I've Noticed a Disturbing Trend Recently....

About, content. It's what you're reading right now, and what I'm providing for you. I'm creating this content myself, simply because, well, I can. Are you depending on me to create content for you? Probably not. You might be creating your own, or, you might be satisfied absorbing, taking in, reading, or watching content that others create. That's ok too.

What I don't believe to be ok, is to ask others to create content for you, and then not pay for the privilege, like this recent tweet. It would seem to me, that they're asking you for your review on the film in question, and are going to incorporate it into theirs. These guys aren't the only ones guilty of regurgitating content, just the most recent.

There was a column in a magazine that most of you haven't heard of, so, I won't mention it, who's subhead was, "There are 20 people creating for the rest of us, many will contribute to this column." That's a paraphrase, and now more than ever, with the 'net out there, it looks to me like most are relying on their own set of 20 or so people to create for them, and maybe they're not doing anything original themselves.

Think about this for a second. There are for instance, six, or seven major movie studios out there, depending on the outcome of what happens to MGM, that for the most part, decide what you see on the big screen. And until such time as the current distribution bottleneck is cured, (37,000 screens in 6200 theatres as of this writing) this won't change. The answer isn't more distributors, as there are many more than just those above, and the answer isn't more theatres, as even though box office goes up from year to year, attendance itself remains relatively flat, and the $10 ticket you bought last year will mostly likely cost $11 today.

And these people aren't really even making their own films, they're simply making sure that you can see them. I read once that Paramount for the most part, except for maybe its resuscitated Star Trek franchise, is not in the business of making movies anymore, they're simply distributing them.

Was tweeting around the other day, and came across an article about blog scrapers, and how there's a whole cadre of people out there that have 'bots crawling around, grabbing content, and putting it on their own site. The unsuspecting among you might believe this to be original with the site your visiting, when the reality is, someone else took the time and effort to post somewhere else, quite possibly with the expectation that you'd read it there, and click on their links on their blog. Will this madness end?

Let me know what you think, and when you think it in the comments below. That is, if you've read this far, and haven't reposted it on your own site.

72 and sunny in Redondo Beach.