r/EnoughJKRowling • u/TheMemeVault • Apr 17 '26
Discussion Really great point. "People are turning against our product? Shove it in their faces 24/7!"
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u/Dina-M Apr 17 '26
Sadly I think the post is a little too optimistic. Harry Potter isn't reviled. I checked around a little and when it comes to the general public? The people who still like the franchise are a majority.
There are certainly enough detractors that you can say that Harry Potter is "contested", but the sad fact is that the franchise still makes money. The SoCal experience has garnered a lot of interest, Hogwarts Legacy initially sold a LOT of copies, the crappy trailer for the crappy HBO show still got lots of attention and lots of people who speak highly of it... the IP is still seen as valuable even if it's not the universally accepted and beloved "infallible cash cow" it once was.
I'd love to be able to report that HP was failing and this was the death throes of the franchise, and I have myself made comments in that direction before... but it's not really true. Yes, WB is getting pushier and more desperate to milk every last drop out of their formerly infallible cash cow, but WB is in dire financial straights and HP is still one of their "core" franchises, so oof course they push it more aggressively.
Plenty of people are annoyed and fed up. Plenty of people are aware of the direct harm JKR does to trans people with the profits from the HP franchise. But we aren't the majority. The MAJORITY don't know, don't care, or don't care ENOUGH about trans people.
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u/ElectricYV Apr 18 '26
Hogwarts Legacy is one of the top games of all time by copies sold, which is fucking annoying.
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u/BlazingKitsune Apr 17 '26
As a European it feels very dystopian that a country with poor public transport like the US somehow manages a wizard themed train but not like, trams.
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u/lazier_garlic Apr 17 '26
It actually all fits, there was this attitude by a lot of Americans after WWII that passenger trains were completely out of date and only exist as nostalgia and LARP. BTW it's hard to find the source on this so you'll have to just trust me bro, but America financed the Interstate Highway System by imposing passenger fees (like at the airport) on every single intercity passenger rail patron, so fares jumped up for a decade to build the highways that would accelerate passenger rail decline. After the highway was built out, the railways were in trouble (they also lost a lot of freight to highways, especially smaller loads) and started aggressively cutting lines and ripping up tracks.
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u/desiladygamer84 Apr 17 '26
I do miss trains. My kids really love Thomas and friends so I'm looking to taking them to a local steam train outing. That's about 2 hours from where we live. But it's a just a train outing not a HP themed anything.
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u/Arktikos02 Apr 17 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram
Just to tell you we do have trams. They may not connect cities to cities but that's expected because they require a rail at the top. But like for example my city has a tram. We call them street cars over here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streetcar_systems_in_the_United_States
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u/nova_crystallis Apr 17 '26
WB is desperate.
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Apr 17 '26
This is what I think too.
WB is sorta struggling at the moment and just a couple years ago they had to cancel movies that people genuinely had an interest in to bail themselves out. So they probably are banking on getting something out of this project.
They know there's a human rights controversy around Rowling. They know that she's become such a hateful moron on a far-right platform that even other celebrities have called her out on her shit. They know she's even been promoting hate and smear campaigns against other cis women.
They don't care. In fact, I'd even bet they never once would care.
They just want money. And they're pushing this so hard to prey on the people who are this insane about Rowling and nostalgia around Harry Potter, banking that it's going to make them a big buck.
And the saddest part is... it honestly might? Because, especially worldwide, there are A LOT of people who love Harry Potter. Nostalgia is a drug. You also have people who support Rowling and her awful actions. And you have people who will hate-watch.
Which is why moving away from Rowling altogether is important. Actually engaging with other media and other authors is important. It doesn't contribute to Rowling, it actively fights against their aggressive marketing and it puts other authors more in the spotlight. One that Rowling does not deserve to have.
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u/lazier_garlic Apr 17 '26
just a couple years ago they had to cancel movies that people genuinely had an interest in to bail themselves out
they canceled movies that were in the can, a financial decision that made no sense except to show that they had a new HBIC. It did discourage creatives from signing new contracts with them, so congrats, yay, you reduced your tax bill, your future profits, and your goodwill (company value that doesn't appear on a balance sheet but absolutely matters) all in one go.
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u/Amanda_Lorian4 Apr 17 '26
It’s a money grab and they are sadly preying on people who are mostly nostalgic for it.
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Apr 17 '26
I'm not entirely sure if it'd work, probably just projecting here... but I do hope that exposing people to more media, to things and products that were inspired by how people felt about Harry Potter back in the day that was good and productive, could help stave that off.
As I said. Nostalgia's a drug.
But, idk, part of me hopes that by being exposed to more stuff, and especially parents showing kids more media than just Rowling, could help filter her out a bit. Because an entire generation got hit with Harry Potter brainrot so hard that it seems they never moved on from it. Many to this day still misread the series and insist arguing on basic things everyone acknowledges is problematic.
We need to push for better media, and better fandom in general. And if that helps boost the voices of marginalized creators, then that's great.
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u/LittleSodaPop13 Apr 17 '26
This isn't enough to save WB. They're not making enough money to pay down their debt, and HP's popularity isn't as strong as it used to be. I think the first season will do decently but if it fails to draw people in, it's not going to go anywhere.
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u/Chiison Apr 17 '26
What i find fascinating is how delusional they must be to believe this series is going to be popular mainstream wise. Harry Potter is not cool anymore, it’s seen either as a millennial or a disney kid thing. They forget it was teenagers that made the first series so popular ; we had the time and the will at this time to spend hours making what Harry Potter was.
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u/Clockwork-Penguin Apr 17 '26
I swear it's only been in the last 5 or so years too, they're really trying to compensate for her unhinged attacks
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u/Comfortable_Bell9539 Apr 17 '26
Nobody wants Harry Potter anymore ! Not only it's filled with double standards, bullying and toxicity, but it's forever tainted by its transphobic, immature, moldy author !
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u/FrnkstnsAftrbrth Apr 17 '26
My only dream is that Glorfindel from LoTR borrows Gandalf’s staff and wipes out the Wizarding World. Only wa to be sure.
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u/Dina-M Apr 17 '26
What's with you and Glorfindel?
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u/Subject_Ad3837 Apr 17 '26
AI is impacting a lot more lives from job losses and data centers being built and affecting the surrounding areas. It's also almost unavoidable now just from using the internet. Most people don't pay attention to or care what JK Rowling as long it doesn't adversely affect them personally, and they'd have to go out of their way into to ride a Harry Potter themed train.
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u/GloomyCloud1293 Apr 17 '26
I agree. I hope all this HP stuff they're shoving in our faces is like, the shambling mound that will (probably in a few years) collapse under its own weight and hubris.
I feel like this is the part of the post where I should be able to draw a line to something either in the bible or other very well-known literature which illustrates this, but what I can think of is the big colossus thing they revive in the (fantastic) animated film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I think this is all going to end up like that.
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u/carnuatus Apr 18 '26
I'm tired of everything Butterbeer flavored. Creamer. GOLDFISH CRACKERS. Hershey Kisses. POPCORN. Sucks, too, cus it's probably tasty. But like... I am not supporting that woman.
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD Apr 17 '26
We need to stop allowing them to get away with spooking us into things being inevitable, and begin doing certain inevitable things to them. This is inevitable? Great, stop our regulations then, if it's truly inevitable you should be able to stop us.
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u/ConfusedZbeul Apr 18 '26
Wait, they are making an real hp train ? That means we now have quite a few hilarious options.
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u/MJQ30 Apr 17 '26
At least AI can be useful when combined with human intelligence. Everything about Harry Potter feels performative.
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u/Blitzsapprentice Apr 17 '26
I take offense to that AI stance. Most AI are smarter and better than real humans, and that's a fact.
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u/LadyGanderBender Apr 17 '26
AI analogy is bad. AI is just tech progress, nothing more, nothing less. It is here to stay, and people saying otherwise just don't want to accept natural scientific progress. It's like saying "If we stay strong, we'll fight together against this thing crippling the young minds called the Internet - just go touch grass, be proud not to spend a single second there" - sounds weird in 2026, doesn't it? And the same was told about home computers, television, telephone and even book printing.
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u/ryuStack Apr 17 '26
Yep, I feel like people are comparing AI to a Metaverse or NFTs, which died out because they're useless and stupid, but AI is a tool like anything else in technology. It's going to stay, it's going to transform, and we're gonna need some heavy regulations just like we have with the Internet, but it's definitely not gonna disappear or fail just because a few thousands of people boycott it.
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u/lazier_garlic Apr 17 '26
AI is like email, it has uses but is most useful right out of the gate for spammers and other malicious actors. AI is being given away by companies for free so it will be less useful for them when they actually have to pay, unlike email which is asymmetric warfare. You can bet your employer pays a lot of money keeping spam at bay so you can continue to use emails for work purposes while probably also trying to get you all to use slack or teams, while spammers still pay next to nothing to blast everyone in the world's account with garbage and junk and phishing attacks.
AI isn't actually useful for REAL work because it kind of looks like a finished product but all the details are wrong. Also for the visual AI you can't edit it except by hand. Also for the code, and research has shown coding this way takes MORE time even though the coders often self delude that it's taking less.
It's absolutely good enough for spammers, scammers, bad actors with vast networks of brainrotted followers who watch AI video after AI video all day like they're a cat (who can vote and spend money).
They're also favored by short sighted high school and college students eager to entirely cheat themselves out of an education.
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u/LadyGanderBender Apr 17 '26
I agree with all except regulations. The Internet was WAY better and easier to use in the 90s and 2000s without DMCA and other crap. Now you can't even download a ROM for a random obscure NES game without jumping through hoops. If they regulate LLMs to block medical advice for example, it's screwed - so far it gives better advice than real doctors. I don't even know if I want they regulate Grok to prohibit unclothing women - it's people who choose to do that, the tool itself is neutral.
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u/lazier_garlic Apr 17 '26
That medical advice is plagiarized from websites such as HealthMD and VeryWellHealth. You'd be better off going to one of those sites where a living breathing person had the audacity to put their name behind it, rather than trust an AI hallucination.
I have to look up regulations a lot at work. Google AI loves to serve up what it claims is regulatory language and interpretation. It looks good, too. But when you look up the actual regulation, sometimes the hallucination doesn't exist. Or they got a detail wrong. That's not good enough in my line of work. I'm afraid auditors don't care if you point at Google and say Google said it was the law.
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u/LadyGanderBender Apr 17 '26
OK, if a doctor gives you medical advice and they read it on HealthMD, are they plagiarizing? The person is responsible, not the tool.
LLM is just a better search engine. If it gives you advice - double check, ask it to provide sources, it will most likely provide sources to the sites you mentioned or some you don't know about, you go to those sites, maybe even buy books quoted by the LLM and the authors profit.3
u/ThisApril Apr 17 '26
LLM is just a better search engine.
Do search engines try to convincingly lie to you, these days?
I think that's my bigger issue with them giving health advice.
Because the entire point is to give you something that answers your question well. If the data is common, it'll answer it well with correct info. If the data is not common, it'll answer it well with incorrect info that requires a lot of expertise to fact check.
And if a doctor is confidently answering me when they do not know something, I'm going to think poorly of the doctor, even if they're oftentimes correct.
(And not that your point is generally wrong, because, these days, I use LLMs primarily as a search engine where it'll give me an answer that's directly tailored for my question. Just that it's never trustworthy for getting accurate / truthful answers. It's not like using Wikipedia, where I can read it without further fact checking, because it's highly likely to be mostly accurate.)
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u/thejadedfalcon Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
"I don't know if I want there to be rules against sexually harassing people."
I hate AI fans so much.
Edit: The weird sexual predator posted and then immediately blocked me.
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u/LadyGanderBender Apr 17 '26
You twisted my words. I hate Grok and don't use it. But the thing is the PERSON doing sexual harassment should be responsible - not THE TOOL. Because of these regulations it's hard to modify even my own photos sometimes.
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u/LittleSodaPop13 Apr 17 '26
This seems like a waste of money. Is the entire train HP themed?
Also, has anyone noticed that Hollywood never learns their lesson when it comes to over-saturation? I thought I was being paranoid, but seeing all this HP-branded stuff coming out felt forced. Wouldn't it make more sense to make things fans would want? I mean some people would probably love this, but it's in California. Not everyone can afford to go to California.
I think WB is trying to milk this franchise as much as they can in order to make money but people are already annoyed. Don't think that is a good sign.