https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/12/most-people-dont-care-about-quality/

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2024-12-30

Most people don't care about quality

@edent[a]design Netflix rant * 10 comments * 1,250 words *
read ~20,109 times.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
 

My friend, the photographer Paul Clarke has an uncanny eye for
detail. Every single shot he publishes is beautiful - they capture
life in a way that I don't have the language to describe. I'm quite
content to point my phone at someone, use the default settings, and
grab a snap. My photos lack composition, clarity, focus,
mise-en-scene, proper lighting and a thousand-and-one details that
I've never even thought of.

Paul has published an essay about official photographs of politicians
. In it, he expertly points out the various deficiencies of some of
them and where they show a distinct lack of quality.

But, here's the thing, I don't think anyone other than a photographer
would notice or care about those "problems".

If you're a website designer, you're always noticing "jank" on other
sites. Your skin crawls at the poor kerning, the FOUT, the lack of
keyboard navigation, improper contrast ratio, and a dozen other
flaws. 99% of users just don't care. It doesn't impact them in any
meaningful way.

A decade ago, I ranted about how designers were chasing a perfection
which would never be noticed by non-experts. You may take pride in
your craft, but the majority of people physically cannot notice the
difference between good and bad design. Not even subconsciously.

I include myself in this maddening desire for unnoticeable
perfection. I've got several rants about things most people would
find inconsequential. There are things which I know to be important
in terms of technical correctness, but which most people couldn't
give a shit about.

There's a brilliant essay by Will Tavlin called "Casual Viewing - Why
Netflix looks like that".

In it, the author (correctly and fairly) skewers Netflix's model of
producing huge amounts of low-quality content for an undiscerning
audience. The creatives recoil in horror and the aesthetic choices,
poor scripting, and lack of creative pizazz. Everything is mediocre
at best and that's destroying the creative industries.

But, much like designers fretting about getting things Pixel Perfect
or photographers complaining about background composition or
musicians ranting about the loudness wars - the hoi polloi just don't
care.

And, frankly, who can blame them? Take this quote from the Netflix
essay:

    The difference between Netflix and its predecessors is that the
    older studios had a business model that rewarded cinematic
    expertise and craft.

Bluntly, I don't think that's true. Look at the amount of movies
Elvis was in. A couple of good ones, sure. But the majority are
literally just "This demographic will pay a dollar to see Elvis on
screen; so put him on screen". You only need to look at the various
lists of highest grossing movies to see that the viewing public don't
necessarily reward expertise and craft.

In an essay called "Fraught Pleasures: Domestic Trauma and Cinephilia
in American Culture", the author points out that in the movie
"Scream" (a movie ostensibly about movies) nobody goes to the cinema.
Their entertainment is schlocky VHS tapes of low-budget and
low-quality horror films. The nearest they get to discussing the
quality of movie making is when one character recommends renting "All
The Right Moves" because:

    If you pause it at just the right place, you can see [Tom
    Cruise's] penis!

Quality!

Netflix, so the essay argues, has perfected the art of designing
content for "casual viewing". Something you can have on in the
background while cooking, playing a game, or doom-scrolling.

    Several screenwriters who've worked for the streamer told me a
    common note from company executives is "have this character
    announce what they're doing so that viewers who have this program
    on in the background can follow along."

So? Not everything should be hard work. After a long day, most people
don't want to work for their leisure. People don't want to expend
cognitive energy on interpreting what a story means. Forget Subtext -
People Don't Even Get Surtext.

We also have the problem that close to 100% of culture is now readily
available to us. Why take a risk on something new when you could
watch something guaranteed to be good? An executive at Amazon's
streaming division recalls receiving an email which said:

    'here are the one hundred movies that people are watching most on
    Amazon SVOD today by the minute.' It was always a lot of Tom
    Cruise sci-fi movies, action movies from the '90s and aughts, and
    Talladega Nights.

You want to get everyone dancing at your party. Do you put on some
experimental music that no one has heard of? No - you stick on ABBA
and watch the dance-floor fill up.

Want something with a guaranteed number of chuckles-per-minute?
Friends is there for you.

When you visit Paris, do you go to some little art gallery showcasing
new artists or do you visit Le Louvre? You, like everyone else, bask
in front of the Mona Lisa.

Finally, we reach the inevitble endgame of Netflix. Cut out the
authors, actors, directors, make-up artists, sound designers, and the
hundreds of other unionised parasites involved in making a modern
show. Go straight to AI and create an infinite and endless stream of
algorithmically-designed crowd-pleasing content.

    Streaming platforms are the only place where this [AI Generated]
    garbage makes any sense -- a place where it would never be watched
    at all.

Hard disagree. Not because I think AI slop is good; but because the
audience doesn't care. Most people don't notice the wires on the
special effects. They can't see that the lighting is wrong on the CGI
shot. The lead actor's shitty accent passes without comment.

I'm not trying to slur people when I say that the majority are
unsophisticated - because I include myself amongst them.

Audiophiles complain about MP3 compression and crappy headphones.
Most of us just want to listen to our tunes, not listen to the
equipment.

Cinephiles complain about poorly calibrated projectors and or motion
smoothing on TVs. Most of us just want to crunch popcorn and see big
explosions.

Fact-checkers complain about fictional quotes from famous people.
Most of us just want a daily dose of something that sounds like
wisdom.

Pornographers complain about the move from gorgeous celluloid to low
fidelity videotape. Most of us just want to rent a VHS rather than
visit a cinema for our extra-special-personal-time.

Fashionistas decry the homogeneity of modern dress. Most of us think
jeans and a t-shirt are basically fine.

Is the quality of pizza better from a tiny restaurant hidden away in
an Italian village using only fresh ingredients? I'm sure it is. But
Domino's delivers something good enough, cheap enough, and hot
enough.

Next year, your pizza will be topped with cheap 3D printed "meat"
and, while chefs will decry it as an affront to culinary perfection,
it'll be cheap and tasty. Besides, you're munching on it while
chatting to friends and watching something dopey on Netflix. Call it
the rise of "Casual Eating".

---------------------------------------------------------------------

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10 thoughts on "Most people don't care about quality"

 1. 2024-12-30 13:19
    [bafkreia]

    [bsky] Mike Gifford, CPWA @ FOSDEM said on bsky.app:

    So where do people care about quality and why?

    When is "good enough" not good enough?  

    Reply | Reply to original comment on bsky.app
 2. 2024-12-30 16:45
    [bd3bc567]

    DinoNerd says:

    In my opinion, there are multiple types of quality.

    I notice when the latest app crashes more often than the one it
    replaces, or when it takes me longer to do the same tasks as
    before. I don't need to be a software expert to be unhappy that
    it takes five clicks to do what I used to do with two. I also
    notice when my new washer takes longer to wash clothes than the
    old one, and my clothes wear out faster. I'm not an expert on
    laundry, or appliances. Oddly, though, a lot of people don't seem
    to be bothered by this sort of thing. I don't know why.

    Others notice and are motivated by products which are new,
    different, and perhaps fashionable. Obviously expensive may also
    be seen positively. They buy the latest styles of clothes, and
    perhaps this year's iPhone. Every year. They are often impressed
    with others who do the same - thus the latest iPhone is useful to
    display when picking up people in bars. While this doesn't float
    my boat, I'd say it's a type of quality and quality
    consciousness.

    Finally there's what I'm going to call connoisseur quality. These
    are subtleties only an expert will notice. Sometimes (most high
    art) it requires education to like much of anything in the genre
    - never mind distinguishing grades of quality within it.
    Sometimes the differences are a bit more meaningful, but won't be
    obvious without paying more attention than a non-specialist
    would, or only show up as resilience against rare events. (Thus,
    IIRC, the covid death rate was lowest in not-for-profit nursing
    homes; highest in for-profit, and medium in those government run.
    Who'd have noticed the relevant issues, before the epidemic?
    Maybe a few patients who had a more miserable experience in
    for-profit than friends in non-profit? Or maybe only specialists
    and regulators.)

    Finally, I guess there's also suitability to task. I don't need
    my groceries protected by a steel vault, but I might want to keep
    expensive jewelry in one. I don't need hot standby resilience in
    a computer I use at home, but I'd be very unhappy not to have
    backups - and others wouldn't care about the backups.

    Personally, I care a lot about quality in the first sense. I wish
    providers believed they could make money selling to people that
    share this preference.

    I find lack of suitability to task often contributes to reduced
    first sense quality. It's much harder to get a snack when your
    fridge has bank vault security. And while I haven't encountered
    that, consider using one's phone as a calculator. Or being sent
    an email that says there's new info available on the provider's
    web site, which requires multi-factor authentication. Much more
    secure than including the information in the email - but often
    the information in question doesn't need such security.

    And as for the second sense - fashionistas can keep their
    uncomfortable clothes that cost too much and wear out too fast.
    They can also keep their status symbol cell phones and cars. I'll
    be wearing something comfortable and practical, using an elderly
    phone that was middle-of-the-pack when purchased, and driving a
    beater that no one would even consider stealing.

    Reply
     1. 2025-01-02 12:56
        [769bd914]

        Stee Jans says:

        " Oddly, though, a lot of people don't seem to be bothered by
        this sort of thing. I don't know why." Doing something like
        laundry is an asynchronous task. Most of the time it is a
        set-and-forget task with no place on critical path of your
        daily routine....again, most of the time. Consequently, if the
        clothes washing cycle take 10 or 20% longer, unless you're
        standing there waiting for the cycle to finish, then you
        won't even notice the difference. Unless your clothes are
        wearing out significantly faster, to the point where you are
        replacing them faster than you otherwise would stop wearing
        them anyways due to style ageing, or body size changes, then
        you're not going to notice. And even then, chances are you're
        going to suspect premature fatigue to be caused by the
        quality of the manufacturing before you consider the root
        cause is your washing machine.

        Reply
 3. 2024-12-30 18:34
    [05d14988]

    Mr why try says:

    How do you think we got from damp caves to your cheap ugly
    T-shirt, your trans fat pizza, your good enough IKEA trash ?

    People working damned hard - that's how.

    Yesterday's connoisseur create today's standard.

    ..and your answer is to ask "why try harder"

    Here's the future you ordered... https://m.imdb.com/title/
    tt0387808/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

    

    Reply
     1. 2024-12-30 19:50
        [b7a57850]

        @edent says:

        Ah! The most pro-eugenics film. Classy 

        Reply
 4. 2024-12-31 13:29
    [bb847ef0]

    [mastodon] Giles Turnbull said on mastodon.me.uk:

    @Edent this is true of words too, and I believe that's one reason
    why LLMs have caught on as tools for writing and editing. To my
    professional eye, the results are awful, devoid of heart and full
    of cliches. But most people don't care. Or even notice.

    Reply | Reply to original comment on mastodon.me.uk
 5. 2025-01-02 07:51
    []

    [news] news.ycombinator.com said on news.ycombinator.com:

    Most people don't care about quality | Hacker News

    Reply | Reply to original comment on news.ycombinator.com
 6. 2025-01-02 11:50
    [b0d46920]

    Mohit says:

    A lot of folks won't care about photographer-grade quality, but
    there's a quality threshold. The moment that threshold is
    crossed, the thing instantly falls off in usage for an individual
    (go poorer on quality, and the threshold is crossed for a
    significant population together). The problem is that a culture
    shipping product can either care for quality, or not. I don't
    think there's an in-between. By the time you realise you need
    quality, the people who cared for quality left a long time ago
    and there's little to salvage. Isn't Boeing a great (and literal)
    example of this?

    Reply
 7. 2025-01-02 15:59
    [1fb34730]

    [srios] Steve says:

    Interesting read!

    Maybe this will help me not procrastinate on pushing out projects
    cause of nitpicking little details.

    Reply
 8. 2025-01-03 06:36
    [a38aacb3]

    Jack says:

    Actually, people care a lot about quality. All of the examples
    given (ABBA, friends, etc) are classics. They are remembered when
    others are forgotten. This alone is a pretty good definition of
    "good quality".

    Conneuseurs or hobbyists by definition go beyond mainstream
    level. But before becoming an enthusiast, they first appreciate
    mainstream quality. Since they want more, they look for the next
    level of detail to be good. After all, it's not a hobby if you do
    the same thing over and over. (Some turn into snobs and forget
    what they initially appreciated. That's human psychology and has
    nothing to do with products themselves.) Overall, any
    enthusiastic endeavour brings diminishing returns. Once crossed a
    quality threshold, most satisfaction is obtained. Anything better
    brings only marginal levels of happiness solely from the product.

    So, the article contains very nice observations but the main
    conclusion is wrong. Satisfaction vs quality curve is logarithmic
    and once a certain level of quality is achieved most satisfaction
    is obtained for general public.

    Hobbyist and enthusiast go further but get less satisfaction. I
    think they do it because it's a hobby now and that brings a
    different type of satisfaction (of being a hobby) that is weakly
    correlated to quality deltas. Once a hobby, even minor quality
    improvements matter within the context of the hobby (maybe joy of
    discovery or going farther). But that aspect doesn't matter for
    general public. This observation is also nicely there in the
    article.

    This is my 2 cents on the topic. Very nice article!

    Reply
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