Pandemic Changes

In March 2021, I got $500 from the bank.

I still have $300.

And I'm kind of uptight, because it's all in C-notes, which are traditionally hard to break. But I never need to, because I can pay with my credit card or Apple Pay EVERYWHERE!

I predicted back in 2014 that Apple Pay was the hit, not Taylor Swift's "1989."

"Is Apple Pay Bigger Than 1989?": https://bit.ly/3Aa7Eit

When was the last time you heard "Shake It Off," never mind another cut from "1989"?

First and foremost, modern music does not last. It's made for the moment. And if you don't have a moment, it's like it never existed. Whereas tech, money...

"Wait, When Did Everyone Start Using Apple Pay? - It took longer than expected for the iPhone to become a wallet. But the patience of Apple is slowly paying off.": https://on.wsj.com/3PEkRpt

You see Apple Pay was new and different, like a classic rock band. Starting slowly and then eventually not only triumphing, but becoming dominant and lasting. The faster the ascension, the quicker the descension, and vice versa.

Paying with your phone was new in the U.S. Apple fanatics and early adopters instantly used Apple Pay, and now the numbers have increased dramatically.

But the real story here is cash is dead. The pandemic killed it. Nobody in real life wanted to touch your hands or your money, and you need a credit card to buy online and...

There has been a low level backlash to the elimination of cash. Saying that the underclass doesn't have access to cards. But the solution here is to get them cheap cards, not to try and keep cash alive. Why is it governments always want us to slow down for the minority, oftentimes small, instead of jumping into the future and ultimately satisfying everyone. Yes, even homeless people have phones. This is how tech triumphed, by pushing the envelope. Steve Jobs abandoned the old to implement the new. I still cannot see why Apple included two USB-A ports in their new Mac Studio. They were excised on previous product, and the Mac Studio is for pros, who have all the new stuff, and now they're accounting for the laggards? This sounds like Microsoft as opposed to Apple.

But... The pandemic killed cash. Not completely, please don't nitpick. The world has turned into gotcha, avoiding the bigger truths in evidence.

And it's not only the death of cash...

The media is inundated with stories of a return to normal, to what once was, before the pandemic, when in many cases this is untrue. Sure, people might have given up masks, but they're still not going back to the movies.

Have you checked the grosses? Only a few pics hit, superheroes and franchises like "Top Gun." Everything else fails. And box office still hasn't returned to the pre-pandemic levels. Evidenced by Regal Cinema having to declare bankruptcy:

"Regal Owner Cineworld Nears Bankruptcy as Theater Comeback Lags - Theater admissions aren't recovering fast enough for the world's second-largest cinema chain to keep up on its debts": https://on.wsj.com/3pxwx2D

Movie theatres will continue to exist, but going to the movies is a bad proposition time-wise and financially. The pandemic lockdown illustrated how much time everybody was wasting, commuting especially. Time is precious, they're not making more of it, and there's so much to do now. So to drive and park and overpay to see a movie with others who keep talking, even on their phones... You're paying the same amount, if not less, for a month of Netflix. And you can stop a flick whenever you want. And if what you're watching sucks, you can just can it, you don't feel ripped-off like you do when you see a bad movie.

As for Netflix and streaming...

For four months now we've been subjected to the story that streaming is in crisis, it's fallen off a cliff, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, in America there is saturation. But there are still opportunities in the rest of the world. And there's a ton of dollars waiting to be hoovered up by eliminating password sharing. Who knows why they don't. Are the people sharing passwords gonna bitch and cancel their subscriptions? No, they're not subscribed to begin with!

But the truth is streaming has already won:

"Streaming Tops Cable-TV Viewing for the First Time - Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and other platforms set records for share of U.S. viewing time in July": https://on.wsj.com/3pFfyva

"Streaming services captured 34.8% of total U.S. TV viewing time during the month, while cable TV attracted 34.4%, the ratings company (Nielsen) said in a release published Thursday. People spent 23% more time streaming content than a year earlier and 9% less time watching cable"

A return to normal? Just the opposite!

Just like credit/plastic killed cash, streaming is killing cable. It's never going in the other direction, to think otherwise is to expect CDs to burgeon.

You see we live in an on demand culture. We want to watch what we want to when we want to and if you're not offering your wares in that fashion they must be based on evanescence, like concerts or sports.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery is moving backward. It canceled its European development and production, killed nearly completed content and licensed existing content to third parties, which is how Netflix ate the traditional companies' lunch in the first place! Disney+ and HBO Max were late to begin with. And although Disney+ has a lot of customers, the truth is most people still pay for HBO through their cable company, they have not moved over to the app. And the funny thing is most of these people maintain a Netflix account!

Yes, you can be too early, just like you can be too late. But is now the time to bet on the cable version of HBO? Is now the time to cut down on content for HBO Max? Is now the time to pull movies from streaming and put them in theatres? Jason Kilar disrupted the movie exhibition paradigm and got Hollywood on his page, and now David Zaslav is undoing all this progress so he'll end up fighting this battle again down the line?

As for Zaslav... We've seen this movie before, with Jonathan Dolgen at Paramount. So beholden to the bottom line, Dolgen made money and decimated the studio in the process. Dolgen wanted sure shots with low budgets, genre pics. The talent went elsewhere and then so did the customers, to the point the paramount Paramount became a second tier studio that has yet to be revived, years after Dolgen's reign.

Yes, fiscal discipline is important, but Amazon taught us you don't go for profits too soon. Meanwhile, out of touch Wall Street is enthralled by Zaslav. Zaslav says fewer productions with higher quality is the way out. That worked for HBO on cable, but not in streaming, where you have to provide a plethora of product or the public stops subscribing.

But give HBO Max credit for offering a yearly subscription. All the streaming outlets should do this, to kill those who sign up for a month and then go. The solution is not to dribble out product, isn't the music business an object lesson here? If you don't give the people what they want, they're going to rebel, and it's going to hurt you, and it's just a matter of when.

But the bottom line is despite Americans romping around the country sans masks, we have not returned to the pre-pandemic baseline, it is not the same country it used to be. As for those talking about a return to in-person shopping... Yes, there is a bit of a bounce-back, but in truth shopping is a huge waste of time, and once again time is of the essence.

Why is everybody with traction convinced we are reverting to a past standard. This never works in tech, why should it work in entertainment?

And it doesn't.

But those executing the change, the cause of it, do not have an old school media mouthpiece. Oh, they do have a mouthpiece online, most definitely on TikTok, but all established business is promoting the China spying angle to kill it, and they still don't understand it. And now the youth are using TikTok for shopping:

"TikTok is starting to disrupt search. When it comes to shopping online, the journey almost always begins via search at either Amazon or Google, with Amazon holding a safe lead. Just 5% of U.S. adults start their product searches on TikTok. But the story changes dramatically among teens and older Gen Zs, 18% of whom start their shopping explorations on TikTok – a mere six percentage points less than Google. This is a trend to keep an eye on."

"TikTok Rising as a Go-To Search Engine Among Young Shoppers": https://bit.ly/3wlrINM

But today's "New York Times" printed a piece lamenting the death of landlines. Sure, landlines had some advantages, like being able to talk to your kid's friends, if only for an instant, but the advantages of mobile so far exceed those of landlines...

But the old media, the "Times" especially, is laden with stories lamenting a past we're never returning to. Because the writers are old.

And speaking of writers, you still get people saying they prefer ink and paper to the computer. Well, it takes a minute to adjust to a computer, bur writing and editing on a computer compared to paper is like writing on paper as opposed to chiseling the words in a rock.

I mean come on, not only is the future coming, in many cases it's here!

But too many have an investment in the past and believe that if they just keep telling people falsehoods, they can hold back progress. This is the right's paradigm. Republicans still haven't put forth a coherent health care plan to replace Obamacare. And they don't legislate, they just put a monkey wrench in the works. As for Fox News... Its whole game is making you fearful of the present, never mind the future, to agitate you to hold on to the past, a losing game from time immemorial. We've got interracial marriage, we've got gay marriage, take away rights and see what happens, turns out the silent majority wants them and won't give them up without a fight, which is happening right now with abortion.

"Dobbs abortion ruling leads more women to register to vote": https://wapo.st/3dJ9xen

Want to argue about spending, fiscal issues? This is what Republicans used to do. As for Democrats, it's a small minority who are agitating for woke ideology that most Democrats don't agree with, but that's become the story.

And this is not really about politics, except to say the only way to keep a country in the past is via authoritarianism. Which is why the right lauds Orban, but now the ruler of Hungary has a huge financial problem:

"Hungary's Orban, a Scourge of Liberals, Faces a New Foe: Economics - The Hungarian leader is being confronted with soaring inflation and a depreciating currency linked to unsustainable spending by his government.": https://nyti.ms/3AfVWTo

You need a video, not a static image. Which is why TikTok is killing Instagram. Instagram is late to the party with Reels and will never catch up. Meanwhile, rulers of the past, like the Kardashians, want no change, they're no different from the established media and corporations wanting to hold back the future, spreading disinformation to try and ensure this. IT CAN'T BE DONE!

So one can argue that we've got a return to normal re the pandemic.

But it's not the old normal, but a completely new one, which keeps evolving. Beware of those who try to convince you to live in the past. It might be good for them, but it's usually not good for you, and by not disrupting themselves, by sticking to the past, media and corporations sign their death warrant, or have them playing catch-up in the future, and usually losing.

To paraphrase George Harrison... Think for yourself 'cause they won't be there for you.


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