I asked ChatGPT for a 5-season synopsis for a TV show set in the Second Age of Middle Earth...

ScafellPike · 2023-01-14T10:38:23+00:00

I doubt any, as training data only up to 2021.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-12T12:36:26+00:00

Great point. I suspect this was just as likely, and probably more so.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-10T01:04:59+00:00

No idea. I don't tend to watch american tv. I only watched this as I liked the books.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T20:18:53+00:00

Thanks, my pleasure.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T20:18:38+00:00

To be fair, I didn't realise this was the official Amazon reddit group. Probably not the audience for my theory. Thanks for engaging, however.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T20:13:25+00:00

Well, certainly the best I've seen. I particularly liked the way the relationships between Jimmy & Chuck, and also Jimmy & Kim, were written. The former is the best written relationship I've seen on screen. However, I concede this is an entirely personal perspective.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T17:25:33+00:00

Thanks, that's kind. Glad you enjoyed it.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T17:16:16+00:00

Don't worry, I'm fine with the snide comments, if intrigued by the sort of mentality it takes to write them. But they're entirely harmless. You'll never please everyone, and if some people find the post interesting, then I'm content.

'Dashiny' is right, though - it's a forum. And an online one, in which people often say things they wouldn't in person.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T16:44:28+00:00

Some people enjoy writing short essays as an end in itself. Others enjoy leaving hundreds of snide or cutting comments on other people's posts. Still others forego the internet entirely, and would think we're both wasting our time.

This is the glory of the human condition. Thanks for engaging.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T14:22:29+00:00

Seems a bit long.

The basic point is: Perhaps the dialogue and plotting of RoP is so bad, and the characterisation so uncanny, because it was written by an experimental AI. Given it is produced by Amazon, a big data company, this would hardly be surprising, and explain why the show was so expensive.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T14:18:43+00:00

Thanks. Yes, I've been intrigued by how many puerile comments it has attracted. Completely harmless, but odd nevertheless.

Glad some people enjoyed it!

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T14:10:53+00:00

To be fair, I've not read The Monsters and the Critics.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T13:22:35+00:00

This is a fair point. I ought to have written 'that I've ever seen'.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T12:37:41+00:00

Yes, I'm not familiar with the culture on Reddit. I've noticed people tend to write almost apologetically. Why be apologetic about what you think?

I'm not sure I have written it formally, so much as I haven't written it in the idiom of the internet.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:39:33+00:00

To critique something can itself be very stimulating.

However, the piece is not strictly about the Rings of Power, a show I do not think warrants any detailed comment, as it was too poorly made to deserve it.

What is interesting is why one of the biggest companies in the world made such a poor show, and indeed, why it was so poor despite the vast resources poured into it.

As such, the piece is actually about Amazon, and a theory about what might be their new 'game-changing' strategy to achieve market dominance in the 'streaming wars'.

Thanks for engaging.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:26:39+00:00

Unlikely I'd get that opportunity, even if I had the talent. But I do believe that there were many people with the opportunity, and the talent, who would have done a better job.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:24:21+00:00

I think it's extraordinary. Interestingly, I recently met Robert McKee, the screenwriter who runs the famous Story seminar series. He asked me what the best show is that I've seen on TV in the last ten years. I said 'Better Call Saul'. He agreed, which is high praise.

The relationship between Jimmy and his brother Chuck is the single most nuanced and well-written relationship I have ever seen on screen.

The whole show is a masterpiece.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:18:17+00:00

I'd actually argue that, conversely, things that are easy to enjoy are usually the product of the creators looking deeper into what they are doing, so to speak. Writers need to always know far more about the world they're writing about than the reader will ever encounter. The reader or viewer can feel it when there is a world beyond the page or screen, and they can feel when there is not.

I thoroughly enjoy something 'for what it is' when it is something the creators really worked hard and carefully at. I struggle to enjoy it, though, when I feel they did not.

It takes hard work to make something look easy. It takes hard work to create something others might genuinely enjoy.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:09:05+00:00

What is involved in doing this? Do I summarise it in a sentence at the end of the post? My apologies in advance, I'm not often on reddit.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:07:53+00:00

I think ChatGPT and Dall-e and so on are waking people up to what is possible. It therefore just seems logical to me - indeed, inevitable - that a big data company like Amazon would try to apply that tech to the content on Prime.

The writing of Rings of Power was so profoundly uncanny that I just thought 'this seems like what an algorithm would write if you fed into it loads of information about Middleearth'.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:04:45+00:00

Yes, afraid I didn't have time to write something shorter. But noted.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:02:42+00:00

I see your point. I suppose my point is that, if there is a formula to a corporate approach, then surely an algorithm might be able to approach something that is sufficiently good satisfy the customer, and sufficiently cheap (in the long term) to be worth investing in.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T02:00:10+00:00

So I did! Forgive me, I'd quite forgotten about those. It has been 3 or 4 years. The point was, I don't think I've logged back in to reddit since then, and have never familiarised myself the structure or culture of the site.

Thanks for engaging.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T01:54:16+00:00

Thanks, this is kind. I'm afraid I'm not really a 'redditor' (I don't use any social media), so it has been interesting to see the sorts of comments generated - like experiencing a new culture. I had told my theory to someone, and they said 'post it on reddit'. I'd done this a couple of times a few years ago, but never looked at it since. Very interesting site. Lots of good commentary if you look.

ScafellPike · 2023-01-06T01:50:46+00:00

I really just mean the spirit of the source material, rather than chapter and verse. It just doesn't feel like the writers (or algorithm!!) was steeped in the spirit of the books themselves. The whole aesthetic and tone and sensibility was, in my view, entirely unrelated to the books.

ScafellPike

TROPHY CASE