For the creator and the consumer, the path forward is curation.
For consumers: The "extra quality" mindset means abandoning FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). You do not need to watch the 400th episode of a reality franchise or the latest forgettable action thriller. Instead, seek the weird. Watch the foreign film. Read the long-form article. Listen to the album that requires three listens to understand.
For creators: The market is bifurcating. The middle is dying. You are either a viral, fleeting dopamine hit (TikTok, reality TV) or you are a monument (Prestige TV, immersive gaming, literary fiction). Trying to be everything to everyone is the fastest path to irrelevance. To achieve "extra quality," you must be willing to lose the half-attention of the masses to gain the full devotion of a tribe. For the creator and the consumer, the path
Here lies the friction. Popular media, by its very definition, is designed for the lowest common denominator. It is the algorithm’s darling. It thrives on franchise crossovers, reboot nostalgia, and the safe, warm blanket of the familiar.
For a long time, "popular" and "quality" were seen as mutually exclusive. You either had the arthouse film that won at Cannes (but bored your friends) or the Marvel movie that made a billion dollars (but you forgot by Tuesday). Instead, seek the weird
That wall is crumbling.
We are witnessing a shift where "extra quality" is becoming the new popular. Audiences are rejecting the "content-ification" of art. They are tired of watching something just to have an opinion on it for Twitter. They want to feel something. Listen to the album that requires three listens
Consider the phenomenon of Oppenheimer. A three-hour, R-rated, dialogue-heavy biopic about a physicist. By algorithmic logic, it should have flopped. Instead, it made nearly $1 billion. Why? Because it offered extra quality. It demanded something from the viewer and rewarded that demand handsomely.
Similarly, the video game industry saw Baldur’s Gate 3—a dense, turn-based RPG with no microtransactions—win every major award and sell millions, simply because it offered deep, reactive storytelling. The market is screaming for substance.
This is a simple heuristic. If you find yourself instinctively skipping the intro sequence of a show, it might not be extra quality. Truly great shows ( The White Lotus, Game of Thrones, Peacemaker ) craft intros that are themselves works of art—integral to the mood and impossible to skip.
Instead of trusting Marvel or Netflix, trust specific showrunners, directors, or writers. If Mike Flanagan ( The Haunting of Hill House ) makes it, you watch it. If Hiro Murai directs a music video, you click it. In the age of extra quality, the auteur is the brand.