Sexualize little girls, earn little profit.
Streaming giant Netflix announced Tuesday that it missed its Q3 new subscriptions target, plunging its stock by five percent. According to Axios, nobody thought the company could continue to grow at the same rate as it had in the first half of the year, but “analysts were still expecting it to meet expectations of at least 3.3 million net new global subscribers.”
Didn’t happen. Why? Neither Netflix or Axios bring up the possibility, but it could be backlash from streaming -- and repeatedly defending -- the French pedo-bait film Cuties. After all, how many companies are targeted with their very own hashtag campaign that becomes a Twitter top trend? #CancelNetflix, a direct response to Cuties, definitely had a short-term impact on subscriptions. Maybe it hurt over the long-haul too.
Netflix blames the pandemic for its Q3 disappointments, stating in a shareholders letter that Covid “continues to make projections very uncertain, but as the world hopefully recovers in 2021, we would expect that our growth will revert back to levels similar to pre-COVID.”
And by then, most people will have forgotten that a Texas grand jury indicted the company for “promotion of lewd visual material depicting [a] child,” and that the Parents Television Council has asked the U.S. DOJ to investigate “a broader, consistent pattern of Netflix sexualizing children.” Or not. The PTC has a whole list of Netflix programs with content involving kids and sex that should make normal people plenty queasy.
Sophisticated lefties have of course defended the movie, arguing that it is a ‘social commentary’ that makes the case about the dangers of sexualized imagery of young girls. Except that sophisticated people should be able to think of ways to discuss sexualized imagery of young girls without actually contributing to it.
And Netflix has tried playing First Amendment martyr, saying it’s shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that anyone in “2020 America would try “censoring storytelling.”
Tell it to the judge. In the meantime, it seems like consumers are judging Netflix, and it's coming up short.
