The Old Entertainment System Shows What It Is by Admitting What It Does

It’s often said in dissident circles that “A system is what it does.” On that basis, even a cursory glance at the legacy entertainment industry reveals that its purpose is to spread regime propaganda by purging normal people.

A recent Compact Magazine piece titled “The Lost Generation” provides a warehouse full of smoking guns. The author, Jacob Savage, recounts chasing a Hollywood writing career, getting tantalizingly close to breaking in, and then watching the opportunity slip through his fingers.

Here’s how it works: A showrunner submits your pilot to a room that says they want you, only for the executives to pull back. Meetings happen, words are exchanged, encouragement is offered. But nothing materializes. The doors stay closed.

On its face, the piece reads like a personal story of dashed hopes. Read it again, and it becomes unmistakable evidence of a deeper systemic problem: The legacy entertainment system has long since stopped valuing merit or skill; now it filters talent and audiences alike through ideological screens that have little to do with creative excellence.

Savage describes was once aspirational. If you wrote relentlessly, built your portfolio, and caught an executive’s ear, you could climb the ladder.

That pathway existed because entertainment institutions once served as distributors of culture; gatekeepers, yes, but with reasons to care whether a creator’s vision intersected with audiences and commercial reality.

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