I haven’t watched The Acolyte because hate-watching a show isn’t appealing. It may not seem fair to judge a show without watching it, but the show creator, Leslye Headland, has made it clear in interviews that the show should be categorized as lesbian fantasy. Using the logic of the lead actress, Amandla Stenberg, none of the actors are like me. Representation is so important.
With streaming services, the size of the potential audience isn’t comparable, so it’s not clear whether a show is popular or not. The Acolyte is available on Disney+, and was watched by 5 million people out of 150 million customers. Some portion of those viewers were hate-watching, but Disney doesn’t care. For a show to pay off, Disney needs the show to generate more customers. Nobody is signing up just to hate watch.
The real value of The Acolyte may be in the cottage industry of media critics on Youtube. The Critical Drinker, one popular media critic gets 1.5 million views for a review of an episode of The Acolyte. There are a couple of dozen less popular Youtubers making money talking about the show. Youtube critics aren’t getting rich from their videos, but, unlike The Acolyte, their videos don’t cost a half-million dollars per minute to produce.
I wouldn’t watch an episode of The Acolyte for free, but enjoy schadenfroude-watching the Youtube critics.
So far, Disney has lost $11 billion on streaming, and that makes me happy. The degenerates and groomers producing their content have ruined so many franchises I once enjoyed, I’d like to see the company go bankrupt.
Even if it were free, I wouldn’t spend a day at Disneyland. My fond memories of going there on family vacations remain, and that’s enough.