The Recession of Creativity

We are in a recession of originality from AIR to algorithms trying to cram a new trend down your throat every 10 seconds. Everything feels like a remake of something else. In fact, 10 out of all top 10 movies from last year were entirely remakes for sequels. And the top pride from this year? All remakes and sequels as well. And it's not that these are bad movies by any means. They're just not original. Like things like Marvel and Disney princesses have existed since the 1930s. And we have been recycling that same IP remaking it for nearly 100 years. And even when you look at things like cars, houses, interior design, how even a refrigerator is visibly more interesting 50 years ago than the way anything looks today. Originality has become an endangered species where even new innovative technologies are somehow gray, black, minimal, boxy, and so utterly lifeless. And I truly feel bad for the gen alpha and the young kids of today that are just growing up on the leftovers from the past three generations. Like their most exciting movies still are Hunger Games and Marvel and Alilo and Stitch, which I saw up to the first time, like 10 years ago, they have nothing new. And when I go back and look at these things like the Jetsons, their depictions of the future were so colorful and often mystic, creative and expressive, yet the future that we actually live in could not be further than that. It has somehow deteriorated, become less creative, less visually interesting, that anything we grew up on in the 90s, 2000s and earlier. So what caused this death of originality and why is creativity feel like it's at an all-time low? Well, that isn't exactly the question we sat out to solve here today. Welcome back to Nikki and I, I'm your host Nikki Beardin and we're here to talk about what I like to call the recession of originality. This was actually inspired by a written TikTok video that I had made and a bunch of people really liked it and just commented about it. And it's sort of this very long discussion and threading. It was like 500 comments on it, which was so cool and interesting. And anytime I let to fall down those rabbit holes, I'm always like, this is something I'm going to go deeper into. And it's like worth researching more and worth discussing more. And I was also just thinking about it a lot. It's really in terms of like TV and film and movies, which would be a very big example section of this video. And I think also like this is not a TV specific problem, but very much is like in industry and a very large industry that I think represents like the societal issues that have caused this situation that we are in now, which I'll really, really go into and discuss further. But quick little housekeeping things. I really want to do like a 100k special. We were talking about it in the discord earlier this week. I've like tossed around a few random ideas like, you know, I could always do something like live stream, like a bonus episode or something. But I always, I was trying to think it's something like fun and creative. I have something like somebody had mentioned. And I also really thought about doing, was I don't know if you guys remember that old YouTube friend, like draw my life. I thought that those were so cute. And I remember watching that when I was younger, like being obsessed with them. And I think it'd be so cute just like doing myself. Like honestly, just really like for fun. And also like to very much get, and I guess like inside about me, and it's so interesting that, I guess like I really like very rarely talk about myself in these videos to talk about things and concepts and phenomena of the culture that interests me. But I don't know, like I guess a lot of you don't really know much about me. And I would like to change that. So let me know if that's something interesting or, you know, we could do something else. But before we dive in, hey, don't forget to subscribe. Don't forget to check out the Spotify or the Apple Music. Also, it recently dawned on me that like, I didn't for some reason have this podcast on YouTube Music, which is crazy. So it's available there now. Go check out if you have a YouTube Premium or use YouTube Music. But yeah, your support means so much. It helps so much to like grow the show. And give it a five-star rating if you're listening to their on there right now. I would love and appreciate you for ever and ever. So with that, I guess I really want to talk about like this recession of originality, I'm calling it. Or I guess more so like death of creativity, this obsession with repeating things that we've done before. I guess is what it really is. Again, like the biggest example, I feel like I've been feeling this lately is in movies and film. And it really boils down to this one thesis that nostalgia bait is killing creativity. Like 10 out of the top 10 movies of last year, were sequels and remakes. Sonic the Hedgehog, Kung Fu Panda, Godzilla, Dune, Mufaso, Wicked, Despicable Me, Molana, Dead one Wolverine, Inside Out 2, are all things I got to grow up with. I am 26 years old. The gants of today get nothing new. Nothing. The most viewed movie of this year was Lilo and Stitch. Lilo and Stitch. Really, hey, don't be wronging. Lilo and Stitch, but like we have seen it before. It's not that old. Where is the originality? Even the top five movies of this year in America. All remakes and sequels. Lilo and Stitch, Minecraft, Mission Impossible 8, How to Train Your Dragon, and Jurassic World Rebirth. Like, we have zero new IP. There is no ability to create anything new, it seems, or original. And when I see things like this, it is such a sad result of like, hyper capitalism. And doing something that is safe and profit maximizing over something that is creative and exciting and actually pushes the boundaries of what people know and love. Like, that is the point of art to begin with. Yet, it feels like none of our art is actually doing it these days. We're just making the same things we've made before to cash a bigger check somehow. And what's crazy is I really think that this is going to be a massive bubble that pops and completely crushes the industry. I think one of the very great examples of this and we have started to see is with Marvel and the MCU, right? Like, it was a gradual increase in the entire, like, wave one. We won, wave two, up until like, Avengers Endgame, which I didn't leave was their big, guest movie of all time. It was one of the inventors. I can't remember which one. But it was massive. Like they just kept growing and growing and growing and growing until it got so big and it was massive and everybody loved it. But then like, it ran out of steam. Like, all they had left was to create like, 30 more Marvel movies or star-written TV shows or all these things. And it just became too much. Like, nobody wants to keep up with it all. It also kept feeling like all of these things were repeats of the last ones. The plots didn't feel particularly like new and interesting or exciting. They just kind of tried to like, repackage a bunch of old characters and to other franchises and stuff like that. And since then, Marvel has never made as much money. Like they have, you know, their reign of bangers every month, like, once, every two years or a year where it's like, Diplom Wolverine. Great. Despite our main ones, always do really, really well. But like, they have reached some sort of cap. And there is literally like, diminished returns you can see. Like, there is a limit to this nostalgia, to how much juice you can squeeze from the lemon until it's just not new anymore. And I think Marvel's a very, very fantastic example of that. And because it's also something that is like, not even nostalgia for me, like my generation, it's nostalgia for like, Badee Boomers and people who read the comic books growing up. And that was really like what, you know, got it to be so big. And again, like, I'm not sure I hate on any of these movies. I think many of them are great. I still see Marvel movies all the time. I love Marvel movies. I'm very, and so excited to see Contas 4. But like, they're just not original. They're just not new. Nothing me get is new. You know, like again, like talking about like Jurassic World and how to trade your dragon and mission impossible. Like, it's not that these are bad things. It's that these are only things that have made money in the past, right? Like, the world you live in is like, we're only allowed to be entertained by something if it's made money before. Which makes it so we just have eight mission of possible movies. And like, what name a new exciting action franchise? Ray's like, there's not there's 10,000 theories movies and eight mission of possible movies and of the Jillian Marvel movies. And now we're doing DC Universe again, giving that another crap. Oh, about right? Like, they just keep trying to milk the same cow. And with this expectation that it's going to keep doing good and good and good. And I mean, what's crazy is like from a data perspective, it's right. Like the top 10 movies of last year and top five again, of this year are like all things with these established fan bases. But also again, like that's the self-procreduating cycle too. It's right. It's like, well, nothing else is getting as big of a budget as any of those movies. Nothing else is getting as much marketing as any of those movies. Nothing else is like being allowed to have the breathing room. And when you think of like, you know, some of the best movies we grew up on, especially in like the 90s and 2000s, I feel like so many of them were not franchise films. Like, they were just these random one-off things that hit and were so funny and felt so relevant to the culture of that moment. You know, you think of like Mean Girls or the Devil Wars Prada. Like any of these random movies, like there was, there was no like, we are trying to make a 36 movie franchise. We are going to do TV shows and open a park with Disney World. Like, there was not this obsession with profit maximization. It was just like, that's a good idea. That's funny. Let's meet that. And like, we have so as a society just like completely gone away from that. And again, one of the biggest examples that this is my gripe. High personal gripe is like, I am so sick. of superhero movies. Did you know there have been 21 movies about Superman? 21! The MCU has 36 movies and 14 TV shows. Like, can we please make anything other to the superhero movie? Oh my god. And like every once in a while we get a random thing like sinners where it is like one of the biggest movies of the year and a completely original story and everybody's like, oh my god. This is amazing. How did this happen? And like, wow, you create a new original story and that creates a new, excited audience. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that making Superman for the 22nd time might not captivate somebody who wasn't that interested in the first 21 times. Like, there is so much obsession with nostalgia and repetition over creativity over expressiveness over individuality that it is so frustrating. And I think what's so beautiful about a movie like sinners was like, it really maintained those elements of action and fantasy that you would love, you know, about like some sort of like superhero-type movie. But it also has these elements of like, it is a period piece. There is a historical education. There's so much interesting fashion in the movie. It even ties in these elements of like music and culture. And that is what made it so exciting, right? It wasn't a rehashing something I've seen 34 times by just putting some very, very famous people in it. It was actually developing a new story, developing a story I didn't know the end to, developing a story I didn't have to watch 18 other movies to understand fully. And that was awesome. It was just a great movie. And we have so lost touch with this idea of just making good things unless it's nostalgic and I'm so sick of it. However, I will say like not all reusing IP is a bad thing. And I don't want that to like come across as like being my take. I think there are really, really great examples when it's imaginative and it's exciting or it is changing the medium in a way that is building a new world or adding something. Like true symbols of thought of my and my head like number one was like Wednesday on Netflix. I thought that was such a great show. I thought general take it was so amazing in it. I thought it was like taking you know a movie franchise we all knew and grew up on at the Adams family. But like it had really been a while. And also like they were putting in a different format of a TV show was also like a bit more kitty. And there was like some fun like dance scenes and a little bit of mystery to it. Like it was just an incredibly, it was comedic. Like you know what I mean? Like it did not feel like just another random Adams family movie like Wednesday felt like its own thing. It introduced a bunch of other characters that weren't you know what part of the thing. And now I think made it exciting to me. You know it was like okay like we're taking this you know outline or idea of like what this world is and what this character is. But then we're gonna like color in the lines and it completely in an entirely new way. And I absolutely love that or another example again was like wicked where even wicked wasn't particularly like transformative. You know it's it's an adaptation of a Broadway musical. Just a really incredible Broadway musical with a great story. But I felt like it was really cool to see the way they brought that to life in a lot of the ways. It was very cool to see how they you know built these like physical sets like shiz university in the emerald city were all like practical sets. I thought I was so cool and so interesting to look at. And and it didn't feel like just a rip off of the musical. It felt like I was watching a movie and a new movie that I was excited about. And also again like it's only they trained to soundtracks only did all these things. It was just I guess like something of the medium changing about the cast changing. And also like giving it this up like big giving it a big budget movie which was like not a thing that had ever happened with it in the past. And also like we haven't had people trying to remake 35 other Wizard of Oz spin-offs. So like we could didn't feel as annoying. I think that's like also like where some of my gripe from like the superhero thing comes from. It's not like a distaste or dislike for superhero's genre or action is a genre or you know Marvel or DC. I actually love both. Like I love that being a movie. It's especially damage if you're a superhero. It's been a man too. Like but I think it was just like we have had so many there is nothing else. Please got saved. But I just can't deal with it. And what's very interesting though is I do feel like TV has been so much better and really really original in a way that's like very interesting. I don't know why this is or why it has fallen this way. Um where you know I think it was show like Severance and like Severance was so exciting. It was just so new to pretty much everybody. It was like such a fascinating concept of like kind of being loosely based on our own reality but just this like one element of science fiction. Um you know like the split personality thing and like what would that do? How would that be? Um and also again like the beauty of Severance was like there was so much thought and detail put into all of it. The way that the hallways look and the office space looks and the way that the characters um act in and out of work is being like two separate personalities and how great acting that was like and also just the entire mystery the show I'm not gonna spoil it because every you need to watch Severance. It's so good. But like you know what I mean? Like it was just a show that was new. It was exciting. It felt current and relevant. Like it was social commentary on these things like work life balance on these things like big tech and massive corporations. Um and like that was what I think needed this massive cultural phenomenon like you were obsessed with it and so excited about it. Um even like another random thing that's like popping off and just ended this past week and was like love Island. Right? Like people love love Island and you know I think that a big reason for that is actually this structure. Like they love Island is a million dollar marketing opportunity of like the episode per day was genius. Like the fact that every single day people would wake up and make a video on their on take off like about last night's episode of love Island and you go to that morning meeting you're telling him being with your coworkers and talk about last night's episode of love Island and like it just created so much momentum. It was the snowball effects like every single week multiple days a week. Many people you know were talking about love Island and that fostered this sense of like community and developed a cultural conversation that I think made the show feel very exciting right? There was some newness on a daily basis. Um and I think the interesting thing about that newness was that it actually made it like a content opportunity again like people literally were making a minimum of like four videos about love Island every single week all the time. Like it was insane. I would see it all over the place. I'm not even like really a big fan of the franchise like that but it was one of those moments where I should really understood like the power of the internet um and I think what the success of a show like love Island proved is how much people love that cultural conversation. We love having something to talk about with our friends when we see them. We love having somebody to talk about with your coworkers in that meeting um or just like do with your friends four times a week for a night like we like these beacons of entertainment to be um something that impacts our lives and impacts our lives consistently and when everything we're watching or all the movies we're watching is something we've already seen before it does not have that same effect like it is just losing the excitement simply for the fact that like it's just a part of that franchise again you know like there is these diminished returns and diminished excitement that I think like people aren't really thinking about and I think so much of that really has to do um with this concept of like social media and um somebody coined this term that I love was talking about like cultural flattening um it was from a video I saw from this creator his name is Yug Brand Strat I love the video up here but before I dive into that like really talking about why algorithms I think have drew into this concept of originality is that like an algorithm's job is really to push like conformity and group think it does not care what the subject matter of the thing is or what the quality of the thing is it only cares if you will engage with it right like if you engage with 10 videos about new home to the core it's gonna surface you more videos about new home decor and what's interesting to you about this like way algorithms work is the way it contributes to extremism and also I think the way it contributes to like having a hot take even if the take isn't good like thought out right like if I were to make a video and be like the sky is red and you comment on that video know you idiot the sky is blue and then 10 other people comment on the video like you're more on the sky is blue all the the algorithm reads is like wow this video got 10 comments in 10 minutes that's really good so we'll keep pushing it out right so like whether your take is good or bad doesn't really matter like it's just like is your take polarizing enough is your take polarizing enough to anger somebody to leave a comment or to like embody that niche for the people who like share that belief and where they want to engage with it right like it does not actually matter the quality of that engagement it's just like is this being a thing that is driving more conversation and that's really where it like is gets really scary as well because it also means that we're like pretty much never getting surfaced something that challenges your existing opinions or beliefs hum like if you you know absolutely hate sushi like and you never engage with videos about seafood you are never going to get surfaced a video about seafood, right? Like, that's the way an algorithm works. And as nothing like that, it's very trivial. But when it's somebody talking about a, I don't know, vaccines don't work. It's like, yeah, they do. They do. There's a reason you, your neighbors, children aren't dying of polio anymore, right? We had a polio vaccine, and it works really well. And that's a good thing. But what's so scary is that like this idea of algorithms is pushing conformity. So it's like, if you like that video about maybe the vaccine is bad, you're going to get five other videos, not maybe the vaccine is bad, which then like facilitates this false sense of verb think, right? Well, you're like, oh my god, I've seen five people talking about this today. Don must mean vaccines like are are maybe not good. A lot of people are thinking about this. And it's like, no, like it's actually relatively like a very small percentage of the population of people who like don't want to get a vaccine. But because you engaged with it, and you saw more videos, you assume that this is like a better tape or a more widely held belief than it actually is. Therefore, you feel more emboldened and embodied to like do that, right? And like, that is where this weird aspects of I think of the internet go into this, right? Like it is this idea of like, algorithms pushing conformity and pushing things that we've already engaged with in the past, which makes it so like being original or newness is very much less rewarded, right? Like before this recent Superman movie, there were thousands and thousands of videos on the internet about Superman, right? Like it makes it easier to do that. It makes it easier to market that. It makes it easier to understand that there's a fan base for it and prove some sort of ROI before you make the thing. And that's why it gets streamlined by a studio, right? Like, that's where these weird, weird elements come from. But what I also really, really hate about that element of the internet is how he pushes conformity over originality or individualism, right? Like, you see all these videos, I talk about this a lot and they've some of me about the deaf and personal style and how I felt like celebrity obsession has really killed it where I feel so much of fashion and wellness and makeup these days is like the Haley Bieber clean look or how to get greasy aprons abs or how to dress legs, so breed and carpenter or whatever it is, right? And it's like, what's fascinating is like everything is about a recreation of something else as opposed to like fashion as a tool for my own expression, right? Like, or like make up as a tool of like this is what makes me feel confident and happy with myself. But the way that the internet works is like, you know, you're always talking to a stranger, right? Like I have no one to use watching this video right now, literally no idea, right? So like, I have to speak and use examples of things that I assume you understand, right? It's why I'm talking about sitter man, it's why I'm talking about Haley Bieber or whatever. So that makes it so that we constantly refer to these collectivist things, these established things as opposed to anything new and original. You know what I mean? Like, and it's like guilty of this and this exact moment myself, you know, but it's like, that's how the internet works. And that's why when I talk about like why I think the internet is really perpetuated this problem, like I don't even think it's like fully a bad thing or like the internet's fault, it is just the way algorithms work. Like you are fed things that it assumes you will engage with, assumes you will like, which means that we have this constant reiteration of the same things over and over again. And that is really where again, this cultural planning aspect that I talked about comes in and he didn't really talk about this. It was a video he made about the word demure when he was really popping off last year and that creative jewels and how she you know, it's so so viral. And then it became this massive trend that everyone on the internet thought was really, really funny. And then all of these brands started to come in and then like once the brands came in and started trying to like mean it and and use it for their own gain and essentially monetization or performance, then other people stopped wanting to use it so much. So then it sounds becoming a trend and then it kind of died out very quickly. So the more that these things happen, the faster that they die out. Do you hear what I was saying? Like there is this flattening of the culture, like something used to go, oh, it takes six months to go up and then people are really interested. And then it goes down, down, down, down, right, where for something like a movie, again, back in the day, like pre-internet, you know, maybe it would come out in summer. And then we'll go down a little bit. But then, oh my god, it's Halloween and now everyone wants to just have a sweater and again and and blah, blah, blah. Right? Like we were more spread out in terms of like cultural conversation. Like this idea, they're always being a conversation all the time, didn't exist yet. So because of that, these things had more life cycles in them. And because there's longer life cycle, one, there wasn't the need to repeat them as frequently and as often. And two, I think that there also wasn't like this idea of like constantly trying to monetize it. You know, like that's like I think what's so interesting about this, you know, like the life cycle, the meme type thing, is where everything, every word spoken on the internet is now like an opportunity to be commodified in some way, whether that is the creator monetizing the video, whether that is just ads are on the platform and it's ads on that thing or a brand account is trying to like use it as a trend and pull up right like it's just everything has the option to be monetized. And that has really made it feel like only like it's like an ad or like we're just like we're being saying he's over and over again, right? Like there's no originality to it. There's no originality to that brand counseling. Demure 30 times they just had to pitch something to their boss in the Monday meeting. And like that was the top full thing that week. And because of that, it has made it so we don't actually get to feel as like deeply connected to any of these elements anymore. And it has developed this sort of meta, where we all know that people engage with algorithms and content on the internet in that way. So now we like do things as videos, not because we're actually interested in the thing, right? I feel like I see this all the time with like fashion and like home decor and like DIY, like it's just these people doing these ridiculous projects that are so massive. They were like very bold, but like not actually good for the space or not something that they would actually wear. But like it's very viable, right? It's very like captivating content. It's already captivating for them to tell you how they're going to like use a jersey as a skirt or something or how they're going to be a boy and like put on a skirt, whatever. I mean, there's these weird like trends like the femboy trend of 2020. He's a very interesting example of this, right? We're like none of those guys were actually out in the world dressing that way. Like you didn't see any of them go like Google them and like look at red carpet photos or anything of any of those like ticked offers or error creators of that time. Like none of them actually dressed that way. He was just this thing that got views on the internet. So then they did it on the internet and then because they did it and it worked for them. A bunch of other people saw it as this thing to imitate and replicate and then it became a trend and that like that is what I'm talking about the thick snowball effect. I don't know what's hard. Like I don't know if I'm explaining this well because it's like hard to articulate like a specific phenomenon to it. But that is really like where I think this like interesting aspect has come in and then also it's just a late-stage capitalism. It truly is like a prime example of this. Like this is really where I think about you know talking about some of like the products and things I mentioned earlier in the intro about like cars and houses and interior designs and phones like everything used to look more interesting than it does now. Actually like as technology has improved creativity has declined which is a very like fascinating thing. And again I really attribute this to capitalism in the way that these sort of things work right. I'll start with Home Decorate for example. Right like you have an apartment right let's like look at this place that I meant for example with the studio. Like if this wall was painted red right now I'm not sure I would want to film in front of it right or yellow or something like that right. It would be a lot harder at the very least. So because of that they painted something very neutral white right. It might not be my favorite color. I'm not wearing white all the time right and wearing green and wearing blue. I'm wearing black. Green blue are of your colors you know. But like not everyone's favorite color is blue. Not everyone has fursure than notches with blue. Therefore they are not doing the creative thing. Their goal is to do the most profit maximizing thing which is just what is the least offensive. What is so it's like opinionated whatever and that's where you see these things like these gray florets coming in all this time right. When you see them putting like faster flooring over hardwood like I love hardwood for I absolutely love I just think it looks stunning. I think it makes the house look like it's made out of real materials and things but like not all people like that not all people want that sort of like deep brown right. So it's very easy to have a white tile kitchen or a black floor or a gray floor because that's a one size fits all solution right. It's more monetizable for them. It's like almost like this blank canvas right. Like if if you were to look at a white wall and touring an empty apartment with all white walls you can kind of search like imagine your stuff there. Imagine what that would look like. But if it's like a yellow wall or a blue wall and you don't have a couch that goes with that you're going to be like oh like I don't know I don't think my stuff would go with this living room. So they make everything white. That's this cultural flattening right. It's like we are getting as close to the minimum to the average boring median as possible. And what's fascinating is like they've actually conducted a study on this. There is literally scientific proof that everything is less colorful these days. The science museum did this brooch study where they photographed 7,000 different objects, just random things that were invented from the year 1800 all the way to today. And then they quit those images into a computer and the pixels of the images she like see how much color there was, right? And you literally see over time how much there is in this increase of like gray and black and neutral, right? Like it is trying to sell you on this idea of like, Oh, it's looking clean and sleek. With honestly, in actuality, a lot of the times it's just cheap, right? Like that gray plaster flooring is so much cheaper than real hardwood flooring to have a metallic or chrome laptop like this is so much cheaper than another material, right? Like there are a lot of types of minor painness that just came when this color and they're putting it out, right? Like it's just the least offensive thing. So because of that, too, there's been a lot of like marketing to make that feel like luxurious and a status symbol. You know, for example, this is like the Apple store and how minimal they try to make it and how clean they try to make it. But honestly, like a big reason they do that is like it's so much cheaper to make the store. You have to spend any furnishing, you have to paint any of these spaces. You don't have to renovate any of the space. Like you can just get a random store that has white walls and like a boring floor and like it could be an app or store. We're like a little bit of judge and pizzazz, you know? Like that is why. Like it's a profit maximizing tool for them. And that is where, you know, this idea of like creativity and profit maximization really butt heads. And that's when I'm talking about like my distaste with like capitalism and the creativity structure is that like it doesn't really make sense all the time. A great example of this I think is like the McDonald's. And the old McDonald's versus the new McDonald's, you know? Like when it had that sort of like dome shape and red building, it was so distinct. Like even just look at these two images side by side. And like imagine you are a seven year old kid, which one of those looks more exciting to you. Like I think the giant red and yellow one with a grinness inside it and a slide out the back seems more fun, right? But like that is not the profit maximizing one, right? They had to do all of that and renovate all those spaces. Anytime they want to build a new store, they have to like take off the roof and install that red thing on it. And also like it made it so that if they, you know, everyone will leave this space, it's harder to rent out or sell off, right? Like if it's a very, very simple box the way that a lot of the McDonald's look, then you can really get that space can be converted into anything. If it's a red space with a very specific roof like it's on McDonald's, you know what I mean? So that like actually express piece of individualism could hurt them. It could hurt their ability to try and sell off their property one day, whatever if they, you know, end up not closing that store or whatever, closing the franchise, whatever. Like there's no, it's not about the creativity. It's about this idea of maximizing profit or the potential of that. And that's where this like weird again, recession of originally comes from. It doesn't need to be loved by anyone. It just needs to be hated by the least amount of people possible is really where of like most things in the world are now, right? Like nobody's gonna get mad at a black iPhone. Nobody's gonna get mad at a white car. Nobody's gonna get mad at white walls, right? But like I think if we were a survey of a thousand people, most of them are not gonna say any of those are their favorite color. Most of them are not gonna say, that's like their dream set up. Like what does your dream hit you look like? What is your dream car with it? Whatever it is, right? Like people actually crave more than that. And I think that's like what's so interesting about this. And this last like facet of it that I think is a very fast interesting phenomenon is this thing called the innovators dilemma, which is really the situation we are in now. And this was popularized into book by Clayton Christensen. And essentially is this theory that in any sort of like business or creativity even almost once you become the market leader, once you become the big fish, you can no longer be the innovator. Why is that? Because if you continue to innovate, you will kill yourself. So these big companies have no desire to innovate. They have a desire to maintain the status quo, right? Because as the status quo, they're surely not a company. And a great example of this is Netflix and Blockbuster. It is the eternal exam. It's so good, right? Where Blockbuster is by far the biggest DVD rental company in the country. Like it is just by far, like most amount of stores was everything, right? Like Blockbuster was this giant of the entertainment industry. Netflix comes along and they had started to work on streaming technology. It wasn't very finished yet, but also people knew that was going to be a thing that was going to come eventually, right? Like YouTube had already existed. So at this time, Netflix was still doing like the, you know, mailing DVDs. And Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy a Netflix. I think they had the opportunity to buy it for like $50 million, which is like nothing for a business of that size. Literally nothing, especially when you consider now Netflix is like multiple billion. But Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix. Why? Because the number one profit generator of Blockbuster was late fees on DVDs, right? They love renting DVDs because people, they would make a little bit of money, but if you forgot a day for two days or three days, they were making just raw profit from that, right? Like every day you miss their zero cost to all profit, right? So they were like, we don't want this nailing structure without late fees. We don't want this streaming structure where there is no late fees. So Netflix was stupid, stupid company. Why would we buy that? Right? They did not want to innovate. Why? They were making a lot of money with the status quo. So what happens? Somebody else innovates until they become the market leader and kill the other guy, right? That is the innovator's dilemma. Blockbuster in that situation could not be the innovator because to be the innovator would be to destroy your own profit. And you cannot destroy your own profit when you are a public corporation, right? You have to adhere to the shareholders. And if you were to generate less money than you were the year before, as the CEO, you will get fired, right? So like that is where this problems with capitalistic structures come from. And people have this idea that, you know, it capitalism always breeds innovation. And that is not necessarily true, right? Like the blockbuster and Netflix example is a great version of that. Like they were lucky that like another company was able to figure it out. And Netflix was able to figure it out on their own. But like the cost of that was all the people had money and blockbuster stock losing their money, all the people who worked at blockbuster losing their jobs. Like it was not even a perfectly great outcome, you know, if it was just what happened because they were too ignorant to change. And this is why fun fact, like Steve Jobs truly is the greatest CEO of all time. And like a one and a million human being because one of the most fascinating things he did was when they were inventing the iPhone, they had Apple had this idea to call out a phone and they had been working on it. And I think they had spent around over a multiple years, like about $500 million worth of research and development to build this phone to turn what was the Mac into a phone to try and create, you know, a smartphone, just improving phones, right? Like they had done a lot of research and a lot of testing hire all these people blah, blah, blah. So they had made a phone, a prototype for a phone. And Steve Jobs, um, then throughout this process, uh, discovers some other technology that a few other people have been working on. I believe it was said that like other people at IBM had been working on this technology, which was the idea of a touch scrape, right? Like then at the time, the idea that like you could just press things, blah, blah, that that was a concept. And um, the second he found that out, he completely killed the entire project and the entire 500 million dollars of what the iPhone was before because he was like this technology is going to revolutionize the world. The second that becomes an option, nobody is ever going to want to buy a phone with keys on it or anything on it ever again. And we need to be the first people to have a touch phone. That was like that. It just like completely killed the initiative. And in doing so, we got the iPhone that we know today. And the iPhone is now the most profitable product on earth. And Apple is, I think a one point was, I think Nvidia has now the biggest company on earth. And their biggest product was the iPhone. Um, no other CEO will ever do that. And like nothing I'm trying to like praise a whole bunch of CEOs and whatnot. But like that was one of those moments where like when I had read about that for the first time, it really did make me realize like Steve Jobs is like a once in a lifetime type person. Um, where like I genuinely believe that he was so enamored and driven by this idea of improving technology in a way where I don't think both CEOs are, I think they're more invested in like improving stock prices and improving their net worth. And you know what I mean? Like a lot of other things. Uh, but like that Steve Jobs, someone is it is like one of the only moments in literally recorded history where the innovators to let me to not hold true. Um, and it's not that the thing didn't die, it's that he was the only one smart enough to kill it himself is a really fascinating thing. And most of the people would never dare to do that because of the risk, because how do you go to your shareholders until then? Yeah, we spent $500 million and R&D. It's gone. Like we basically are all we're going to do something else now. But people would have a problem with that. And that's again, where this recession of originality comes from, right? Like the goal is is to do something proven maximizing. The goal is to do something safe. The goal is to do something that you know will work. The goal is to do something that you know will bring in more money than it costs. It has to be the least risk involved thing. And that's why we have a little in stitch remake. You know, like we're rethinking all the Disney movies and stuff. Because they know that they're going to work. They know that there's an audience for it and they can put stitching Disney world and make some merch and sell some theater malls and blah, blah, blah, right? Like they know how to do it. They know it will work. And that is where this recession of originality stems from. It is this weird phenomenon of the internet and groupthink and cultural flattening. It is the way that a profit maximizing works in the way that people want to design things cheaply and boringly and not offensively instead of things that are unique and individualistic and exciting. And how that has created this beige gray phenomenon of a world that we live in where they are trying to sell you and dress you dress up these, you know, minimalism as an aesthetic choice. But in actuality, it's just cheap. You know, a concrete floor is cheaper than a hardwood floor. Plaster walls are cheaper than wooden wall like brick walls. You know, all of these things like we have been sold this lie that the future is going to look this way. And the future is a gray boxy Tesla truck. But like does that really look better than like a 1960s Mustang? You tell me what I mean. Which one of those things are better? Like would you rather have? And that is the fascinating thing about this recession of originality of how this idea of tried to constantly improve and grow profits, grow the thing. We have to be risk a burst. We have to make 21 superman rupees, has killed creativity and originality. I think that's my thoughts on that. Also, I'm so sorry to superman. I don't I'm very excited to see the movie. I know hate about superman. It's just like that reason example in my mind, so I've been seen in everywhere. So thank you all for listening. Don't re-subscribe to the channel. I know this is a bit of a ranty episode where I'm just talking about things pissing me off, but that's obviously off this week. Okay. I love y'all. Don't forget to subscribe, follow us on Spotify, follow us on YouTube music, Apple pods, you know the drill. And I'll see y'all next week. Bye.