Once upon a time in a far and distant land people’s favourite entertainment was the theatre. There were only two theatres in the land, and if you wanted to use them you had to pay a fee every year. They were sort of independent, but the government who controlled how much the fee was, and who had to pay it. They were on something of a short leash. Then came a third and a fourth, and eventually a fifth, they were independent from the other two. They didn’t charge an annual fee instead, they used to stop the plays every so often to let salesmen in. These salesmen paid the theatres lots of money to convince the audience that they wanted to buy shit they didn’t need. Then the government stepped in and made rules about which salesmen could come in, at what time and for how long, it helped a little. But here’s the catch if you ever visited one of these independent theatres, you still had to pay the fee to the original ones. Then one day another company came swooping down from above and opened lots of little theatres. They charged another even higher fee. They were closely followed by another and before long the two companies had merged. The reason for their success, they not only showed plays, but also all the sport. While all the theatres had performers from far and distant lands, this one had all the plays from a distant land across the see to the west, and they had them before anyone else.
The problem with all these theatres, is they choose what was on and when. If you didn’t like what was on, all you could do was walk down the street and watch something different. But if you wanted to see a particular play, you had to be in the right place at the right time. The old theatres were accused of repeating too many of their plays and being poor value for money. This was probably true, but they didn’t spend their money on plays, they had other ways to inform, educateand entertain.
Then one day everything changed a magician came from the land across the sea to the west and flicked his magical net across the land. He created a special magical theatre where every visitor chose what they wanted to watch and when they wanted to watch it. The choice was massive, there were thousands of plays to watch, long and short, old and new. They could watch half a play or just a few minutes of it and come back and watch the rest another time. Things would never be the same again. He charged everyone who came to visit a monthly fee, for this they would get a password they needed to get. They were allowed to share this password with all the people in their house, but nobody else. However, some people only visited occasionally and didn’t want to pay every month, but this was okay because if you had a friend who would share their password. The magician new this was happening, but he didn’t mind because more and more people were visiting. While all this was going on a magical book salesman had being making his own magical theatre. Nobody noticed because it wasn’t as big or as good, and it really confused people because it kept changing its name. But slowly it grew and became a serious rival for the magician.
Then over time, everyone learned the magic and lots more magic theatres opened. All the old-fashioned theatres opened magical theatres along side their big old ones. They didn’t show anything new, but you could watch all their old plays, or catch up on something you had missed. Best of all they didn’t charge any extra. It wasn’t all good. Some of the theatres were poorly built and frequently stopped working. Some of them still let the salesmen in, they would stop the plays for even longer than in their other theatres because they had different rules. It was a brake new world, and for a time everything was good. Because you could watch anything at any time, the theatres started telling longer story broken up into lots of little plays that you could watch a bit at a time or all in one go and people loved it. This had been done before but they spent all the money in the world and did it so much better. The people declared it a golden age. Then a plague swept through every land across the globe and people couldn’t meet up in public for two whole years. The magical theatres that let people be entertained in isolation thrived as they entertained the world.
But then over time the cracks started to show; there were countless magical theatres across the land, too many! People didn’t have the time or money to visit them all so had to pick and choose the ones they wanted, but the choice wasn’t always easy. The magicians who owned the magical theatres started spending more and more money to attract people to their theatre and away from the competitors. For many years the first magician who owned the biggest and the best theatre wouldn’t tell anyone how many people came to visit his theatre or what plays they were watching. Very quickly the audience began to smell a rat so the magician gave some cryptic information to appease the masses. It didn’t really work, but it gave them something to talk about. The magician wasn’t exactly evil, but he was ruthless and had a wicked streak running though him. He created a magical device that he called the algorithm. The algorithm was a cold hard and heartless machine, it didn’t care about the people, its only goal was to please its magical master. The algorithm quickly worked out that shiny new plays would bring in new audiences at a faster rate than the existing audiences would leave if their beloved plays were cancelled. The algorithm was really clever, it knew that some plays were really popular and could be stretched out for a very long time, even if they got progressively worse. It cancelled many beloved plays that were really popular, but it knew they had stropped bringing in new audiences, but it distracted them with new stories every week. Often disposable rubbish that wouldn’t last long. Occasionally very good but equally doomed. But the plan was foolish and short-sighted. The plays were no longer entertainment, they were content, an opium to distract the masses.
The cracks turned into rifts. The magician was spending more money than he was bringing in and the quality of his plays was dropping. Nobody knew if his theatre was still the biggest, but everyone could see it was no longer the best. There were many new players in town. One was a magical mouse, that despite a dubious past was beloved across all the lands. The other was one of the biggest companies in the world, according to the legend it had made its money selling stylish but overpriced fruit. The magician had to do something, so he made a plan. He had two ideas. The first was he would give some of his customers a discount, but in return he would let the salesmen. The other was to put guards on the doors to make sure nobody was sharing their passwords with other people. If people were caught in the act they would be made to pay or not let. Many people had already stopped visiting, it was clear things would get worse. But it wasn’t the magician that was having a hard time. the original two theatres were constantly restructuring and downsizing as they battled with the government over how much their fee should be and what sort of plays they should make. All this was happening at the worst of times following two years of plague and a war in the east made everyone’s food and heating bill higher.
I don’t know how the story ended, but it was clear the magician was on shaky ground and his theatre wasn’t as well built as he thought it was. Would it last? And surely there were two many theatres charging too much money, some would have to merge or go bust? One day we will find out what happened next, I don’t think that will be a happy or pretty story for everyone!
This story is entirely fictional, any resemblance to actual persons or streaming service living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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