Do you mean you're glad because you now have a chance to prop up the rapidly atrophying emotional intelligence of younger generations? Or because you're jumping into the right business? My personal anecdata to back this up: I matched with a girl on a dating app, and we talked for a long while over text before we set a date to meet. The highlight was when she told me abruptly about halfway through our conversation that I am "v cool," v meaning very. I was jazzed. Partly because I appreciated her forwardness, partly because I am just sort of starting to get over a wrenching break up. But it dawned on me later. We haven't met yet. Except for some mutual interest to meet, I have no idea what she's like or if there is even any chemistry. But the highlight of my week was texting a girl I haven't met yet that I was paired with algorithmically and her saying I'm v cool. How fucking weird.Haven't quite wrapped my head around it, but it makes me glad I jumped from screenplays to novels.
When your primary means of interacting with your friends and surroundings is via mediated text, mediated text becomes the most powerful cultural and emotional influence in your life.
Glad I'm jumping into the right business. Friend of mine wrote the script for Maze Runner. He ended up with the same manager who dropped me. He's got like three projects set up by Charlize Theron. But his work is largely being driven by authors. It occurs to me that as the 'boomers die, narrative television dies with them. The average age of TV viewers is 44, while the average age of broadcast TV viewers is 53. And I've done lots of work for Smosh and the like and the thing is - big, stupid, overblown facial expressions and physical humor and jokes with zero subtlety not only works when your screen is 5" or less, it works when your native tongue is emoji. I spend my summers observing young people who are deprived of their phones and internet for up to 12 weeks. They still speak in memes and hashtags. It's not that people are getting worse at communicating with each other, they're just getting better at communicating with people they'll never meet.