{"id":84,"date":"2005-10-01T19:44:06","date_gmt":"2005-10-02T02:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=84"},"modified":"2005-10-03T22:52:17","modified_gmt":"2005-10-04T05:52:17","slug":"netflix-and-the-stigma-of-mediocrity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2005\/10\/01\/netflix-and-the-stigma-of-mediocrity\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix and the stigma of mediocrity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Netflix allows people to rate movies.  I remember their rating system once upon a time including a &#8220;just okay&#8221; choice.  Now, however, their options are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 star: Hated it<\/li>\n<li>2 stars: Didn&#8217;t like it<\/li>\n<li>3 stars: Liked it<\/li>\n<li>4 stars: Really liked it<\/li>\n<li>5 stars: Loved it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is no room to indicate that a movie is mediocre, that you neither would demand your money back nor would care to watch the movie again.  Is this another form of society&#8217;s belief that there&#8217;s something inherently wrong with being <em>average<\/em>?  It&#8217;s like parents who can&#8217;t stand the thought of their kids getting C grades in high school.<\/p>\n<p>So, as in high school, the end result is grade inflation.  I see a movie that I think is &#8220;just okay&#8221;.  I don&#8217;t dislike it, so I give it 3 stars.  But then I see a movie that I actually do like, and now that the 3-star rating is cheapened, I have to give it 4 stars.  Argh. (And do we really need to distinguish between &#8220;really liked it&#8221; and &#8220;loved it&#8221;?  Is this really high school?)<\/p>\n<p>Why can&#8217;t everyone have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deftone.com\/archives\/2002\/10\/adequate\">Bill McNeal&#8217;s attitude<\/a>? (And yes, he did admit at the end of the episode that being adequate sucks, but it was fun while it lasted.)<\/p>\n<p>Not coincidentally, it&#8217;s the time of the year <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2004\/11\/26\/performance-evaluations\/\">when everyone at VMware writes performance evaluations<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Netflix allows people to rate movies. I remember their rating system once upon a time including a &#8220;just okay&#8221; choice. Now, however, their options are: 1 star: Hated it 2 stars: Didn&#8217;t like it 3 stars: Liked it 4 stars: Really liked it 5 stars: Loved it There is no room to indicate that a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantsraves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}