Arnold’s Docuseries: A Case Study in Online Content Pollution

A friend recommended Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 3-part docuseries on Netflix a few days ago. And I did. The series focused on Arnie and his life in a way that portrayed him as a hero. I got that feeling as well. I almost believed what I saw. It turns out it is an infomercial at best, as this article in The Bulwark reminds us. 

More than the article and Arnie’s series, the whole episode focused on the irony of our post-Internet age. Today, when everything is a search away, we can’t find anything or even forget to check things. I suspect the real cause of this is the increasing info-pollution. It is so easy for the past to be buried under terabytes that are our recent yesterdays. 

You forget the past. Everything becomes a blur. Take Arnie’s example — I was well aware of his misadventures (in the recent Russian sense), yet it took a rundown of Arnie’s history to remind me that he ain’t no saint. 

Netflix, at one point, wanted to be HBO. Sadly it is now a data-informed MBO — Median (and Medicore) Box Office. Now it just pumps out lower-quality facsimiles of popular shows. Rust Valley Restorers has led to TexMex Motors. There are barely watchable true crime shows or docuseries about recent scandals, such as Orgasm Inc. (I wanted to poke my eyes out after watching 15 minutes of that crap. )

I can’t blame Netflix. The company, like most streamers, is hungry for content. These low-value docuseries are cheap, fast, and can create a lot of buzz. A series about a true crime, a scandal, or Arnold, gets a lot of attention to drive viewers to the platform. 

It is not the platform’s job to worry about the quality or accuracy of information. It is ironic because when I think of documentaries, I think of hard-hitting investigative reports and telling the truth. As a talent manager told IndieWire: 

“Documentaries are supposed to be about telling a story that wouldn’t otherwise be told, or bringing to light a story and an issue and characters that likely wouldn’t otherwise be told,” the manager continued. “That doesn’t mean the ‘WeWork’ [docs] shouldn’t exist. It’s just there’s also got to be room for those emerging filmmakers and those stories that are giving you a snapshot into a world that you wouldn’t otherwise get a snapshot into, something that’s not already been in the headlines. I think that’s where the divide seems to be. It just seems like commercial equals something that we as a society already know about.”

Docuseries and faux documentaries are just a continuation of a reality I learned very early as a blogger: the post-social, the always-on, the always-connected Internet is an insatiable beast. The more you feed it, the more it is wanted. The sheer volume of information uploaded to the Internet every day is staggering. It is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily. Five hundred million daily tweets and nearly 100 million photos are shared on Instagram. And the numbers are going up and up. There is a reason why we can’t remember anything anymore, and we, as humans, are incapable of our new reality. 

As a blogger, if I wrote more and published more often, more people would return to my blog. Many would engage in the comments and would come back often to check the comments. The longer the comment threads, the more often people returned to my blog. And I will have more page views. (Eventually, this would become to be known as engagement.)

This was in the early-200os, and things were still in control. In the early days, Google used to value “quality” as its page rank algorithm looked at how many people linked to a specific website and how often it was linked. It arranged the search results this way. It also offered monetization through Google Adwords. I know my blog benefited from those ad dollars. Others went further and started arbitrating cheap blog posts — anywhere from $5 to $50 per post — and Google ad dollars. Content farms were next. And it didn’t take very long; the quality of the whole ecosystem went down. 

If advertising and ad-based business models were the first original sin of the Internet, then engagement-based business models are the second deadly sin. The post-social Internet doesn’t distinguish between quality and quantity. It doesn’t care where the content comes from, either. As long as it has engagement, and that is why social media platforms expose us to the same stories and similar headlines so often that it drains our ability to recall anything relevant. 

Since engagement doesn’t assign any qualitative value, all that matters is engagement for the sake of attention, which in turn begets more attention. More engagement means platforms can sell more ad impressions and/or keep everyone glued to their platforms. The more dopamine hits we get, the higher the addiction and engagement. This is an all too familiar story of the Internet. You are already seeing the cheapening of content in newsletters and podcasts. Streaming platforms — video and audio— follow that all-familiar route. 

The harsh reality of today’s Internet is that it isn’t designed to help us. There is only so much information that can be presented to us — and it is decided by the objectives of the companies that offer Internet services. Google will optimize results to extract maximum value from its ads. Facebook will do the same. Despite seeming to be very sophisticated, most of these systems use crude inputs and are mostly arranged around new and novel to do one thing: keep you addicted so fractions of your attention can be bundled together to sell ads. (Recommended: How your attention is bought and sold online/The Markup.)

To some, this might be a problem. To others, such as marketing and media makeover gurus, this is an opportunity. And docuseries and documentaries are the newest frontier. Streaming platforms need fresh content, like blogs need fresh posts, or Instagram needs new photos and reels. More new content means more people stay glued to their platforms. What doesn’t matter is fact, truth, reality, what’s right or wrong. 

As long as it is presented with a palatable, believable truthiness. Like Arnie’s documentary.