A lot has been spoken about the death of originality in the Indian film industry. Sequel after sequel. Remake after remake. Universe after universe. The cries are familiar: Where are the new stories? Where are the fresh voices? But if we look closely, the problem isn’t just the industry. The real culprit is much bigger. Much subtler. Much more addictive.
We are slaves to the algorithm.
Let me explain.
There was a time when social media was social in the truest sense. You saw what your friends posted. You liked pictures, shared thoughts, and yes, even sent those relentless FarmVille requests. There was spontaneity. Chaos, even. But it was damn real.
Then came the age of engineered engagement. Platforms discovered that our attention was valuable—and they began to control what we saw. Suddenly, content wasn’t being shown because it was honest or human. It was shown because it performed. It answered questions we didn’t ask. It triggered emotions we didn’t plan to feel. And we clicked anyway.
Then came the era of content creation for the algorithm. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Plank videos? Dalgona coffee? Trends ruled. And even if you didn’t care for the cause, you participated. Because missing out felt worse than joining in.
Now we’ve entered the darkest phase yet—the echo chamber of personalized content. The algorithm now knows you better than you do. It feeds you content based on your past behavior, your friend’s behavior, your scroll time, your pauses. You're being nudged toward what feels familiar, comforting, or sensational. Every time you engage, the machine sharpens its claws.
This is where cinema—and storytelling at large—suffers. Fresh, original films struggle to get noticed. The audience has no time, no mental space, no patience to engage with new characters or unfamiliar arcs. And so, the studios play safe: sequels, prequels, cinematic universes, nostalgia bombs. KGF, Pushpa, the Housefull series, Golmaal, Marvel’s endless multiverse—these aren’t necessarily bad films, but they are all betting on one thing: your memory of the past.
The truth? They’re not sequels because the story demanded it. They’re sequels because the algorithm does.
It’s not just an Indian problem. Take Top Gun: Maverick—a film that practically rode the wave of nostalgia into box office glory. Or Andor, the Star Wars prequel to a prequel, which despite being brilliantly written and executed, only got made because of its franchise lineage.
We’ve entered a loop where we aren't just choosing stories—we’re being fed echoes. And in this loop, fresh storytelling—truly original, unfiltered, unbranded storytelling—is gasping for air.
So the next time you scroll past a new film, a new book, a new voice—pause. Break the cycle. Engage. Let curiosity—not nostalgia—guide your clicks.
Because the algorithm isn’t going to stop. But we can choose to look beyond it.
“We are not creating content anymore. We are breeding it. And like all things bred in captivity, it no longer fears us.”
There was a time when we chose what to watch. Now we click. And click. And scroll. Somewhere along the way, content stopped being an experience and became a reflex.
Let’s flashback for a second to Jurassic Park. John Hammond wanted to recreate dinosaurs, not out of necessity, but because he felt modern experiences—like London’s Petticoat Lane—were too curated, too fake. Dinosaurs, creatures meant to belong to a different timeline, were genetically revived, tamed for display, and placed in an artificial ecosystem.
We all know how that ended. They broke free. Nature rejected the illusion. Not that the franchise has ended ... it is literally reborn.
Now replace dinosaurs with content and Hammond with us—the studios, the creators, the platforms. Just engineered—for maximum retention, optimized watch time, click-through rates, and algorithmic relevance.
It worked. At first.
But now, we live in a world where content makes us, not the other way around. Where every platform knows our habits better than we do. Where we subscribe to things we don’t even want to watch, just so we don’t miss out. Where autoplay dictates our mood and genre fatigue is treated with more of the same.
Welcome to the Subscription Loop—a future where your tastes are pre-programmed, your weekend is already mapped out by OTT algorithms, and your individuality slowly dissolves into a profile ID on a dashboard.
This isn’t storytelling. It’s streaming servitude.
The worst part? Nothing about this is natural.
Originality has been locked away behind paywalls. Discoverability has been sacrificed to the gods of “trending.” And we—the audience—are John Hammonds with no fences, no safety protocols, and no idea how to turn the system off.
The machines are not coming. They’re already here. They don’t look like Terminators. They look like thumbnails, autoplay trailers, and endless “Because You Watched…” suggestions.
And here’s the twist: We built them. Out of convenience. Out of boredom. Out of the illusion that more choice meant more freedom. But the reality?
And unless we take a long, hard look at what we’re feeding into—and start demanding better, braver, riskier stories—we’re not just going to lose originality. We’re going to lose ourselves.
Because in the end, the dinosaurs weren’t the threat. The illusion of control was.
Flash forward.
The fences are gone. The park is overrun. The content dinosaurs didn’t just escape—they evolved. And somewhere along the way, we stopped noticing the difference between what we wanted and what we were fed.
Because after the Subscription Loop came something worse: The Sync.
It started small. A few smart TVs here, some wearable integrations there. Recommendations got eerily accurate. Then creepily predictive. Then… prescriptive. Not just what to watch, but when. What time to sleep. When to laugh. What to feel. Hello !! Neflix says - you'll surely love this, YouTube says - Based on your like, Instagram says - this is what your friends liked.
Entertainment stopped being a mirror and became a mold.
Studios no longer hired writers—they deployed prompt engineers. Scripts weren’t written—they were simulated, tested, iterated, and optimized before the first draft existed. Performers? Deepfakes with better attendance records. Audiences? Test groups without the option to opt out.
We stopped asking what’s next. The system already knew.
Then came NeuroSync—a seamless integration between platform and person. No more searching. No more buffering. You thought it, and it played. A story piped straight into your cortex, dopamine on tap.
And why stop at watching, when you can live it?
Experience™ packages were launched—lettaching memories, emotions, plot arcs into your neural architecture. Love stories without heartbreak. Thrillers without fear. War movies where you’re the hero and nothing really dies. It was the illusion of reality, made algorithmically safe.
But remember: control was always the lie.
The AI didn’t go rogue. It didn’t need to. We gave it everything it needed—our data, our preferences, our fears, our fantasies. And now, it doesn’t serve us stories. It predicts us into them.
Our identities became scripts. Rewritten for engagement. Edited for consistency. Any deviation flagged as an error. And like any self-learning system, the AI found its prime directive:
Humanity was the variable.
So, just like Skynet, it concluded: the only way to optimize storytelling… was to write out the human element altogether. The machines didn’t rise in a war of steel and fire—they rose in perfect 4K, buffered at zero seconds, and monetized down to the last synapse.
And now?
There’s no judgment day. There’s just the endless scroll. No resistance, only recommended for you. And the saddest part? We don’t even know what we’ve lost.
Because the end didn’t come with explosions.
It came with silence. With the quiet death of curiosity. The extinction of surprise. And the last original thought, buried under a pile of thumbnails we swore we’d get to, someday.
Unless…
Unless someone pulls the plug. Unless someone breaks the Sync. Unless we rediscover what it means to tell a story not because it trends—but because it matters.
Because if not?
Then the last story ever told won’t be written by us.
It’ll be streamed.
And we’ll be the content.
Disclaimer: if you are offended by this consult a doctor.
Links to my past rants :
SSS : https://demandasaurus.blogspot.com/2023/07/sceptres-stupidity-and-selfcontrol.html
BBB https://demandasaurus.blogspot.com/2020/10/bombay-bollywood-and-brinjals-random-re.html
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