The News Letter: Issue #003
LET'S GET PHYSICAL.
A funny thing happened last week. Not so much funny "ha-ha" as funny "uh-oh."
On Monday, news broke that a group of disgruntled customers had filed a federal class action lawsuit against Amazon after realizing that "buying" a movie or TV show on Prime Video is essentially just a fancy rental, since the company can (and does) spontaneously scrub the purchased content from the platform without warning.
"The complaint explains that unlike a physical DVD, which a customer can keep and watch whenever they like, content sold on Amazon Prime Video may disappear from a user’s digital library at any time, if, for example, Amazon replaces the work with a different version or loses the rights to it."
Indeed, as The Hollywood Reporter notes in its write-up on the lawsuit, "the way in which digital transactions are structured, the lack of transparency around them and the streaming landscape is partly why physical media is kind-of-sort-of cool again."
With all due respect to THR, physical media was never not cool. Conversely, the flagrantly spurious concept of digital content "ownership" eagerly peddled by gluttonous streaming services, film studios, and music labels as an ostensible replacement for physical media was always a scam -- a realization that is happily (if belatedly) dawning on some countries, a few states, a handful of litigious victims and, naturally, the youth (more on that in a moment).
And while Amazon is in court desperately trying to gaslight the judge with some Orwellian chicanery concerning the very definition of the verb "to buy," several of their rivals in the entertainment industry are quietly retreating from their fortress of digital solitude and making soft excursions into terra firma with physical experiences intended to satiate fandom hordes pleading for a tangible piece of their pop culture faves.
Take KPop Demon Hunters, the Sony Pictures Animation-produced (lol) phenomenon that took America's preteens by storm after casually dropping on Netflix sandwiched between the latest Adam Sandler payout and the ghost of yet another genre-defining masterpiece that was unceremoniously canceled after just two seasons. After the film found unprecedented success on streaming, Netflix made the unprecedented decision to release it in hundreds of movie theaters across the country for a limited weekend sing-along event -- and most screenings quickly sold out.
As Variety notes, "the film is all about fandom, and this unprecedented move from the streaming-first media company suggests that Netflix recognized that the film's millions-strong audience were craving the collective experience that only cinemas can provide."
God bless Netflix for "recognizing" that people like hanging out in communal spaces with like-minded people to enjoy things they all like, together. It's almost as if humans are social animals who must form real and lasting bonds with other humans through shared lived experiences in order to survive and thrive!
A24 is another film distributor that recently made a full-throated investment in this curious evolutionary quirk called "leaving the house to do stuff" by buying NYC's iconic Cherry Lane Theater for $10 million with plans to host a variety of live performances and, naturally, film screenings. The New York Times article announcing the indie studio's move made note of Netflix, Disney, and yes, even Amazon discreetly taking over some well-known theaters in recent years to give their productions a premium sheen, gauge real demand, and foster long-term memories. It seems in-person intentionality is a stronger signal of interest and lasting value than passive, distracted, ambient third-screen streaming propped up by "proprietary" metrics. Who knew?! (Not Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who continues to insist we're all happier couch-rotting at home, alone.)
But entertainment companies are certainly not alone in concluding that some things are just better IRL. In fact, real life is having a full-blown moment right now, thanks in large part to young people who weren't even alive when many of the things they're now clamoring for were real.
A Harris Poll highlighted in the Times notes that a full 60% of Gen Z respondents "wished they could return to a time before everyone was 'plugged in,'" which the writer helpfully points out "would involve returning to a time that largely predates their own lives."
The term for this incongruous sensation is apparently "historical nostalgia," and it is rapidly approaching pandemic proportions among society's most digitally native cohort. The reasons for this are at once obvious and fascinating, but too dense to delve into fully in this limited space. Suffice it to say, this is the outcome:
[One social media user, for example, described being inspired to buy "a large photo album and high-quality photo printer" because the user was emotionally moved that previous generations created physical photo albums and shared them with visitors to their homes.]
And the contagion is spreading, with Axios reporting that multiple legacy publishers have either launched or relaunched print editions as demand for print products explodes, prompting at least one publication to double its output. Meanwhile, J.Crew brought back its discontinued catalog; Outline discontinued its e-commerce in favor of a new catalog; and in an effort to connect with very online Gen Z readers, Family Style decided to launch an offline zine. Infection or infection? Why not both.
Physical media, movie theaters, print publications, in-store shopping, and, lest we forget, landlines (!) are all making a roaring comeback through a melange of circumstances culminating in a definitive end result: A thoughtful reexamination and reevaluation of The Cult of Innovation. As Gen Z content creator Chon Digital laments in his hyper-timely magnum opus-caliber ode to video rental stores, "I think we're too quick to abandon something for the sake of convenience and not really think about, 'well, is the convenience really worth it?'"
Hopefully for the folks suing Amazon, it will be. For the rest of us, however, always taking a moment to reflect and reconsider before sacrificing our collective and individual autonomy to the grinning Cheshire Cat of intangible misanthropy will forever be invaluable.
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RIYL: This highly apropos video from another excellent Gen Z creator about the generational threat of AI solutionism →
At The Newsagent's we're committed to bringing back the lost art of human-first curation (i.e., by humans, for humans). The Mixtape is our semi-regular column curating some random good stuff that's made us happy in the hopes that it'll make you happy too.
THE MADE-YOU-LOOK MIX:
Side A: Physical photos.
The kid in the New York Times op-ed about "historical nostalgia" had it just right: There's nothing quite like the intangible delights of flipping through tangible photo albums. The insurmountable imposition of tech limitations forcing one to consider no more than an exact number of photographs to corral and then curating them with museum-grade precision inside a pastel memento mori Trapper Keeper, resulting in an emotionally resonant personal-pan time capsule unmatched in perpetuity throughout the universe by so-called modern "upgrades." You can keep your algorithmically generated "memories," Apple; I'll be over on the floral couch thumbing through pages of awkwardly lit Kodacolor prints I happily arranged myself.
I lost track of the post-hardcore supergroup Rival Schools after their initial break over 20 years ago (I'm young/I'm old!), so it was an unfathomable pleasure to randomly learn that they had reunited in the late aughts and released a late-era pop emo love letter called Pedals that picks up right where the gang left off. The opening track took me all the way back, and if you don't mind, I'm just gonna hang out here for a while.
A Woodstock-raised, avant-guard creator who makes genre-defying music for a living and genre-defying short films for a hobby. He put his hands together for this transcendent genre-defying musical YouTube essay recently featured on Jack Douglass's essential Credit the Creators newsletter (which is your bonus recommendation of the week).
Director Jason Rosette's feature film debut is a neglected, no-budget, Beat Generation-inflected gem described on its Wikipedia page as "the only first-person documentary made during then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's controversial 'Quality of Life' campaign, which sought to limit and control individuals engaged in informal economic activities on the streets of New York City." So while it's ostensibly about colorful people selling colorful books, it's actually about monochromatic people who hate rainbows.
Bootleg: The Smashing Pumpkins Fan Collaborative Bootlist + Internet Archive's Smashing Pumpkins Live Music Archive = RIP your workday.
With nearly half of all websites online in 2013 going dark by 2023, it's only a matter of time before the entire internet of yesteryear is gone. Scary stuff! That's why we've decided to devote an entire section to random cool links from the internet of days past, to prove to future generations that it wasn't always just a bunch of Cocomelon clones and rage-bait fan-edits. Welcome to Ye Olde Internet:
LINKS:
+ Milk.com (And before you ask, it's not for sale.)
+ The Zoomquilt: A collaborative infinitely zooming painting Created in 2004.
+ Watching-Grass-Grow.com: LIVE WEBCAM of Watching Grass Grow since 2005!
+ Mr.doob
+ Windows93.net (Wiki93)