The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
McFedries: Media companies should build IP from single characters up to films
“Traditionally you kind of started with this like longer form asset, like a Star Wars, and then you kind of iterate in like a Star Wars video game, comic book, all the way up to like a lightsaber you could buy at Target. And so you have this pyramid that moves …”
McFedries: Compelling characters drive new platform adoption, not empty virtual worlds
“I always thought that like a character would pull you into emergent platform. So like, you know, Pikachu is the reason you get Pokemon Go. You know, you don't want to just walk around your yard scanning stuff. You want to follow Pikachu somewhere.”
McFedries: Generative AI will accelerate media's race to the bottom
“This kind of race to the bottom in a lot of media is going to, like, that bottom's going to hit far quicker because of AI. It's going to be really easy to be good at things.”
McFedries: Backward-looking AI models will cause repetitive media feedback loops
“It's going to be really hard to be excellent, and because, you know, models effectively are backwards looking, data kind of begets more data. I mean, you're going to have some, like, nasty feedback loops, not entirely dissimilar from, like, what happened to Ne…”
McFedries: Unlimited celebrity availability could devalue virtual engagement
“The variable rewards component of social, that kind of like brain hack of a slot machine brain hack is what makes a lot of social experiences sticky. And so the idea that you could just, you know, message Emma Chamberlain and she responds right away or pops up…”
McFedries: Modern Disney or Marvel Should Be Built on Social Media
“If you were going to build a modern Disney or Marvel now, you probably wouldn't want to start in comic books or in theaters. You'd want to start where the eyeballs are, which was, you know, really on social”
McFedries: PG-13 ratings neutered middle-ground cinema and TV
“In a post PG-thirteen America, like movie ratings really neutered kind of like middle ground of cinema and television where I used to have these kind of like John Hughes films.”
McFedries: Minimizing novelty and maximizing familiarity drives adoption of novel media
“And if we minimize as much of the novelty as possible and keep as much of it familiar as possible, I thought we had a better chance of succeeding.”
McFedries: Audiences engage with media aimed 5 to 7 years older
“People engage with media that it's like five to seven years older than them.”
McFedries: Narrative media businesses are like fashion businesses requiring endless novelty
“Narrative is, you know, like unthinkably hard, right? You know, there's all kinds of books you can read about why you shouldn't build like narrative driven media businesses, because you, it's like building a fashion business. Like you have to keep things inter…”
McFedries: Brud operated as a tech company using weekly data science on content
“We really tried to build, you know, a technology organization disguised as a media organization. So we had like data science teams every week bringing back what worked and what didn't, building taxonomies on images and videos.”