In last week's episode, we talked
about the ethics of watching or not watching leaked media.
let's see what you had to say.
Purpledesperado on the subreddit talks
about the relationship between leaks and video games,
or video game content, which is something that I didn't mention
at all in last week's video.
And especially in relationship to Super Smash Brothers,
this makes me wonder about the severity of leaks
or the perceived severity of leaks for different audiences
of different types of media.
Is there something about video game leaks
that make them more egregious or more
severe because of either the cost associated with buying
a game or the amount of time video game players
spend with their games, that having these things leaked
seems like a greater transgression in some way?
And I don't know.
I'm sort of putting this thought together as I'm saying it.
I'd be interested to know what you think.
Brent Z and a bunch of other people
pointed out that we might have leaks
to thank for the creation of certain pieces of media
that we're very excited about, specifically,
in this case, the Dead Pool movie.
And I want to maybe believe that this is true--
that a major Hollywood studio would be totally on board
with making a movie that they were not otherwise going
to make after some test footage got leaked and everybody got
really excited.
And they were like, oh, people are excited about this.
There's a market for it.
So yeah, OK, definitely.
Let's actually make it.
But I really don't buy it.
Maybe I am just-- maybe my cold robot heart is just not
feeling it.
But I don't know.
I'm skeptical.
Friend of the show, ProfessorPuppet,
likens watching leaked media to sort
of peeking into your Christmas presents
before Christmas morning.
And I kind of feel this.
And I also really feel this description
of looking at low quality leaks of things,
like photos from the Star Wars set
and getting a little bit of excitement
or a small amount of insight and joy from this thing,
but then feeling like you're borrowing happiness
from later-- that if you were to not experience those things,
you would have saved that excitement, just
a little bit of it, for the full, high quality release,
where you can then be just overjoyed and overexcited
in this really effusive way.
So yeah.
I feel you.
I feel you, ProfessorPuppet.
Firewoodsparkler talks about interesting and weird
functional distinction between leaks and spoilers.
And this is a relationship that we sort of danced around
in last week's video, but didn't really make explicit.
Specifically, they talk about how they will avoid leaks
like the plague but are a total sucker for spoilers.
And I wonder what the relationship is here--
that when something gets leaked, it is more of an event.
And I wonder whether or not eventizing
of it, the fact that it's made a big deal
has something to do with our individual predilections
to consume leaks or not consume leaks.
Whereas spoilers, it's kind of just a low level understanding
between people in the community that spoilers are OK,
spoilers are not OK.
You ask people before or you don't.
Yeah, I would be curious to know what people think
about the relationship between leaks and spoilers,
or leaks as spoilers.
MrOpelula and a ton of other people
suggest that leaks really are nothing more than a PR stunt--
that studios and creators are behind the whole thing just
to make sure that the stuff that they're making
gets on the news in the eyes of consumers.
And I am willing to accept that a small percentage of them are.
But I also think, having recently
worked with some musicians who are going
to be releasing records in the next couple years,
seeing the lengths that a lot of them go to to destroy CDs
or digital files or recordings of what happens in the studio,
I would hazard a guess that is not
the marketing plan of most creators
or most producers or most distribution companies
to leak their things on purpose.
And also, once everything is just always being leaked,
that's just releasing things, right?
I think.
[INAUDIBLE], while recording next week's episode,
my Fitbit actually told me that I had hit my step goal
and my feet had not moved at all.
So I don't know exactly how many, but definitely some.
So Toshi Nakamoto brings up the fact
that there are a lot of male memes on Idea Channel,
meaning that the assets that we use depict a lot men
and gets actually given a hard time for pointing this out.
And I just want to emphasize that this
is a thing that me and the rest of the Idea Channel staff
try to be really cognizant of, try to make sure that there is
at least some diversity in the assets
that we show on Idea Channel, because it is important to us.
And we run into a lot of problems
with this, not the least of them being
the fact that for me, white dudes codes as normal,
and also the fact that as it turns out, the sources that we
find most of our animated GIFs, there
is a relative lack of diversity of women and people
of color on places like Giphy and in the first couple
pages of the Google Image search for animated GIFs.
So that's no excuse.
It should just mean that we spend more time trying
to find more diverse assets.
But I just wanted to respond to this,
because this is a thing that we do think about.
We're not great at it, but we do consider it.
So thank you for pointing it out.
I think it was somewhere around 2,000 people--
folks on the subreddit seemed to get it almost immediately.
I think the five people who wrote
comments were very confused, as they should have been.
We just wanted to experiment a little on y'all, I guess.
All throughout the comments on last week's video,
there were great takes on the economic aspects of watching
or not watching leaked media.
For instance, fuzzmonkey talks about how
if you are watching the media, then you
are stealing, because you are not giving money
to the people who are making the things that you are invested
in.
You're taking a different route, and that that
doesn't incentivize them to create more.
Whereas Aldrich talks about how people who watch leaks
are maybe the types of people who
are more likely to spend money on these things
that they're excited about anyway--
that if you're watching a leak, you're probably excited and so
you're probably going to invest as soon as you can.
Whereas Shawn Penny talks about how
you can see some sort of justification
for watching or consuming leaked media
based upon an amount of money that you've already spent.
And the example that they use is Game of Thrones--
that if you have paid for HBO, have you somehow
paid already for the experience of an entire season of Game
of Thrones?
That feels like a stretch to me.
But to see it explained, I'm like, but maybe I have.
But maybe I have.
This does make me want for some research
or something about the economic effects of leaks
and whether or not if someone watches a leak,
are they more likely to spend money later?
I understand feeling that way.
But I'd be curious to know if it's true.
Devina Harlow and a ton of other people
talk about how if you live in certain parts of the world--
seems like Australia is one of those parts like whoa--
you kind of have no choice but to watch things that
have been leaked in some way.
And this is where we get to a fine line between leak
and piracy-- that if there is a TV show that
is going to be released in Australia six months after it
is released in the United States,
someone in the United States records it and uploads it
to the internet where someone in Australia and download
it, is that a leak or is that piracy?
Does it matter?
Either way, I feel you.
That sounds like it is terrible.
I agree.
Round of applause for Ben.
Really an under appreciated member of the Idea Channel
team.
That's not true.
We constantly tell him that he's a genius.
Ben, you're a genius.
Tessa Mederhoff and Samantha Ramirez both write great
comments about the relationship this idea has to Broadway
theater-- that there are economic reasons that a lot
of people cannot go and see corporate Broadway theater,
because it's so expensive.
And so there's this question of whether or not
watching video, watching leaks or bootlegs,
is in some way forgivable because you
want to be up to date with your industry.
And yeah, this is a point of view about this
that I have never considered.
So check out these comments.
Link to these ones and all the others in the dooblidoo.
Darth Toad, this list exists on my phone, on my Trello.
It's not short.
It's not a short-- there, I got to the end.
It's not a short list.
Some day, they will be made.
Lois, it is mostly lots of hand waving and shouting
about weird music while drinking coffee in and around Brooklyn.
It's OK.
It's just all right.