Ask A Genius 827: Equestrianism Into Television
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/02/23
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So we had a talk about equestrianism off tape and you had something to talk about, let’s talk about that.
Rick Rosner: Okay. You and I have been talking for about nine years now and from the beginning we were talking about things like consciousness and at some point we started talking about AI or we’re talking about alternate non-human types of consciousness. Are you familiar with the show Succession on HBO?
Jacobsen: No, I’m not.
Rosner: All right, Succession is by Adam McKay and a bunch of other very smart talented people and it’s basically a satire of the Fox News Murdoch family. It’s the story of an aging patriarch who’s a prick, who owns a media empire and his four kids, as the kids kind of jockey for power within the organization and that’s why it’s called succession because the dad is old and somebody’s going to have to take over for him sometime. So it’s about a mainstream kind of sleazy media empire but the show itself isn’t sleazy, it’s very prestige. It’s not a soap opera like some like you’d see on the CW, I mean there’s plenty of intrigue but it’s mostly a satire of how douche-y these people are within a more or less normal big business context. Unlike a show like Empire or Power where it’s all soapy and it’s all about like scandalous fucking and all that stuff.
Anyway, last night the Roy family, the patriarch is Logan Roy and all they’re all named Roy and at a board meeting, one of the kids who’s in a strong position to take over the company tried to sell the singularity in a normal business context which I found shocking but also kind of… All the stuff we started talking about nine years ago is becoming more and more mainstream. AI is all over the place. Nobody was worried about AI when we started talking and now it’s kind of fashionable to be freaking out about AI to the point where the people who actually know something are saying “Freak out about AI but don’t freak out about this AI because this AI is just a sophisticated form of auto fill.”
Anyway, let me finish talking about Succession. So among the things this company Waystar RoyCo owns is a set of amusement parks the way Disney owns amusement parks as part of an entertainment empire. Similar to Disney, Waystar RoyCo is trying to do planned communities. Disney has, starting 20-25 years ago, started experimenting with planned communities. If you like Disney as a product then maybe you’ll like living in a Disney neighborhood where we built the houses, we planned everything, and we built everything. So Waystar RoyCo is selling a community called Living Plus; it’s for people 55 and older and it’s not just a lifestyle but also an entertainment style where if you live in our planned community you’ll get VIP access to all our entertainment products and visits from the stars of our productions because they also own a movie studio and get to see the rough cuts of things and you’re in a privileged community. The main selling point that this douche bag, Kendall Roy is selling to the board and to investors is you’ll get to live longer and maybe forever.
The show set it up that he was going to crash and burn with this obvious bullshit but he sold it and the investors bought it. He did a good job and he was selling the freaking Singularity. Nobody said the word Singularity but it’s almost like it’s a mainstream cutting edge product now which A) means we’re on the right track because the shit we’ve been talking about forever is now the shit that everybody’s kind of talking about in various ways and I forget what my point B is but there you go. Also, if we wanted to and I don’t want to, we could take a look at all the movie TV lit products that are increasingly embracing the themes that we’ve been talking about for almost a decade.
[Recording End]
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