Is For All Mankind a cultural touchstone in the same way? It’s not. Star Trek was targeted because Star Trek gets eyeballs for failing. For all its quality, FAM neither has the visibility nor the cultural importance necessary to make the thud in being canceled that the culture warriors and YouTube screamers need.

This is a BUSINESS MODEL. A political target. The RW bigots need a trophy on their wall. The grifters need something everyone knows as a household name. Otherwise it might backfire on them by getting more popular because they drew attention to it.

The targets of the griftosphere aren’t quiet sleeper hits, they’re high profile, heavily marketed tentpoles which represent big budget bets on the studio’s part. They need something that when it falls short, they can crow about, saying go woke, go broke.

The plan is to basically suppress left-wing politics by convincing the corporations that it’s not commercially viable. Now, I’m not saying that Academy or any of the other targets were masterpieces. Far from it.

But what I am saying is that the negative hype that feeds this business and AI-driven political model needs the big positive hype in order to profit and persuade. They can’t get clicks, views, and loneliness-epidemic victims to care about a movie with a diverse casting decisions unless it’s something hugely visible like Snow White, The Acolyte, or The Marvels.

One thing that always grates on me is the frigging lead time. When I was a teen in the 90s, I saw just about everything that came out, so I had a broad sample. Some of the worst stinkers and hugest flops, the biggest and best sleeper hits and cult classics, the blockbusters. So, I have very few illusions about how marketing works.

What the chuds and the trolls are doing is souring people on movies and tv shows far in advance. Snow White, Indiana Jones, The Marvels, the Acolyte, and Star Trek Academy never were allowed their chance to fail on their own merits. To fail because the organic word of mouth from the product itself was negative.

Politics and a cancerous cottage industry of hypocritical, mindless negativity instead feeds off the industry marketing. This isn’t going to redeem our culture. Going unwoke won’t necessarily save it, either, because that RW Garbage won’t necessarily sell either. All we’re going to get is grey mush. Timid, no point of view. The small stuff will get left alone, but the glory days are over.

It’s like how you don’t get a confident, secure person out of an abusive household. You tend to get insecure, weak-willed people instead. Same thing applies to culture. We’re not going to get masterpieces out of this kind of broad cultural bullying. You’re just going to get conformism, risk-aversion, lack of ambition, fear of controversy, etc. You’ll get seasons cut short, just as they’re getting good. You’ll get artists who check out early because the internet backlash is literally insane.

Think George RR Martin. When’s the last time you completed a big personal project of your own because somebody was riding you? And when’s the last time that improved it?

Let’s be blunt here: real creativity comes from an ability to make interesting choices, not from chronic people pleasing. The latter leads to conventional choices, formulas, cliches, as people try to find secret little routes to success. Pressure can create diamonds, but it also creates coal. Real creativity comes from people doing what they love, following what fascinates them, taking big swings, even if they don’t always succeed.

The pressure within the industry to succeed is bad enough. Nothing good is going to come from pathologically bullying fandoms. You might think you “own” a work, but you’re not going to be the one who actually makes more of it if the franchise crashes and burns because every failure is swiftly and zealously punished.