A few days ago, I watched The Arrival. It’s basically a movie about a alien landing and a Linguistics academic is the only one who has the patience/knowledge/skills to figure out a way to communicate with them without having the world combust. I really loved the movie, especially because it was sort of a sci/fi futuristic movie and it featured a heroine as the protagonist.

I remember in high school, I used to watch one movie every weekend, I basically looked up every single Oscar nominee and tried to watch them all. In my freetime, I would browse trailers for hours on YouTube. It makes me kind of sad that I don’t even know what movie trailers are out there anymore. Not just movies, but also browsing new music used to be one of my favorite activities. :’)

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I think the movie industry is going to experience a lot of change with the influence of data science specifically in the area of attracting viewers. MoviePass is this hot startup that has lots of funding from their seed rounds. Currently, it’s in the process of losing a lot of money in exchange for data collection to bolster the strength of their algorithm. The company is giving out unlimited movies at any movie theatre in their system for $10 monthly. You are essentially paying $10 and your privacy (they keep track of what movies you are watching). Clearly, from the Cambridge Analytica mishap, it seems fairly simple to allocate different buckets of personalities for people and micro target them. So, I will not be surprised if what MoviePass is able to do changes the landscape of movies and trailers entirely. This is really sad to say I think, but I am fine with them sending me targeted ads about products I might like based on my personality and past searches. I guess the problem comes when they try and influence my political and social views… that’s not ok!