Hollywood Prefers DELUSION Over Accepting Failure 

I hadn't planned to make a video about strange Hollywood ratings of things like Gotham Knights and Rings of Power, but here we are. Internet Rabbit holes are real if you start to look up a question, and this is the product of the start of that. The more you look into it, the stranger it gets and by the end it seemed worth talking about. Didn't intend to go for this long on the topic, was going to include a video but then saw the size of my recording already. You can get the gist of that video from the clips at the end, and I was amazed that anyone would make a video like that and release it publicly. But what did you think? Let me know your thoughts down below and as always, thanks for watching :)

The company calls itself Parrot Analytics because it parrots back to the client exactly what the client wants to hear.

You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

the people behind Parrot Analytics are geniuses, they managed to turn "that friend that tells you all you want to hear just to smash or get money off you" into an actual business.

If companies genuinely use these metrics to gauge success, then it explains a lot about the garbage being produced by Disney, HBO etc.

It feels like a lot of society in general is starting to prefer make believe over reality. And if you try to shine a light on the issue, they lash out

They’ve took sniffing their own farts to the next level!

This is actually scary how much it explains the current landscape. If their primary goal is "engagement", exclusive of viewership, what gets people engaged? Well, things they hate. That's why we get so many things that fans of that property…hate. And they call that a "win" and have data to "back it up".

One of my old directors used to say "perception is reality". The problem is that reality doesn't care, and it will run over your perception like a truck running over a paper cup. Sometimes it takes some time, however reality always wins. Some of these companies are finding that out the hard way.

I'm actually kind of impressed that Parrot Analytics has made an entire business model out of presenting nonsensical "analytics" to their customers (studios, streaming services, whatever) so that they can be a "credible (sounding) source" to promote bad content.

It's called money laundering, brother. Out in the open.

So basically they count views of disparu's videos as demand for Velma and She-hulk. Utter madness.

I like how every video, Disparu gets deeper into the conspiracy of hollywood. It all started with a man trying to get a quick buck out of his dislike of She-Hulk and Rings of Power, but now he's continuosly uncovering new sides of the issue to the point old enemies seem more misguided than they were bad.

'It's popular because... we think it is'.

This is an incredible video. This explains one of the ways media corps are trying to deceive gullible investors. How producers, writers, and directors are failing upward. I always want to know the why and how- and you nailed it. Investigating takes time and it is well appreciated.

Amazon "So, we have the numbers and they're bad. How can you spin this into a success for us?" Parrot Analytics "Well, to start, we don't use numbers."

I am reminded of a line that, at the time, was very Edge-lord but in retrospect is becoming more and more applicable to reality by the day. The line was from the first Mirrors Edge game funnily enough. It was in the scene where Faith, the protagonist, was talking to her sister who asked something to the effect of "Don't you watch the news?" to which Faith responds... "It's not news any more. It's advertising."

I take it these shows are "in-demand" in the same way Captain Marvel was in high demand for Disney... ...when they were literally buying up theater seats in bulk themselves to simulate that demand.

This is why I keep saying that just because they are losing money and some people are fired, that doesn't mean that movies and tv shows will get better. These people are incapable and unwilling to admit their agenda is unwanted and hurting them. They are only capable of doubling down and making the same stupid mistakes. It will only get worse.

This video is an eye opener for me. I was questioning why Velma was doing so bad yet still getting a season 2. The gist of it is simple; it's a 2-man con job, only on the scale of corporations. 1 Corp presents the product and another sells you a false idea about it in the form of data. Reminds me of the cons from Better Call Saul, when Jimmy/Saul presents something to a mark and they reject it, then Marco to shows up and pretends that it's worth something, which pushes the mark to believe that.

Three letters: E, S and G Parrot Analytics is a perfect hedge: the worse a show is, the more (negative) mentions it gets on Twitter and so the more "in-demand" it is. This guarantees that the studio can put out press releases and have their friends in the Access Media write puff pieces about the show, which they can then show to the money men who would never watch this stuff in a million years.

It's all about creating the ILLUSION of popularity. Humans by our nature don't like being the odd one out. We want to be part of the crowd. It's why FOMO is a thing. So when you get these 3rd party companies to tell everyone how popular the show is, you're more likely to watch it even if you've already given it a try and hated it.

'Parrot Analytics' is probably the most apt name for what they and their clients in "news" do. Their mutual self-interests require parroting each others' words but will cause their mutual self-destruction eventually.

Disparu is now officially the best Hollywood journalist alive today. (And the only one). I fear for us all.

There was a time when if I asked "is this show any good?" I would get a yes or a no answer... These days anything goes as an answer except the actual answer! I'm starting to believe we took a wrong turn some years back and ended up in the twilight zone!

Am I the only one that remembers the absurd lies about the box office results for Captain Marvel? Marvel/Disney renting out their own empty theaters to claim box office sales? My guess is those empty theaters were over fire code capacity!

Hollywood lives in a void within a void within it's own dimension. It's insane how blind this people are. I'm not sure they understand basic morals anymore. I miss good story telling in TV and movies. Oh well as long as Japan keeps pumping out the good stuff I'm nice and happy.

I wonder how long it will be before a “massive success” is assigned to a show that didn’t even get made.

Modern entertainment doesnt seem to even believe when their stuff is bad, they seem to completely disreguard what the public think. They huff their own farts and smell nothing but roses.

Those shows aren't smashing anything but rock bottom.

BOOM! Suddenly a conversation I had makes perfect sense. I was talking to someone from a studio and they said "We need someone who can do streaming." I'm like: "But you've *been* doing streaming. People have been talking sh-t about your shows for quite some time." They didnt elaborate further. The reason I can say this much is I'm pretty sure this exact conversation has happened at least a hundred times by now. This makes me think at least some of the streaming services might actually be subcontracted through an unmentioned third party. "But why wouldn't that third party provide the analytics?" They might not have the analytics. Its a feature that would need to be developed. If it hasn't been developed, then there's no analytics. Its really common in the tech industry for a company to advertise a feature, and then say "Ehhh... its still in progress." If the sub-contractor didn't actually develop the system around collecting analytics, then *another* third party would effectively need to 'find other ways to collect data.' "This sounds epically stupid." No sh-t. "Do you have a source?" Don't even bother asking.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but "In Demand" only means people talking about the show? That it doesn't necessarily work as a proxy for conversions to actual viewers of the show? So, by that "metric" they could call a show a success, even if only a tiny % of people watched it, but everyone talked about how awful it was? If that's the case it doesn't seem sustainable.

Very revealing report. Great work ! This reminds me of "citogenesis" or "circular reporting" on Wikipedia -- where someone posts a lie on Wikipedia, which is then publicized by other media, which is then cited in Wikipedia, validating the original lie. Here, Parrot Analytics creates data that's based on questionable sources, and the data is then used to promote the customer's product or to confirm what the customer believes or wants to believe.

They are paying for the third-party company to tell them what they want to hear, even if it is the opposite of the truth. "Whose truth?" is very applicable here. Since She-Hulk showrunner Jessica Gao bragged that she deliberately antagonized the fan base by making men the villain of the show, the low viewership numbers can be interpreted as a victory which proves that "toxic masculinity" is real. It used to be the entertainment industry's goal to earn money - so they would try to create an enjoyable product that people pay to consume. Now, their de facto, yet usually unstated, goal is to antagonize the fan base. Profits or losses seem irrelevant to them for some reason. This strikes me as extremely privileged. I might have had slightly more respect for her if she had said, "I want to antagonize the men. I ALSO want to get ladies to watch it, especially women and teenage girls, who otherwise have no interest in superheroes." At least one of the stated goals would have been positive, but she only focused on the negative. Thanks for the video! (Edit: a new idea 💡)

I'm with you. I just finished the Rings of Power tonight and I honestly was in tears laughing. I love seeing them burn piles of money on absolute lunacy. These shows are awful in a way that Sharknado couldn't aspire to. The pleasure of watching these companies crash to earth is worth it.

They're giving people in their bubble what they want. You don't want to be the outsider in Hollywood. You don't want to have that awkward moment when you see people you've panned in print. You don't want crazies' showing up at your home because you don't toe the line. You think you're safer following the flock. The problem is that people know authenticity when they see it. The problem is that the advertisers and accountants want numbers they can trust.

There are different standards for how Parrot Analytics measures a show compared to the standard of Nielsen. From what I hear, Parrot Analytics utilizes social media platforms such as hashtags in order to measure engagement, not ratings. This means that as long as someone Tweets or does a hashtag on TikTok, it counts. This means that the numbers can easily be falsified whereas Nielsen will measure the channel that its tuned to along with how long it is tuned to that channel, which gives more accurate and reliable numbers since its also based on a sampling of US households. This is also why we know House of the Dragon absolutely shat on Rings of Power in overall ratings because Rings of Power thought they would actually do gud.

Disney should be applying that Amazon quote about LotR to Lucasfilm: If Kathleen Kennedy can't even make Star Wars successful, why is she here?

This is literally the best journalism of the film industry in modern times.

It is worse than you described! If they take their data from all those different activities they are actually capitalizing on the HATE those shows generate!!!

They say things similar in comics. 'fan favorite' series cancelled. So many publishers going under.

Word of mouth is definitely important, and negative word of mouth can be extremely damning for something. It does matter _how_ people talk about it rather than if they are talking about it at all. Take the movies Puss in Boots The Last Wish and Strange World. Both had similar disappointing box office openings of around 12 million dollars. The difference is in their WoM. TLW received massive amounts of positive WoM and it went on to make 477 million worldwide (and for the first couple of months saw less than 5% week-to-week drops and even gaining in some weeks), whereas Strange World received very bad WoM and it flopped at 73 million worldwide. But thanks to streaming, they are able to hide their failures and merely claim that you talking about it at all is good for them.

Growing up, I was a big fan of X-Men the animated series. It was so well crafted. The story of mutants was universally relatable. Media abstractly taught me life lessons, touched on difficult situations, found intelligent ways to tell stories. So much so that when I've rewatched "Kid's movies" from the 90's I realized how well they told & crafted stories even adults and kid's can enjoy & appreciate it. (Pretty much anything created by Don Bluth or Written by Roald Dahl) My Brave little toaster, James and the giant peach, The never ending story, Jumanji, Hook, The secret of the Nimh, Sword and the stone, black cauldron, beetle juice, Alice in wonderland, Rock-a-doodle, Captain Planet, Thundercats, He-man, Spawn, Matilda, The BFG, Ren and stimpy, courage the cowardly dog, magic school bus, Dexter's laboratory, pinky and the brain, rocko's modern life, Ah! Real monster's, goosebumps, are you afraid of the dark, pee wee's playhouse, she-ra warrior princess, Flintstones, the Jetsons. So many more I won't list them all but they had such creative range. So many ways of telling stories. So many types of creatures, unique worlds, weird things, macabre things. I loved how we used to embrace those things. Nowadays everything is so bland or Shallow live action version's filed with nonsense & hollowness. I miss the Era of creativity, of animated series, of things that made us utilize our intelligence. Artistic depictions of the Human condition that connects us on a deeper level. No matter what kind of character, creature, specie's they are. I seriously don't understand who can enjoy these modern live action movies. Filled with so much disconnected CGI. Cheap cop out writing, acting, storytelling that is treating our entire audience like they are 2 yr olds that just need a pair of shiney keys waved in front of them for entertainment... it's a very bland & soulless way to entertain... Seeing how things are nowadays, i feel so lucky that i got to grow up in the 90's. Back then I never could have guessed that things would have changed the ways they did. It was such a great time to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative ways kids, teens and adults could all enjoy themselves. Entertaining movies with practical effects. Animated movies/shows galore. If they used CGI it was used intelligently. I really miss the Vibe of that Era. The creativity that came from that era. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with it because the world seems like it really needs it right now. I mean just look at the aesthetics compared to now? Things have somehow become so bland, bleek, and minimalism that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/uúnique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movies, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that came with a demo disc to try out game's, blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's, you could preview music before buying it, they had great kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. I want to reignite that feel sort of like Retro-Futurism or that Y2K Vibe compared to this current Dystopian pessimism that seems solely focused purely on capitalistic agendas. Our Quality of Life should be better than this.

The programmers are increasingly uninterested in quality programs, they are interested in socially engineering the viewer with unpopular political agendas which make everyone uncomfortable

Great video Disparu. I've always felt that if the creators of these shows would just look up the reviews on RU-vid, not just the fluff pieces, but the actual honest and accurate reviews, there would be no way they could deny that their shows are crap and are not what the public at large is asking for. Now it makes sense though - they have created, and now maintain, a puppet review company to tell them just want they want to hear. Not only that, it's what they want the public to hear. Cheers to the dedicated, truthful reviewers on RU-vid like yourself, Critical Drinker, MauLer, The Little Platoon (and many more) who tell it like it is and value their audience. It is clear that the big Hollywood TV and movie producers most definitely do not.

People weren’t “watching” per se, they were just slowing down to “witness” the train wreck.

“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.” Orwell 1984

"Contagious?!?" "That's what he said." He's lying!" - Penelope Ann Miller and Elizabeth Shue - 'Adventures In Babysitting'

All modern media needs to have this boiler plate at the end - “The was a test. Had this been an actual show you might have been entertained!”

Disparu is now being investigated by Gotham PD for the murder of Batman. Motive: CW Batman claimed the title of the world's greatest detective.

The reason they are doing it because they believe if they can get even one extra viewer by telling lies it will be worth it. Conversely, telling the truth shall prevent potential viewers from watching. According to them, word of the mouth is a useless.

The streaming companies pay Parrot Analytics to generate fluff numbers in hope investors and advertisers will pay based on those numbers rather than hard viewership numbers.

"Look investors! Our shows are great! Look at all these analytics and articles! Please give us more money."

they cracked the code! They found a way to scam investors and their management for nearly a decade at this point. I'm in awe at this

The state of woke Hollywood is even worse than I thought.

I worked for years in market research. To say Hollywood is constantly and absurdly ignoring tropes that were consistently true for over 100 years of audience viewing patterns is an understatement.

"In Demand" = "We like it"

It sounds like these third-party companies are playing an April Fools joke on the studios.

Part of me wanted an April fools day video, but then I realised that basically all of your videos are about jokes in the industry - so that kind of works out anyway!

Parrot Analytics? More like Rasputin Analytics...which may be a good thing since Rassy toppled a kingdom.

We have information about She-Hulk "success": it did terrible on nielsen charts, i believe the peak was number #6 during final episode and the next week it dropped out of the top10, it didn't stayed in top10 during the whole week by week episodes by the way. The only Marvel Disney+ shows that were actual smash hits were WandaVision and Loki, both topped nielsen and WandaVision charted from January to December, Loki fell off two weeks after finally and never went back, but the numbers were massive during airing.

The worst thing that could happen to a pretender is if someone pulls off his mask to present how mundane they are. Taking away something that wasn't special in the first place devalued their inflated ego to normal levels which of course offended the insecure and narcissistic clowns.

They should’ve named it “Copium analytics”

These people are the reason Sony thought bringing morbius back to theaters would be a good idea. People were morbin all over the place online, but despite the amount of people that were morbin, morbin did not equal audience interest.

I'm really impressed by Disparu here, I actually learned something. Bravo buddy.

"Pig swill is in high demand in restaurants" -Parrot Analytics probably

Someone around here said : "documents only answer what you ask them, they don't tell you if you ask the relevant questions". Clearly, that's the issue with anyone believing that the answer to "how to ensure our show's success" is "get a 38 years old lead and put 40% of this or that in it". These people look at charts, spreadsheets and polls, which describe the numeric results, and completely dismiss the reality of how people actually behave. It's like reducing a recipe to its ingredients list, or a painting to the ammount of each color, dump it all together into a bowl, and then wondering why nobody likes it. People don't seek a specific ammount of anything, be it age, color or vegetable, they seek something that sounds, looks and smells interesting to them. The "how" it's made is as important as the "what" it's made of.

Good take and haircut. Always an interesting commentary.

The only thing that ratings wouldn't matter is stuff like. Hello Kitty or Lilo and Stitch. Where the characters sell mech more than the show.

All these articles make me think of the Churchill quote "a lie gets half way around the world before the truth has a change to get its pants on"

Parrot analytics: We will repeat back to you whatever you tell us to say, just like a parrot.

So sooner or later Hollywood is going to be a LOT poorer. I am not feeding Hollywood.

Boycott until they're bankrupt

the only paradox is that they claim to hear the victim yet when the people they preach to cry out to stop, they don't listen

If they are willing to lie to you about viewership on TV shows just imagine what else they are willing to lie about.

Great video. All the research and time you put into this seems incredible; looking through all these articles, comparing them and showing up all the manipulative strategies out there. Although I have often been wary of over the top headlines, it's good to have it explained and confirmed. Can't wait for your next deep dive into all this media BS. 👍

Failimg upwards until the system collapses

This really feels like they are commiting fraud to overvalue themselves, so that the investors think they are more succesfull then they really are.

So major corporations pay these analytic companies large sums of money to lie to them about how popular their stuff is, even though it's not generating them any money? Seems legit...

All publicity is good publicity in Hollywood

The delusion has been around for way to long

They have always had their thumb on the scales lies dam lies and statistics

Their demand model is not even wrong at the basis of common sense, it's incomplete. It doesn't take in consideration external factors that can influence subscriptions. I deleted my Netflix account when the location restrictions happened, for example

I studied industrial engineering, I've spent a lot of time with statistics and analytics along with having seen how my fellow industrial engineering students worked on their side, and I've worked with a few companies (can't name any, of course, due to various NDAs) in order to get data for my projects and papers. Long story short, data can be twisted in so many different ways that it's actually quite scary how a simple abstract can directly contradict data gathered without being so obvious. That's why some of the most famous quotes about statistics literally says "Facts are stubborn, but statistics are pliable." and "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.", both of which come from Mark Twain. Like the man or not, he's right about that. The aforementioned companies I've studied and worked with have had information that I personally wouldn't consider entirely trustworthy. One thing is certain... statistics can be useful, but it's never a guarantee whether or not it is being used for good or evil.

lol. This is like a grocery store staying in business because everyone in town knows where it is. No one shops there. No one orders from there. No one even goes in there. But it's doors stay open because homeless guys go there to crap in the parking lot. ROFL

"We were always at war with Oceania. Promise."

Wheel of Time, Witcher, She-Hulk, Velma, Rings of Power, He-Man etc. ad nauseam. Destroyed franchises and corporate lies.

They’re the woke regime’s Baghdad Bob.

Great video, Disparu. Parrot Analytics has been fishy for a while, but this is the first real takedown of it I've seen. One other problem of measuring "demand" this way is that it undercounts shows that audiences enjoy but don't talk about as much. That makes it harder for good shows to get renewed. And it encourages creators to subvert expectations and continually frustrate their audiences, since that gets people talking.

It's a validation company. They create evaluation that gives good results to the client, so they don't feel bad for their failures.

I remember someone talking about this in regard to STD and CBS all access a couple of years ago

They don’t like admiring their wrong arrogance is apparent

I feel like I could really get into a D&D campaign with Disparu as DM. You'd have to bring your A-game, cos damn... Imagine a Disparu shredding in real-time around the game table 😝😶

That company sounds like the sycophantic cheerleader to the prince in Coming To America, where in his litany of empty praises for his prince, he includes that he, _"Saved Gilligan from the island!"_

Telling me a show is great, doesn’t make it great. These media giants must think we’re all drooling idiots.

They can spin it as much as they want, money talks and none of these crap shows made money. If they want to keep huffing their own farts let them, eventually they will go bankrupt, get bought up or change.

Streaming companies should be required to show their numbers.

Interesting business model: We twist and bend the numbers in any way possible so your show will end up in the top spots of our list. And obviously there is a huge demand for this type of "rating" as all the woke companies spit out tons of garbage series and movies.

She-Hulk: *Steps in a dog turd* ...Hey everyone! I stepped in a dog turd on purpose! Who wants to smell it?!

Great video. It explains SO much about how this kind of madness could ever come about. And hearing them openly and fully aware tell that Rings of Power must sound good regardless of reality shows that this isn't plain old incompetence either.