Sometimes a decision that seems understandable and even successful in the short term can have disastrous long term consequences.
Disney+ is a classic example. Released right around the time the world was locking down because of a virus which ████████ ██████ ████ ██ ██████████ ████████ ██████████ ██ ██████ █████ emerged completely naturally in the wild and the science is settled so shut up, the streaming service allowed people to stave off cabin fever by watching brand new Disney movies at home, at an all-you-can-watch monthly price point.
And it worked, for a while. One of my enduring memories of the early quarantine period was watching Onward - the last truly great Pixar movie to date, but that’s another post - in my rec room with my sons. Millions of people signed on to Disney+ and it looked like Netflix might have finally encountered some serious competition.
Four years later, Disney is coming off one of its worst year since the “malaise” period between Walt’s death and the release of The Little Mermaid. Quality declined as the company scrambled to keep feeding the content mill, but even if its latest movies and shows had been up to standard, it might not have mattered much because we’d gotten so used to watching them at home instead of a in a movie theater.
When ads for Lightyear1 and Strange Planet started appearing, I just assumed they were going straight to streaming. And if the box office returns are any indication, I wasn’t alone.
This New York Times article (republished in another paper, sans paywall) reminded me that the mass “deplatforming” of Donald Trump after the Beer Belly Putsch is another move that made sense at the time, but may have backfired in the long run:
Not all that long ago, many Americans committed hours a day to tracking then-President Donald Trump’s every move. And then, sometime after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and before his first indictment, they largely stopped.
They are having trouble remembering it all again.
More than three years of distance from the daily onslaught has faded, changed – and in some cases, warped – Americans’ memories of events that at the time felt searing. Polling suggests voters’ views on Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. Social scientists say that’s unsurprising. In an era of hyper-partisanship, there’s little agreed-upon collective memory, even about events that played out in public.
But as Trump pursues a return to power, the question of what exactly voters remember has rarely been more important. While Trump is staking his campaign on a nostalgia for a time not so long ago, President Joe Biden’s campaign is counting on voters to refocus on Trump, hoping they will recall why they denied him a second term.
“Remember how you felt the day after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016,” the Biden campaign wrote in a fundraising appeal last month. “Remember walking around in disbelief and fear of what was to come.”
[…]
“What’s been clear for a while, especially among swing voters, is that Biden is just more front and center,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who opposes Trump and has conducted dozens of focus groups with conservative and swing voters in recent months. “They know about what they don’t like about Biden, and they have forgotten what they don’t like about Trump.”
Polls suggest that Trump has also made inroads with voters who may have been too young to remember his first term in detail. The nearly 4.2 million 18-year-olds who are newly eligible to vote this year were in middle school when Trump was first elected. Polls show they have soured on Biden in part because of his support for Israel in the war in the Gaza Strip, saying they favor Trump on the issue, even though Trump was also a staunch ally to Israel while in office.
I sure remember what it felt like for a few days after the 2016 election, as I walked around feeling like I’d been punched in the head and was still feeling the effects of a massive concussion.2
But then again, I am obsessed with this politics nonsense. And if you’re subscribing to this Substack, you’re likely the same kind of weirdo, albeit one with impeccable taste in newsletters. The Trump era is likely burned into your memory.
Most people simply aren’t like that. They only pay attention to the news and political developments every now and then, maybe as a major election approaches or some earth-shattering news event is going on. Otherwise, they have actual lives which attract most of their attention.
I envy them.
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