Writers Guild Strike 2023

The writers definitely have good arguments, for example the way you learn to be a good writer is working in a writers room with a bunch of senior writers and you contribute but mostly soak up what everyone else says. You also advance from journeyman to middle-tier to showrunner in a long standing writing room like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc where the writers work on stuff for months and months and they would rotate going to the sets to do last second rewrites etc but getting industry experience.

Studios don't allow that anymore though, they put together fast rooms that last maybe 3-4 weeks, bang out a bunch of scripts, and then the showrunner is the only one left with all the writers let go except for one maybe who just stays in an office on call to change stuff. There is no career advancement anymore, you just jump from short contract gig to gig similar to every gig economy job nowadays.

I don't really give a fuck, being a writer is not a "good job" its just another aspect of being an entertaining clown and who gives a fuck what clowns say or think. Plus instead of thinking about their own careers the last decade they have turned most TV shows into garbage thanks to diversity hires who are absolute shit at doing anything other than posting on twitter. Still, if they have the power to strike and demand better pay and work environments -- why not, thats capitalism, fuck over the company for more money if you can.

It may take a decade or two but its obvious a mix of AI and self-insertion will allow Holodeck type self creation of all content, I for one can't wait to author classics like "TNG Dreams Vol 7: Ensign Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher Nude Hot Yoga"

spronk said:

The writers definitely have good arguments, for example the way you learn to be a good writer is working in a writers room with a bunch of senior writers and you contribute but mostly soak up what everyone else says. You also advance from journeyman to middle-tier to showrunner in a long standing writing room like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc where the writers work on stuff for months and months and they would rotate going to the sets to do last second rewrites etc but getting industry experience.

Studios don't allow that anymore though, they put together fast rooms that last maybe 3-4 weeks, bang out a bunch of scripts, and then the showrunner is the only one left with all the writers let go except for one maybe who just stays in an office on call to change stuff. There is no career advancement anymore, you just jump from short contract gig to gig similar to every gig economy job nowadays.

I don't really give a fuck, being a writer is not a "good job" its just another aspect of being an entertaining clown and who gives a fuck what clowns say or think. Plus instead of thinking about their own careers the last decade they have turned most TV shows into garbage thanks to diversity hires who are absolute shit at doing anything other than posting on twitter. Still, if they have the power to strike and demand better pay and work environments -- why not, thats capitalism, fuck over the company for more money if you can.

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Yeah. It used to be pretty rare that someone was handed the reigns to a show with little to no experience writing. Now, it is the norm. Who you know has replaced what you know. All the good shows had writers that worked for years in the trenches before moving up...and that's what made them good. Shitty writers never matriculated to better positions or productions. Those days are long gone with few exceptions.

Studios want fast and cheap. Why serve up steak if people will happily eat shit?

People who think writing good material is easy are either exceptionally gifted writers who never have creative block or can’t write for shit and are talking out of their ass.

Good writing and dialogue will instantly raise the enjoyment from a work.

Wombat said:

Just a reminder that most of the worst written movies of our lives (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Transformers 2) were due to the last writer's strike, as the strike also covered rewrites when they ran into problems onset.

Technically, the actors can adlib/ write their own dialogue, so your late night hosts could still do their own bits last time around, but they have more union partners not crossing strike lines this time around.

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Those movies, while they suck, was better than the huge influx of reality TV.

Netflix gonna be 99% Bollywood/Korean shit now.

there is an upside

Gravel said:

Weird how none of this was addressed during the last strike.

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Seems to mostly be streaming related, which was nothing in 2008 like it is today.

House of Cards is the first big streaming only content that I can think of, and that didn't come up out until 2013

Mist said:

Also the idea that AI will be able to write anything other than completely bland, borderline woke drivel is a joke.

Writing is what makes a show, period. GoT is proof of that. The acting, costume, effects, sets, everything got better and better over the course of the series, but the writing got worse and therefore the show got worse. Battlestar Galactica also a good example of this (also heavily impacted by the last writer's strike.) There's lots of shows where everything got better as the seasons went on, but the writing got worse and the show ended up sucking because of it.

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GoT is a perfect example of this.

AI just knows how to regurgitate shit, which is why the last couple seasons were complete garbage. It went from a very unique, non-Hollywood style show to just throwing every stupid trope and cliche we've seen a hundred times before at us.

Weird stuff going on in the IATSE unions. My union has been advised that we can decide for ourselves whether to honor picket lines or not, but if we join the lines, we can't wear any IATSE apparel or any apparel representing our local... and yet IATSE as an organization is posting stuff like this:



So I have no idea what's really going on. Historically, the WGA and the other Hollywood unions have not gotten along.

Fadaar said:

At least this time there is absolutely NOTHING I care about coming from American television productions

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Next season of Billions will have the return of Bobby Axelrod. So that kinda sucks.

Goddamn, it doesn't seem like it has been 15 years since the strike. For some reason I remember it as being in the 2010s.

Cybsled said:

People who think writing good material is easy are either exceptionally gifted writers who never have creative block or can’t write for shit and are talking out of their ass.

Good writing and dialogue will instantly raise the enjoyment from a work.

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Good material takes talent, sure, but not-completely-retarded material just requires an IQ above room temperature, and somehow the majority of television is still dogshit. Despite being the mouth-breathing retards that we all are, it's easy for us to identify shitty writing, and generally we've got a superior solution on hand with little effort. There's really no excuse for the lack of quality in modern entertainment.

The only one I remember is the one that fucked up LOST. But I basically stopped watching tv around that time.

this can only be good news for Youtube content creators. where any content you can imagine is being made on a daily basis for 15+ years and you can watch all of it and never run out. i dont know how TV is still existing these days when there is such a thing at everyone's fingertips, for free. i ditched cable in 2020 and havent missed any of it. there is literally nothing on TV i cant find on youtube and with no bothersome commercials because i have Ublock.