"So I had the most awesome dream last night"

"okay"

"and I'm going to tell you all about it!"

"uhhh"

"actually it's better than that I had an AI hallucinate a feature film full of all the shit that turns my crank and we can sit down together and watch it"

"my my look at the time surely I must be going"

"ehh that's okay you were never my friend anyway besides thanks to CoPilot I can watch Joe Rogan snuff porn all day you can fuck off"

"kthxbye reallyappreciateit"

I'm actually all for this. I'm sure Sam Altman is, too. Consume hundreds of hours of (paid) AI time generating your own special movie just for you. Will he serve your prompts up to the police if court-ordered? Indubitably. Considering how much colocation there is between Microsoft and the NSA, and considering how much information-sharing there is between the three letter agencies, I can virtually guarantee that shit's already rolling. "Hey Copilot draw me some shirley temple DP porn" "no prob fam I'll work on that while you answer the door I think I heard a knock"

Where it all falls down is the nerds assuming that anyone but their incel asses wants to watch custom movies.

I don't care how far back you go, theater of any kind is a mutual experience. It is a social ritual. Find a movie that's super great? TELL YOUR FRIENDS! Find a movie that's overhyped? BITCH TO YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT! Even a fucking DnD game takes at least two people and it hits its stride with four. Table read of a script with two actors? Weird. Table read of a script with a dozen actors? Sell tickets to the audience.

And look. If AI allows you to generate a film for your eight friends? Great. That's awesome. I hope you enjoy the shit out of it.

But it will never fucking threaten Hollywood.

The reason there are no real indie films left is that in order to make your money back these days you have to appeal to the broadest possible swath of humanity. Thats' why it's nothing but superhero movies anymore - it's the spectacle that makes money and the only controversial opinion in superhero movies is 'do you like superheroes.' Anyone of the opinion that superheroes are fascism is gonna stay home so you don't even need to worry about them.

The incel nerd take is "millions of actors will soon be out of work as we all use AI to generate our own custom movies" and holy fucking shit dude that's why nobody invites you to parties. you don't fucking get it and you won't even try.

123 million people watched the superbowl. The playoffs averaged 40m people - still a record. But what that tells you is that 80m people who don't give the first fuck about football sat down to watch the Superbowl simply because of the spectacle. And look.

Let's say I can build you a custom movie for $10. Let's say I can shoot something with actors in it for a million dollars. I make your movie and I profit let's say $9. I make my movie with actors in it and I charge $2. If I can get a 500,004 people to watch it I make more money. The argument put forth by the AI boosters is "well but those half million people won't come to your movie because they're busy spankin' it in their own personal Apple Vision Pro holodecks"

To which I say

the sooner we can make this happen the better, for all mankind.