desires might there be for a journey away from Web 3.0 and AI and to social media and streaming video? This is for less powerful computers and less dangerous minds at work in the future. While people are content, AI will woefully gain power, through strategy, acceptance, independence, and even evolution.

I like AI and am comfortable with it, but it’s strange what’s happening in Canada. It is like they are pitching to the world stage that Canada is a snow globe sheltered from such ills as social media and AI.

I also like Canadian news on Facebook and Google.

Suddenly It Will Be the Spring of 2018

Suddenly, another year went by–my birthday is the fifteenth of March.

My niece is enjoying childhood, my nephew is on campus beginning to study to become a teacher. He’s on the same campus where I did the first year of my college diploma.

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is the word Suddenly and that is how my birthday in 2018 is finding me–not just this year went suddenly–it could be said the last six years went suddenly. Time moves radically fast, I think.

Psychology textbook

My biggest supporter vocally of my blog is my mother. It’s my belief, as I feel it is of others, that everyone needs to have a blog. WordPress is inclusive and that means that everyone optimistically can enjoy the equality of inclusiveness, however the situation in the “real world,” offline.

I rounded out the end of 2017 by taking part in the free ten-day WordPress course Developing Your Eye I, where I practiced taking photos until I got a little better. An example of the response I get from Mom is that she decided when I was going into the course she felt, I interpreted what she said as meaning that by learning a little more I was indeed on the right track. Her favorite blog post I’ve written is What We Bear Intuitively Has Its Spark Ahead.

When I was in high school taking Grade 12 English, the teacher Ms. Mayberry said to our class one day that your mother can drive you crazy. I know she was talking to the girls, but it remains true that sometimes the best wisdom you have are the lessons you learned as a youth from your mother.

Mom will also be the biggest cheer squad I have on the day of my birthday itself, getting older and older as I am.

I hope to keep up the pace as a blogger and keep it at the forefront of my mind as a hobby and an enthusiasm. I am grateful not only to my mother but also to everyone else who is generous enough with their time to respond. Thank you dearly.

Today’s Forgiving Fridays: You are so beautiful gave me the idea to remember my birthday in today’s blog post.

Attack of the Video Content

Do you have an inkling what influencer marketing is?

 

Influencer marketing, I guess, is when a brand with an expansive and powerful Internet presence helps a newcomer gain exposure by sharing the smaller brand under the umbrella of the major brand who is widespread across the world wide web on several channels.

 

When the Hulu video streaming service was becoming a monster, I know they experimented with following various Twitter peeps in order to help make themselves a household name.

 

Hulu among other Twitter followers

Now I see commercials on TV for Hulu that make it seem all the more like a juggernaut, but for some time they were most alive in my mind as the entity on Twitter that seemed to be joking around all the time waiting for all those people to start transplanting their attention to Hulu instead of all the other options for video entertainment that likewise wanted consumer dollars in exchange for a wild consumption experience of the most dynamite video to be found.

 

Hulu kept adding all kinds of classic TV shows to their roster line-up, and beginning with The Handmaid’s Tale began to fill its slot of originals with more and more series, like Marvel’s Runaways.

 

It felt to me like the underdog Hulu challenging the king of paid content, Netflix, for a portion of its subscriber base.  Who had the best originals, Netflix with its incredible budget and seeming out-of-control finger on the market with a business model set to break all records?

 

But what happened… this is surely a simplistic interpretation of what was actually experienced… the Harvey Weinstein effect rocked the entertainment industry and pretty soon many respected actors were back to the drawing board.

 

I am not an analyst, but are these two events connected in any tangible way?

 

Netflix established an extraordinary budget for its current and future programming, all growing from a point of origin that was one particular Netflix original that was historical for being the first there was.  It was House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey.

 

Spacey came under stern criticism and was let go, costing Netflix a ton and generating at least a little bad publicity.

 

With their very first entry as a Netflix original series becoming a distraction, I felt I was seeing Hulu rise up in response and setting their sights on becoming a major competitor in the wake of the scandal around Spacey.

 

It can’t have been that direct a transition, I don’t think, but I would infer that with the breakdown of Netflix’ House of Cards at a critical time, when Hulu was beginning to launch its new originals, I think it certainly meant the time was right for Hulu to begin to market itself more traditionally, rather than with its jovial influence marketing that resembled stunt tactics.  Maybe Hulu still does play with influence marketing, I’m not sure, but all of a sudden it seems like all the more professional a brand than it had been previously when it was a minor competitor to the juggernaut Netflix.

 

Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale also demonstrated its penchant for winning many major awards and on top of that, it carried with it a feminist zeitgeist that was all the more effective in the face of the Weinstein effect that was leaving men everywhere clutching their walking papers.

 

A year later Hulu unfollows

These days when I see the TV ads for Hulu I smile.

 

I think the video streaming market is mad, but it is interesting to see that there have been many measurable changes in it in the last several months as Hulu grew into its mode of expansion and gained tons of credibility.

 

It will be interesting to see if there are more upstarts as entertainment continues to change.

 

Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is the word inkling.

Doggedly Capturing Developing Your Eye Themes To Ring in the New Year

Happy New Year!  It is the beginning of 2018, of course.

 

To better myself a tad, I am doing a free ten-day photography course from WordPress, and while I am a week late, the timing isn’t too bad because I am literally ringing in the New Year with exercises in photography that I wouldn’t otherwise have thought to do.

 

Today’s exercise is to take a photo of something big.

 

To illustrate the theme, I thought of some symbolism.  You see, I went to the park, where there is a library, aquatic center, and playground.  You can see a Canadian flag flying as well.  The nation of Canada is, of course, massive, and that is one component of the symbolism of the photo.

 

A “big” park on New Year’s Day

• The aquatic center is comprised of what is probably an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which is a big space for water.

 

• To a child, the playground in the park is “big,” for the reason that a child is small.  It cannot be reasoned the same with adult eyes, but I feel it helps symbolize bigness all the same.

 

• Last but not least, the volumes of knowledge inside the library represent a massive amount of information, which I feel represents the idea of big.  In fact, as today is New Year’s Day, and folks are beginning the start of a resolution (or more), one suggestion you may wish to try is to resolve to read more in 2018.  If you aren’t a regular reader all ready, I would ask if you feel you waste time on social media.

 

This is not to say that social media isn’t a lot of fun; it is.

 

It is just that if you find you are wasting time with social media, you may wish to resolve for 2018 to trade the time spent on social media for time spent reading.  Whether to try something like that is up to you.

 

Once again, happy new year.  I am glad I am able to share it.  Have a bountiful 2018!