Personally I believe that the idea must be good in order to have the content get any chance of actually becoming successful/popular, but I welcome to be proven otherwise.
Business management practices. For a half century now, the snake has been eating it’s tail devouring itself, it’s employees, it’s communities, it’s government’s…all to make Lumberg’s stock go up 1/4 of a point. None of it is sustainable. Most of it is impractical. We all know it will end in violence in several likely ways and some of the damage is irreversible to people and planet. Yet, despite those unequaled consequences of current approaches, it’s breathtaking the confidence with which freshly endebted newly minted business grads seek to join the line of miserable adults to create more miserable adults. Impressive execution of horrible ideas for sure.
I think your premise is pretty easily shown untrue; modern propaganda tools simply outpace and put volume traditional education and so bad ideas, memes and misinformation–to say nothing of the lower ends of human nature–are quite popular.
Personally I believe that in art and any creative project there are no bad ideas as long as you execute them satisfactorily. Even the best idea of all, if done badly, becomes a bad idea…
That been said… The Sims. I still can’t believe a game about doing mundane shores and just being a person can be so famous and addictive.
As I recall, Will Wright’s inspiration for the Sims was watching his daughter play with dolls in a dollhouse.
When viewed through that lens, yeah I can see how that formula works.
I read an interview with him once where he said it was initially supposed to be the “house” version of SimCity, and be about how good or bad architecture shapes the lives of the house’s inhabitants. But their playtesters were spending all their time on the people, not the building, so the pivoted to making it more about the Sims’ interactions.
IME, you can really see the bones of that initial concept in Sims 1; but it’s stayed throughout the series.
There’s a story about a man (Hennig Brand) who figured since pee was yellow, and gold was yellow, maybe if you boil urine down enough you can get the ‘gold’ out of it and make lots of stacks of cash.
Unfortunately this didn’t work, but it did yield a process to create phosphorous which ended up being a valuable chemical process, of which he sold to other alchemists at the time (Who in turn tried to figure out how to turn the new found phosphorous to gold).
Author Jim Butcher once said something like, “Give me one bad idea and it’s a bad idea. Give me two bad ideas and I’ll write a bestseller.”
Someone gave him “the lost Roman legion” and “Pokémon” and he wrote a series that’s yards better than Dresden Files.
A good quality prepper video. Its a bad idea to put in the time, money and effort into preparing for society to collapse or at least preparing to the extremes some of these youtube videos go to. But the shit they teach you in some videos is chalk full of excellent survival tips. Most of which are more handy if youre stranded somewhere than anything else.
Eh if you look at it as a hobby it’s not so bad. My only issue is that it rests on a certain mythology that you’ll survive collapse by holing up in some bunker by yourself which is complete nonsense. Strong community bonds will help people survive difficult times, not isolation.
Yeah i should’ve specified it depends on the video you watch. The videos I watched were super informative about creating generators from a creek, purifying water, storing food etc…
I kind of think of myself as “prepper light” I keep a small stockpile of food and supplies around, have at least general plans for most emergencies that might arise, like I live close to a nuclear plant so I know the evacuation route I’m supposed to take from my home if something ever happens there, what radio station is going to have information, etc. I know what I’m doing if we lose power for an extended period of time, etc.
But I’m not devoting a significant amount of my time to it. A few minutes or hours here or there, a little casual research, the occasional “roughing it” camping trip for fun and practice
But most importantly, I have friends. I’m a pretty all-around capable guy, but there’s a lot of gaps in my knowledge. When it comes to fixing cars, spinning yarn and weaving cloth, more advanced construction, plumbing, gardening, etc. I’m kind of clueless. But I have friends who are really good at those things. If shit ever really hits the fan in whatever sort of “end of the world as we know it” sort of scenario you might be imagining, none of us are going to cut it long-term by ourselves, but with all of our various skills put together we might just stand a chance.
And also I like those people, I want to make sure they make it through it with me.
!atbge@lemmy.world (awful taste but great execution) may be of interest to you.
In the context of this question, what do “content”, “poor idea”, and “great execution” mean? What do you mean by “examples of content”?
Almost everything IDidAThing does.
The million pixels website that sold pixels on a dedicated website (who would buy any?) and made a million.
Buy now pay later apps.
The movie Ghost Dog. Cheesy premise, beautiful execution.
Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus:
I applaud the commitment to the bit.
Trump?
Nah, if it were actually “great execution”, Lemmy would’ve already been banned and progressives would’ve been executed.
Seeing how these fascist leak so much military intel, they are incompetent, fortunately for us. 🤣
This is “evil idea, half-assed execution”. The only reason they even got so far has nothing to do with their competence, its that the “opposition party” is also doing a terrible job.
He abolished the department of education. American citizens are being detained by ICE. Student protestors have been arrested for “anti-Semitism.” The execution is fucking happening.
