I want to speak to the manager of storytelling

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@davidgerard I think we have found a good candidate for being replaced by AI. I mean, a stochastic parrot. And not their *job* being replaced by one; I mean their *brain*. (They're already pretty close to that state.)

[raulredondo@mastodon.social]

@davidgerard watching Netflix like a porn movie

[dcoderlt@ohai.social]

@davidgerard
Big Browser doesn’t want you to know this but browser extensions to make websites better are free you can just install and customize them I have 465 extensions at home

[muetdhiver@piaille.fr]

@davidgerard Those people don't want to experience art, they want to consume content.

[rhodium103@mastodon.social]

@davidgerard
But we can all agree that we should have this option for cutting Strictly Come Dancing down to just the dancing and judges reading out the scores, right?

[henryk@chaos.social]

@davidgerard TBF, there's a lot of fiction which triggers an "I see what you're *trying* to accomplish here, but I'm just not interested" in me (and, trying is quite distinct from accomplishing). So, yeah, I fast-forwarded all scenes in Top Gun: Maverick with that woman who was not connected to the story in any way whatsoever.

[jwz@mastodon.social]

@cstross @davidgerard Now I want to get a pet parrot just to name it Stochastic.

[rhodium103@mastodon.social]

@davidgerard
But in all seriousness, while I don't know how to fix it, we really do need to get back to art and entertainment being something that a creator puts out into the world, and not a form of customised gratification. We should have shut this shit down when people started petitioning to get the ending of Mass Effect 3 changed to nip it in the bud before it got to this point where it's just normalised.

[jwz@mastodon.social]

@cstross @davidgerard I'd train it to say *SQUOCK* I'm a Chinese Box and that's racist! *SQUOCK*

[peter_sc@chaos.social]

@davidgerard I would go further: Watching a story unfold is very limiting. What if you want to see something from a different angle? How about we make one character selectable and you get to control them with a kind of controlling device? And what if every character you see has a icon above their head that tells you what they are all about? And what if there's a sort of mechanism that records your individual progress in the narrative? You could call it something catchy like Interact Vid!

[lucky@mastodon.nz]

@davidgerard our finest minds are truly on LinkedIn

[rich@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@davidgerard I often skip whole scenes. I watched the whole of the Walking Dead ouvre in 30 mins flat just by skipping those pesky zombie scenes

[lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@davidgerard Analysis Paralysis As A Service

[rich@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@nickzoic @davidgerard it was weirder for me, as I always skip consonants in posts to get more done

[rycochet@furs.social]

@davidgerard Why do I kind of suspect anyone who would want such a feature doesn't want it due to how the character is written, or for storytelling reasons but has other motives for wanting to see shows made in a way certain characters can easily be white... Washed out?

[emilianosandri@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@davidgerard Her take on films and series is chilling and screams "TikTok Brain" but she's right about the web (although she could have worded it much better).

Originally, one of the ideas behind the web was that every user could customize his own viewing experience trough browser settings and custom CSS overrides. As websites become more complex this idea faded in the background but its still alive as proven by extensions such as YouTube unhook which allow you to customize YouTube's UI removing or replacing its annoying or distracting parts.

[emilianosandri@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@rich @davidgerard
“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”
― Woody Allen

[heavyimage@mastodon.social]

@davidgerard ah yes I remember the lectures in film school on filler characters; “just put ‘em in there to waste time and space. We just do it out of tradition: there’s no real reason for them!”

[toerror@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@davidgerard I keep being reminded of the story "The Diamond Age" where the poors get customised news feeds while the upper class in some parts of society get uniform news print.