The reason you go on TikTok is to get the pulse of the nation, to be informed of what people think.

This is where the oldster/mainstream media/anti-technology perspective gets it wrong. If you’re not on your phone consistently, if you’re not surfing TikTok, you don’t know what the majority of the public is thinking, and therefore, how can you market to them?

We keep hearing about IRL. That one must put down the phone and interact with those around them. I’ve got no problem with in person relations, but we are not going back to the 1860s, or even the 1960s. To insist on real life only is like decrying the car and continuing to use your horse and buggy.

Think of music. How is it marketed today? Online!

Of course we had word of mouth previously, but music didn’t spread as wide previously. But there are put-downs of TikTok and Spotify and…this is how most of the active consumers find out about music and consume it. This is what is driving the sale of tickets. Terrestrial radio comes last, if at all. Find a youngster who listens to terrestrial radio and I’ll give you a nickel, and at the end of the day all the requests will be fulfilled by the cash in my wallet…and I’ll still have money left over.

Social media is not the devil. And today’s social media is not that of yesteryear’s. It used to be one to one, now it’s one to many. Furthermore, unlike Instagram, TikTok is not a bragging platform. As for influencers trying to sell you something… People are trying to sell you things all day long, you’re bombarded by sales messages. And despite all the press, the number of straight ahead sold out influencers on TikTok is de minimis. The story is just amplified because some of these people make bank.

And when people make money online this way, they don’t make music.

Trends start on TikTok. And if you don’t know the trends…

TikTok is where creativity lives. Want to be inspired? Just go through some TikTok clips. It’s a cornucopia of expression and ideas. With modern technology everybody has the ability to record themselves and post the result. This is what the smartphone has wrought. It’s broadened the playing field, reduced the barrier to entry to nothing.

Also, unlike on competing platforms, you can get pushed into people’s feeds without having a history of success. In other words, if what you do is good people will see it. This is the problem the music industry has, how do you expose people to new music, how do you break an act?

Of course not all music on TikTok is good. And sure, labels have injected money into TikTok successes to no result, but you’ve got to separate the wheat from the chaff, it’s a skill you must develop.

And do you know what one of the main types of video on TikTok is? Confessional. Women especially speaking about their relationships. But most A&R people are men, and this doesn’t square with either their lives or their history. You want to sign up new Joni Mitchells, you want to sign up women who fit Taylor Swift’s adolescent confessional niche in country.

The other thing you’ll find out on TikTok is your feed is different from another’s. Demonstrating that we’re all in our own silos. But those silos run deep. We are looking for expertise in these silos. An example would be Billy Strings, whose success is based on his ability to play, whose career in arenas is a result of internet exposure and word of mouth.

If you are concerned with marketing, you must take the pulse of the public constantly. This is one of the reasons the Democrats lost in 2024, they didn’t know how the public thought. And Andrew Cuomo lost all that money on television ads during the mayoral campaign while Mamdani created online viral moments.

What are people thinking? What are they interested in? What keeps popping up again and again? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you can’t relate to the public at large. Which is fine if you want to live in a bubble, but if you are selling anything…

A starting musician could surf TikTok to inform them what people are listening to, what succeeds. As for those artists sitting on the sideline, refusing to post on social media, the joke is on you.

Oldsters are now explaining their songs on TikTok. Todd Rundgren gave a lengthy explanation of “Hello It’s Me.” I bought both the Nazz album and “Something/Anything?” which contain that tune when those records came out, I’ve spoken with Todd multiple times, I still learned stuff.

Yes, that’s one kind of video that works on TikTok. An explanation of your past, of your history. You used to have to rely on the press to do this, your PR person had to persuade outlets. Now you don’t need a PR person, you can go directly to your fans and talk about whatever you want for as long as you care.

And newbies know that a TikTok clip must have internal value beyond the music. That this is a canvas to be creative. If you say you play music and that’s it, if you don’t come up with new ideas and how to express them visually, you’re marketing yourself with one hand behind your back.

The precepts have changed. And when one rails against TikTok it’s no different from those who railed against MP3s and then streaming. Where did the market go? Not back to physical media.

You can choose to live in a bubble, but if you want to know what is going on with the people, if you want to be exposed to and learn from unfiltered messages, unlike in the press, you need to spend a lot of time online, and right now the platform that is king is TikTok.

If I were a company marketing to people I would insist that my team watch TikTok for at least twenty minutes every day. This is no different from those who watched MTV during the eighties to be hip to what worked, what the outlet would play.

As for record companies, I’d tell them to hire more women, because women rule disproportionately online. Too many men who pooh-pooh feelings and intimacies, who are baked in the rock or rap of the past, have decision making power, and they’ve got it all wrong.

And mindless can work, but what resonates most on TikTok is knowledge and depth. Think about marketing to that.

The same people whose parents told them their music was for troglodytes have contempt for what the younger generations are into today. But Perry Como never came back.

I harp on this point, the need to utilize TikTok, because it’s so important.

Also, you must be on for a while for the algorithm to figure out what to serve you. To go on for a few minutes and say you don’t get it is a mistake. You must invest yourself, make a little effort, then the payoff will begin.

If you’re too busy to be on TikTok you’re too busy to market to the public. And that’s fine. But if you’re selling…

And Hollywood wonders why this was a box office disappointment?

There have been reams of pages utilizing “One Battle After Another” as an illustration of a failure of the audience, that people just won’t come out to see a great movie. Having now watched it on HBO…

I was hipped by Harold that it was a disappointment. He went to see it in the theatre. Something I choose not to do. Not only do I find the experience passé, how do you expect me to sit for two hours and forty two minutes without getting up to pee? If you want to make a series, do so, but don’t give us these lengthy, extended films that are a chore to watch in one sitting.

Now I’ve recently thought that Leonardo DiCaprio was overrated. However he was good here. But Sean Penn? He’s the new Meryl Streep, you can see the preparation, you can see the acting, the ultimate result being that the portrayal just doesn’t ring true. The walk? Both bow-legged and stiff? Maybe if you’re in your twenties… I mean he’s signaling the rigidity of the character, but it ends up making viewers wince…this is why people decry Penn, he takes himself so seriously. I loved Willa’s put-down of him, about the tight shirt and the lifts in his shoes, but it’s hard not to square that with the real Penn.

But Benicio del Toro has never been better. Confident yet understated.

The acting in all was pretty good. But the plotting?

I didn’t read Pynchon’s “Vineland,” although online research tells me the film is not faithful to the book. But the first issue the flick has is TONE! You want to take it seriously. Is this a commentary on immigration? I mean there are no laughs at first. Except maybe for when Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills first encounters Sean Penn’s Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. The plot seems so fantastical, an underground rebel organization akin to the Weathermen, one which we don’t have today (don’t tell me Antifa is equal, Antifa is not even an organization!), taking violent action. The inspiration for putting their lives on the line is not made clear. And then they’re robbing banks… Is this like the Symbionese Liberation Army?

And then sixteen years go by and you start to wonder…is this like a Mexican drug lord movie, like “Sicario,” or is it a family drama and…why should I care so much?

I know, I know, the reviews talk about the humor. And there is some, but it’s not like I was laughing out loud, I smiled at most.

And then it’s a chase movie.

But all the critics have waxed rhapsodic. Maybe this is why they no longer have pull. If an adult went to the theatre to see this based only on reviews, if they didn’t consider themselves a cineaste, they’d be angry, they’d want their money back, and they would not journey to the theatre soon thereafter, if at all.

This is not what the public wants. This faux intellectualism. It’s not as bad as Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master,” then again, his previous film, “Licorice Pizza,” had tone and not much more…but at least the tone was consistent.

Do I think “One Battle After Another” would be best seen on a big screen? Sure. The cinematography was rich. But I watched it on an iPad and I didn’t feel that I was missing anything. Then again, the intelligentsia will say that’s why I didn’t love it. Hogwash.

Let’s say that theatrical is for event movies only. It is no longer a broad-based business. If anything, what is purveyed by Netflix and the other streamers is superior. And now you’ve got Tinseltown’s knickers in a twist regarding Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. The two main fears being that Netflix will make fewer films and those they do produce won’t be distributed theatrically.

This reminds me of nothing so much as Napster. You had the record labels and old farts saying that the CD was superior, that no one would want anything better, need anything better. But now computers and cars don’t even come with a CD drive, on demand streaming is king, and vinyl is mostly a souvenir, don’t let the press persuade you otherwise.

Why can’t Hollywood do what Spotify did and get ahead of the market?

Oh, that’s right, that’s what Netflix did. It switched its formula from rental to streaming and there was public outcry, people loved their DVDs! Ask them today if they even have a DVD player! And then all the studios licensed their product, building Netflix’s business, and Netflix started production itself. This is Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma write large. If you don’t disrupt yourself, someone else will!

When I think back on 2025, the best production I saw was “Adolescence.” Notice that despite all the ink spilled about “White Lotus,” no one is talking about that anymore, it was formulaic when “Adolescence” was not. And we can talk all about the one extended shot technique, but that was secondary to the plot and the performances. I still think about “Adolescence,” it raised issues in our culture today. Am I going to think about “One Battle After Another” tomorrow? No!

Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is right. Not always, but if you’re in the business of commerce/money as opposed to pure art, you should look at what the people say.

And don’t crap on the public too much. People do not want retreads, they always want something new, they’re open to something new, the fact that the purveyors don’t give it to them is something else.

There might be an audience for superhero movies, there might be an audience for the Spotify Top 50, but most people don’t even bother, they’re not even shrugging their shoulders, they just don’t care, these productions don’t speak to them.

And did you read  in the “Wall Street Journal” today about the lack of melody in today’s popular music? Once the mainstream goes on something you know there’s a problem:

“Has America Lost Its Melody? – Something changed in popular music around 2005. I suspect it reflects a change in the country.”

Free link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/has-america-lost-its-melody-0ec9fc31?st=1yjWtD&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

This is how Lou Pearlman ate the labels’ lunch with Backstreet Boys and NSYNC! The majors weren’t selling this stuff, there was no competition. All the A&R people were too hip. Just like they’re too hip to sign something today that’s pure melody, laden with hooks…it just doesn’t get them off.

The record labels lost touch with the public years ago. That’s why the business is stale. And theatrical films are almost laughable.

Do I think they spent a lot of money on “One Battle After Another”? Do I think everybody involved gave it their best? Yes. But I also think it was the emperor’s new clothes…didn’t anybody see that this production didn’t appeal to enough people to make a profit? That the movie is flawed in tone and ultimately indescribable? Is it action, romance, comedy…so much is thrown in that the audience can’t ultimately be engaged, never mind that there is nothing to take from the flick.

And if you think “One Battle After Another” is an allegory about today’s political scene… Yeah, right. And today’s revolutionaries don’t even fight with violence, they fight with technology, computers, the internet…but everybody involved in this picture is an old fart invested in old ways. Hell, I’d like to see a movie about Ukraine’s homemade drones and how they’re attacking Russia’s vulnerabilities, that’s modern warfare… Not some nincompoops out of the sixties who look so out of date they’re laughable. And I’m not laughing with the filmmakers, but at them.

First and foremost it has to be an enjoyable experience. No one cares about the look and the performances if the story isn’t great. Same deal with music… Without a good song, it doesn’t matter how good the playing is.

The film industry needs the equivalent of the Ramones and the punk bands of the seventies, revolting against the overproduced rock of the day.

Oh wait! We’ve got that, on TikTok and YouTube. Instead of criticizing these platforms, creators have to study them, to see what is so attractive about these videos.

And I’ll bet most of the reviewers saying how great “One Battle After Another” is, and those at the studio too, don’t even have a TikTok account, they’re out of touch with the public. The public is ravenous, if it finds anything good it will embrace it and spread the word.

“One Battle After Another” is not it.

For the new year.

Tune in Saturday December 27th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

Wow.

I was going to write about another Netflix documentary, “Breakdown: 1975,” but when the ending reflected the attitudes of today…I lost the inspiration.

You see there’s no snow in Colorado. Just the stuff they made back in November. Since then, not only has it been too warm to make more snow, it hasn’t snowed for three weeks. The news has been pretty widely disseminated, but don’t conflate what is going on in California to what is happening in the Centennial State. As of this writing, Mammoth has gotten 67″ already from the Golden State storm you’ve been reading about, and it’s still snowing! And that’s not completely atypical for California, where they have these insane dumps and then days and days of sunshine. In Colorado it’s an accumulation of a few inches here and a few more there and you end up with three hundred plus inches at the end of the season. But not this year.

Now my policy is to go out each and every day. But on Monday…

It’s more crowded here than I’ve ever seen it. Bombers and beginners. The slopes are frightening, a straight-liner missed me by mere inches. But later in the day, just before I was done, I was just above the entrances to chairs 3&4, below the SLOW banners, and I saw this snowboarder about ten to fifteen feet away and I yelled out DON’T HIT ME! She was barely moving, I was completely stopped. And then she ran right into me.

I haven’t been out since.

Of course she skied away. And when I got up from my fall, my butt hurting and my knee a little bit too, I raced down to confront her. She just smiled and said she was skiing, she didn’t apologize at all.

And there you have it in Vail, Christmas 2025. It’s supposed to snow one inch tomorrow, and then six the day after and…I’ll go back out, but really, that’s not enough to make a truly significant difference.

So I’ve been reading and last night we finished “Pluribus” (am I the only one who doesn’t get it?) and today I decided to fire up Netflix and watch the 1975 documentary.

And this smorgasbord of images is great, however it always bothers me when they interview those who were not alive back then to testify… But everybody’s afraid if they only feature old farts, youngsters won’t watch. And for a minute there, I thought every American needed to watch “Breakdown: 1975,” to see the way it once was, when movies were necessary viewing, at the theatre, but… The film fudged the dates, it just wasn’t 1975, and then said the era was over with “Jaws,” which was untrue, and then featured right wing blowback and the gas emptied from my tank.

So I decided to watch the Seymour Hersh documentary, “Cover-Up.” Once again, WOW!

Now thinking about it, what struck me most about this doc was when Hersh referred to himself as an outsider. That’s it in a nutshell. Now, more than ever, society doesn’t like outsiders. And people don’t want to be  outsiders, they don’t want to be out there alone, never mind victimized by online abuse, so they take a side and stick to it. Seemingly everybody in America, from musicians to corporate executives…they hold their head down and don’t make waves because they don’t want to suffer the consequences, even if they’re right.

And Hersh has been right many times.

Of course he’s also been wrong. But that’s the nature of the game, if you’re never wrong, you’re playing it to close to the vest, you’re holding back too much. I guess you could say the same thing about musicians, when you get inspired and what you’ve created is too far out for the record company, if you’re afraid of alienating fans, that’s what you should include, that’s what you should release, because that’s what changes the world, not what is expected.

So you get Hersh’s story… His upbringing, his acceptance at the University of Chicago almost by accident. And I hate to piss people off, but that college experience helps form him, makes him who he is, because in that elite hothouse there are smart, educated people who challenge him, who want to wrestle with ideas, who inform and teach him too.

And then he becomes a reporter.

His “cases” are legendary. There’s the My Lai Massacre.

No one wanted to believe it. And then Calley was released from jail soon after conviction…just like the January 6th protesters. Didn’t matter what you did, if you supported the war… And Hersh posits that the story hadn’t leaked despite so many knowing about it because it was de rigueur, it happened all the time.

And if you ever thought Henry Kissinger was a hero instead of a war criminal… Wow a third time. He had a cozy relationship with the “New York Times,” they printed what he dictated while he was responsible for so much heinous stuff that people were unaware of. (At least until Hersh arrived.)

There’s Watergate…

You’ll watch “Cover-Up” and be disillusioned with the government. But the weird thing is today, the administration is doing all this stuff openly that they used to hide.

But the generations have changed. Boomers were taught to question authority. If you do that today, you can’t get a job at the bank, and then you can’t join the country club and…

When you’re outside looking in and it doesn’t add up, oftentimes you’re right, which is why this Bari Weiss/”60 Minutes” thing is so important. If we can’t depend on the news to bring us the truth…

Then again, today most people get their information online and are convinced of inane conspiracy theories that end up overshadowing the real ones. Even Abu Ghraib…we all saw the images. Today, the news site you click on, the one that aligns with your views, may not even post a story that doesn’t comport with the orthodoxy… Fox News got the message, when it started challenging Trump it was losing viewers to even more right wing outlets, so it got with the program.

Everybody gets with the program, but not Sy Hersh.

And this documentary is a bit different from most. It’s not a linear retelling of Hersh’s life. You ultimately get some details of his growing up, but what you’ve really got here is his greatest hits, and his reluctance to do this movie at all.

So “Cover-Up” is the documentary all Americans need to see. And since it’s on Netflix, many more people will see it than if it debuted in the theatre. You only get publicity once, and if people can’t partake immediately, they forget about a movie when it’s finally available for streaming, it’s not only no longer new, there’s a tsunami of additional product and…

Netflix is smart. “Cover-Up” came out today, when most people are on vacation and have the time to watch it. “Cover-Up” cuts to the heart of not only the government, but life in these United States. On one hand it will leave you numb, on the other suspicious of the government. And you should be suspicious of the government, and corporations too…Hersh gets into Gulf & Western and in the process it’s revealed that the editor he reports to, who doesn’t want to run Hersh’s business stories in the “New York Times,” has crossed the line too. And what does the editor say when confronted with his behavior? That his lawyer said it was okay. And then Hersh responds that that’s what he hears every day from those he’s investigating.

I can’t recommend “Cover-Up” enough. Not because it’s the best documentary I’ve ever seen, but because it raises issues that are not being raised elsewhere, and it illustrates you can make it, have a career, challenging conventional wisdom. Just don’t expect to be honored by the company or be invited for drinks at the bar…

But if you have the cojones…