This is exactly why Snakes on a Plane didn’t do well in the theatres. We had been overexposed to the snakes meme before the actual event. The movie added exactly zero to our appreciation.

Finally, consider two trends: Broadband use going up, and DVD sales going down (1% in the US this year). While it’s too early to call correlation as causation, I would suggest the expanding market plus increased exposure limits the appeal of physical, DRM-ensconced media. In a few years, a lot more people will be consuming media the way folks in NYC/SF do.

Read the post on reelpopblog.com for more. Thanks for your comments and thoughts, they’re very helpful.

“Media that can’t be manipulated is almost useless” is a great soundbyte, but it isn’t really practical. When you want to watch a full-length movie, are you going to wach all 22 parts illegaly uploaded to YouTube? Re-read all your blog posts and people’s comments, hoping you can recall everything that happened?

The buzz leading up to a film is special, and the discussion around a film is good, too. But that’s stuff happening BECAUSE of the movie. So if you enjoyed the buzz more than the movie, fine. Just don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, saying “thanks for the ride, hope to never see you again!”

Another thing about buzz and online communities… For the first season of “Lost”, it worked to the show’s advantage. This was the freshman season, everything was new, fresh and invegerating. The show was still setting the stage for everything to develop in later seasons and fans went nuts trying to get answers to everything. But then, the show started to focus on answering just one set of mysteries per season. (The Hatch for season 2, the Others for season 3…) And the same fans who were obsessed when the show was new and fresh suddenly became hungry and upset, in part because the show lost a bit of it’s original vest. (Although you probably could argue pretty well that it’s just a natural progression of storylines.)

Just because one movie worked great spliced up all over the “internets” doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily translate well to ALL genres of entertainment. And you also have to be careful, because the same fans who loved you for creating a certian kind of content can just as easily turn on you, even if you’re staying on the same track.

I think it would be a bit premature to think that Bryant represents the zeitgeist. “Media that can’t be manipulated is almost useless” packs a punch, but it assumes a great deal.

It assumes that all media output should be hackable in the way that Borat is. While one-liners and quick outtakes are fun to play with, that doesn’t mean that Flags of Our Fathers or Chocolat or A Fish Called Wanda are inferior cultural products because they aren’t so amenable to IM/Digg/YouTube hackability.

For people who swim in that sea, hackable cultural artifacts do provide a much better experience. But outside the LA/Silicon Valley/NYC hall of mirrors, I doubt most people would even know what you were talking about if you asked them how frequently they hack Hollywood movies.

My guess is that most people see TV and movies as a wonderful way to escape their day to day lives. To these folks, the passivity of the medium is an advantage. To those who enjoy hacking media, the fun is in the manipulation. But I’d be surprised if such folks ever became the majority.

Of course, I’ve been wildly wrong about things like this in the past. Time will tell.

Hello time traveler!!! Can you please email me the results of the most recent powerball drawings?

The DVD comes out March 6th.