The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience.
I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claiming they were broke and talking about about their $150 house cleaner, or the long rant about not being invited to a Slack channel she needed for the work then later realizing they were in the channel from the start and just missed the required onboarding. There’s a section where we’re supposed to hate a coworker whose only offense is trying to do the job well.
Doesn’t sound like a great job, but the article was trying so hard to show this as an “everyone in Hollywood” instead of admitting it was one person’s bumbling misadventure.
I once spent an hour listening to a drunk woman telling me how broke she was. The gist was that she wanted to build a 50 horse stable but could only afford one big enough for a dozen horses. She owned about half of Anaheim. She told this to me as she sat across my desk at her condo, which was my post as a near minimum wage security guard. My money angst was probably less than hers.
He was making $5 million a year and he was MISERABLE. Those stupid horse expenses completely drained his life and finances to the detriment of everything else, he was one of the most unhappy people I've ever encountered in life.
My point in outlining this is to scratch the surface and paint a picture on the systemic damage to this ecosystem and as a result you have people who have been working in a collaborative video workforce who no longer are able to find work. I've seen probably 75% of my colleagues and peers move on to other pastures, parlaying their skills into other careers, often starting in fields where your entry level positions are typically held by people 10, maybe 20 years younger. And of course, some have it easier than others. The AI training gigs come at an extremely opportune time (for them) and typically offer very tantalizing wages (in the form of an AI generated message from a LinkedIn recruiter who only replies with a link to the company's registration page). And if you're months without work and you use some of that unwanted free time to think introspectively about the offer, its easy to walk away with a sense that, eventually, the right talent will meet the right training method and produce the software package that actually kills your employable skillset. Its a horrible feeling. Its a scary feeling. Its a feeling of being on the wrong side of a window that is in the process of closing.
So while you may find it easy to lose sympathy for this particular writer, I would implore you not to lose sympathy for the broader class within and to not lose sight of where this article sits in context to the bigger story. Without a shadow of a doubt, her experience is the norm within the industry right now. I think it is worthy of recognition because what is happening will come for many other fields/areas of expertise in the future. What you describe as one person's bumbling misadventure rhymes quite a bit with other people's struggle to make ends meet in a rapidly evolving/devolving market.
To clarify, in the OP that's $150 flat rate per cleaning, not per hour. If you've tried to hire a housecleaner recently, that seems a bit below average (depending on the apartment). It's not an extravagance - you'd have to spend more time doing it yourself, which takes you away from buidling up your paying work and future.
Prices are going up everywhere, and the contemporary business theory is to maximize extraction from the customer, not to compete (on price, for example). Uber-wealthy capitalists do it; I'm happy for the housecleaners doing it. Not only do I not mind them getting the money, but they have to pay all their rising bills just like everyone else.
In the context of someone complaining about their $14 bank account balance and their job paying $32 per hour that isn't giving them enough work, spending $600 per month on a housecleaner is an extravagance.
> AI training wasn’t on my radar until a comment in an unofficial Writers Guild of America Facebook group caught my attention. The page was filled with posts from unemployed writers struggling with debt and panicking about their income, begging for tips and ideas and survival strategies: “I am stressed and anxiety-ridden … simply trying to breathe” … “ISO food bank/pantry info” … “Hey, so what kind of part-time jobs are you all getting?” I’ve been working for this AI training company called Mercor, one woman typed in the comments. They’re paying 150 an hour for writers. It’s easy money.
See also a comment below from someone who, unlike you (or I), actually works in the Hollywood industry.
> bounced between claiming they were broke and talking about about their $150 house cleaner
this isn't what the article says at all -- she was not both broke and hiring a house cleaner
if you don't like the article, just say so, but don't skim read and then misrepresent what the author said
> one person’s bumbling misadventure
you missed a lot of what was written
And further, isn’t the evidence that low income workers have seen their real wages rise over the last few years?
I really found it hard to sympathize with the author at this point. If you're in a crunch you don't need to pay a maid to clean.
Nowhere in the article did she support the “everyone in Hollywood” claim, other than saying she found it in a Facebook group for writers.
here is an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260511122830/https://serjaimel...
(Side-note: I have created htmlpipe which archives archive.is pages on archive.org so I am more than happy to answer if someone has any questions about it and I have an submission of a blog regarding it too if someone is interested but yeah, enjoy the article now!)
It seems this may be a case of "I am representative of everyone's experience."
Her first credit was in 2008 and then there is a 5 year gap between that and her next credit. Then 8 years between that one and the next.
For comparison, I pulled up the crew for The Boys. Most of them have tighter credits.
While there is probably some people in her situation. I feel that she also could have written this with the title: "I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Waiting Tables."
And this isn't to disparage her. It was always a hard business and getting consistent work was always hard. Even if it is good.
Shades of Glengarry Glen Ross
"These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads, and to you, they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers."
It's the equivalent of losing your job and having to run DoorDash to pay the bills.
All the while you're being lied to with promises that this will somehow set you free to "work on your own terms".
That's fine if you are gainfully employed and want to earn some extra cash, but not if that's all you have.
This is just the next step in the gig economy, which strips away rights and security from employees and hands profits to employers.
However, if you think that any of the conditions described in the article are acceptable or that this is a fair price to pay for having AI, I think you are a horrible human being and I hope you'll be expelled from civilized society.
I see two problems here:
1: The streaming platforms are filling themselves with slop shows. Maybe not "AI slop," but slop in general. When I browse, I keep seeing lots of shows that I have no desire to watch, and wonder who actually watches them. Every time I open a streaming platform, they keep wanting me to watch a new series that I have no time to watch.
2: It seems there is an over-abundance of screenwriters.
Now onto my response:
TV has always been this way, the only difference is there aren't time slots now, so they can develop a bunch of crap shows (that used to just get left for dead after pilot season), let them run for a season/series and gauge popularity vs cost, and cut the under performers (why I don't watch a show until a couple seasons are live).
When it was ad-supported with 4 prime-time hours across 10-ish channels (between OTA, cable, and premium), every show had to count. Streaming removes that constraint, which has actually been beneficial to producers and consumers of content. More shows means more jobs for writers, actors, directors, crew, etc., even if those shows they are working on are completely forgettable.
But with every gold rush, comes over-abundance of people panning for gold. So yes, there is an over-abundance of screenwriters. There is an over-abundance of choice on the platforms. There is an over-abundance of platforms to chose from. There is an over-abundance of over-consumption of content on these platforms.
And so you don’t contribute to the selection of shows.
It’s a dilemma. I started streaming stuff I like the sound of despite the risk of being rug-pulled, because otherwise there’s no signal that they should fund series 2.
On average I do that, although I generally don't like to start a "series" unless I know there's a good chance I'll finish it.
1) general decline in wages
2) only short-term work being available
3) streaming platforms never pay the way Hollywood/Broadcast TV did: bad pay, but with a share of show profits for decades afterwards. Now just bad pay
So it was generally about getting their pay increased. Instead, the strike lead to a big decrease in pay that Netflix and Skydance (Paramount) are blamed for.
There’s the ever-increasing restrictions and cost of shooting in California and the huge incentives other localities offer to film and even commercial (advert) projects. My friend just flew the whole production to Louisiana to shoot a 30 second commercial because of the incentives.
There’s the fact that even if a new show or movie is good, it is competing not only with other new stuff but also with the entire back catalogue of everything ever made that is instantly available for viewers.
There’s streaming rights, that never paid as much as traditional TV even though it had broader reach.
There’s competition with phone / social platforms that continue to optimize their content and algorithms with shorter feedback loops and more additive content, against trad production which takes a ton of money and time and upfront cost.
What a wonderful dystopia we're building.
Musicians seem to be embracing AI as a platform given that's another oligarchy itself. Where's the Robert Rodriguez of AI film-making? We haven't even seen the Ed Wood here yet.
Edit: and here we go with the enablers of the overlord status quo again. I'd love to know why people think Hollywood's effective caste system is worth preserving. You don't like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel? Cool, the smarter Harvey Weinsteins of Hollywood are much worse and they're the ones that didn't get caught to this day.
Anyway, right around '10 the industry was really stressed. The financial crash was 2 years in, and the recovery was more propaganda than reality. The productions were chasing a Hollywood market that the population did not have the disposable income to support. Then in all that stress, the Me-Too movement starts. Rumors and murmurs at first, but soon a tsunami of women from the entertainment industry sharing their institutional abuse and choosing to leave the industry entirely. My wife was one, an Academy Award winning filmmaker, famous for children's media.
That line in time of Hollywood films going bad? It is when the women that were silent in their abuse chose to leave the industry enmasse. What replaced them were clueless men and women okay with the abuse, and the reduced quality of Hollywood is a reflection of the quality of their intellects.
Many european countries are constantly releasing movies with low budget but far better in terms of character work, plot, etc.
Asia is killing it as well, with south korea having golden era hollywood quality, Japan being consistently decent and China starting to develop a world-friendly industry...
Coincidentally, I'm doing the same thing with movies, TV shows and games, and 2010 still feels too modern for me. I try to make it before 2005.
I mean, I understand and somewhat share some of the criticism, but it has to be said that Hollywood used "wigs, makeup, and so on" from its very beginning. Movie stars were always supposed to be "more" than everyday mortals. The only real aberrations of modern hollywood are plastic surgery and deeply unnatural body types (stick-thin women and dehydrated steroid-pumped men), mostly because they are abused to the point of absurdity.
'The Americans' Wig of the Week: Nina's Emotional Disguises
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2014/04/the-americans-wi...
>Each week we will be crowning a "wig of the week" from The Americans, FX's wonderful show about Russian spies who happen to wear a variety of insane wigs when doing their spy duties.
>Wig of the Week: As you might have already been able to tell, we've diverged from the theme a little this week to focus on double agent Nina Sergeevna.
>Why This Wig: There were some good wigs in this episode. Elizabeth pulled out her sophisticated blonde number to meet with Andrew Larrick, the dangerous Navy captain the Soviets are using. Philip, to bug the ARPANET, pulls out a Rust Cohle sort of look, which only makes him more horrifying when he murders an innocent who happened to get in his way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmericans/comments/el1o11/wigs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAmericans/comments/1hn88mx/favou...
The article doesn't say it's weekly. Some people I know with housecleaners are do it monthly.
Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
Marketing needs 4 second jokes to put in the trailer; sales needs a cute pet to sell toys; an actor demands dramatic moments aiming for an Oscar; market research needs a love story, a diverse character, and a specific geographic location to widen the audience; early screenings show that attention drops so story is simplified...
All of these roles should be working to support a product, but they should never interfere with its creation. Instead, they're the main creators. People in the industry genuinely believe that the plot is just an excuse to do all the above, and results show.
His income was $25 million a year but his spending was at $50 million a year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1fc6wsc/michae...
Something I hold as a truth in life is that the neither money nor what it's spent on is the issue when it comes to spouses screaming at each other about what they can afford.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.
that, or golf
You're missing the point that if she wasn't spending $600/month on house cleaning, she wouldn't have only $14 left in her bank account.
Going without a house cleaner is not an ascetic lifestyle. This is getting silly.
The article doesn't say it's weekly. Some people I know with housecleaners are do it monthly.
It's not an immutable fact of the human society.
But yes, mass/pop culture as we know it would be dead. And IMO the world would be better off.
I agree with other comments that may lead to people staying inside their comfort zone. But I think it's question of time when good portion of people would start sharing that content with other people. Expanding each others' imagination. And few that don't... Well, existing pop culture is not exactly good at expanding mind as well. And such decentralized content creation may be less prone to propaganda and other social control efforts.
Unless the problem is people isolation in way, that people would not consume standardized content that also, to some extent, standardize their mind. But in that case it's an isolation problem even without AI when people check out from mass culture and entertain themselves. Wether entirely solo or in small fringe subcultures. Which is kinda isolation if you look from 19th/20th century point-of-view when name of the game was to normalise all the regional cultures into bigger bodies of people. But is such isolation the wrong or a good kind of isolation? I'd lean towards the later.
I even agree that $150 a month is not exactly extravagance, but unless you are disabled, hiring a housekeeper is a major luxury. It's a recurring cost, be it $150/week or $150/month, that can easily be eliminated, and anyone who has been poor would not think twice about eliminating it when things get tight.
And the point isn't that this person is or isn't the "right" kind of poor. It's that they come off as someone cosplaying poverty, and it undermines the premise of the whole article.
Again, they have $14 in their bank account.