Skittles and Salad and Unfocused Palates

In the arts—film, music, theater—we are watching a widening gap between what is safe to produce and what is meaningful to create. Financial risk pushes toward familiarity. Audience metrics push toward repetition. Algorithms push toward predictability.

We are even seeing this shift acknowledged openly. Matt Damon recently remarked that Netflix prefers scripts where the plot is repeated multiple times in dialogue—not for artistic clarity, mind you, but for the audiences who are presumably watching while distracted.

Friend… read that again. Or perhaps I should repeat it three times. Scripting for the convenience of the distracted? We might as well start putting skittles in salad, you know, to appease the sweet-tooth palates among us—at least Buddy the Elf would approve.

Now, let me be clear—I’m not sure who’s really at fault in this equation, Netflix or its audience.

It’s sort of a chicken or egg problem, as far as I can see it. But what is clear to me is that when plots must explain themselves three or four times to survive divided attention, we are no longer shaping art around engagement. We are shaping it around interruption.

And so we create music with no complexity, depth or lasting value—just earworms and catchy hooks to keep your leg dancing while you scroll through social media. We stop scripting subtext because some people might be texting. We keep jokes short, loud, and vulgar in a desperate reach for attention—who cares if they laugh, so long as they watch. And if it doesn’t have sex, violence, or someone famous, it had better hurry up and get one in there quick—even better, get all of them together all at once. Like the Avengers taking a fight into an intergalactic whorehouse.

Now there’s your sugar rush.

Candy performs well. Fruit requires cultivation.

If we want a culture that produces original thought, layered storytelling, and work that lasts beyond a weekend cycle, we must rebuild taste.

Next time: The Homegrown Approach