Category: Entertainment

By Sammy Bovitz

If there’s anything that people all agree on when it comes to streaming services, it’s that there are simply too many. An overwhelming amount of content to choose from for ongoing monthly prices means that consumers have to pick and choose which services they deem to be worth shelling out real money for and which one will be Quibi. Each major streaming service has spent a little under a year on the market at this point, so let’s take a look at each one in terms of their outlook now and what the future holds. We’ll be taking a look at nine services, which can be easily split up into three categories:

Group One: The Powerhouses

Netflix

With over 200 million subscriptions, Netflix is still king, and it’s easy to see why. The sheer amount and variety of content is unmatched. HBO Max has since outclassed them when it comes to quality, but still, no one is topping Netflix. But it still costs a bunch of money– even an account for one person costs $8.99 a month, and that doesn’t even provide HD. Most people are probably getting the next tier up, which is $13.99. To keep people convinced, and to keep Netflix at the top, the company is going to have to fight off Disney+ and HBO Max, and they need to keep providing quality originals and variety of content. Seinfeld alone coming over is not going to save them. The Crown and Stranger Things are still coming, but that’s not enough– not to mention that we haven’t seen anything about release timing for the latter show’s fourth season. 

More than any other streaming service, Netflix is seeing their third parties leaving for other services or to start new services of their own. The Office, Friends, and Disney content alone is a huge blow, so Netflix needs to rebound and double down on originals. For now, that’s exactly what’s happening. The sheer variety that they have already is overwhelming: Bridgerton, Ozark, The Witcher, Narcos: Mexico, The Umbrella Academy, Outer Banks, Master of None, The Poltician, Space Force, Big Mouth, Love is Blind, Grace and Frankie, Cobra Kai, and Lucifer are just some of the original shows set to return right now. As for the future in both movies and shows, the Knives Out sequels, the Avatar: The Last Airbender reboot, Tick… Tick… Boom!, the star-studded Red Notice, a Cowboy Bebop reboot, a Matilda series, The Kissing Booth and The Princess Switch sequels (for people that are not me) are just the tip of the iceberg. Netflix is also going all-in on games, with Magic: the Gathering, Resident Evil, Sonic Prime, and The Cuphead Show! all slated for the next few years. If people see enough originals they like, Netflix will be just fine. But we’ll truly understand how much shows like The Office mattered as the service moves into full-on original territory within the next few years and subscription numbers are revealed. 

Disney+

Absolutely no one is shocked to see that this streaming powerhouse is still going strong, and their recent price hike to $7.99 a month didn’t seem to faze anyone. Disney+ doesn’t exactly live and die by its originals– the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel content they already have will keep plenty around– but the remainder of their 2021 lineup looks incredibly strong. We’ve got big hitters for Disney+ coming up for every major tentpole. Marvel is going to continue to lead the way with Loki, What-If, Ms.Marvel, Hawkeye, and even Black Widow coming to its $30 Premier Access service– for my money, the first real must-have for that price. That’s only 2021 we’re getting into, and Disney+ will always have the Marvel diehards locked into a subscription as long as the shows keep coming and they keep making a splash. Star Wars spinoff The Bad Batch is going to carry on through the summer, and with The Book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian season 3, Andor, and even Obi-Wan Kenobi coming in the next year or so, fans of the franchise will have more than their fair share. The Pixar straight-to-streaming trend is going to continue with Luca, but keep an eye on this one– it’s not getting nearly as much attention as Onward and Soul did. Luca’s performance could mean a lot for the future of Pixar in theatres. It could also mean nothing, so we’ll see. But that’s not even the end of Disney+ originals this year: Monsters at Work, Muppets Haunted Mansion, Dug Days, and The Mysterious Benedict Society are among the highlights slated for this year. 

The service hit 100 million subscribers months ago, and as long as enough people don’t get tired of Marvel and Star Wars, Disney+ will continue to rise. But it remains to be seen how rapidly this rise will continue– the service is running out of big new regions to hit and big service-selling originals. If WandaVision didn’t sell people, who’s to say that Hawkeye would change that? The only gigantic title I see next year that could finally push people over the edge is Obi-Wan Kenobi, but beyond that, this subscriber momentum probably won’t be sustained for too much longer. But the service is going to continue to break through milestones and could even gun for Netflix long-term. 

HBO Max

If there’s any service that I thought could topple Netflix down the line at the start, it was HBO Max. But the service really stumbled out of the gate. Max’s $15 price point and lack of compelling launch originals– along with the debacle of having and almost immediately removing the Harry Potter series– made for a largely unappealing service to start, as only The Flight Attendant managed to make a splash in 2020. But a couple of originals came out recently that are pushing the service in the right direction, and those are Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the Friends reunion. The amount of positive press the service is getting– and will continue to get– because of these two titles alone really boosts the first half of their year. Not only that, their decision to bring all of their theatrical releases to the service, if only for this year, is a pretty big bet on the service that could really pay off. The fact that In the Heights, Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Suicide Squad, Dune, and even The Matrix 4 are all coming to HBO Max– no Premier Access required– will drive a lot more subscriptions for sure. But as for the originals themselves, Max has a largely unremarkable lineup. Gossip Girl and the untitled Conan O’Brien series are the headliners confirmed for a 2021 release thus far, and it looks like the real year for Max originals will be 2022, when Peacemaker and Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon headline. 

Overall, the best bet for HBO Max will be gradual success in the long term. Over 40 million subscribers is nothing to sneeze at, but it looks like the service is still looking for its Netflix-level tentpole originals, and there are several projects coming up with a lot of promise. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens when it comes to the service’s new ad-supported tier. The fact that the privilege to watch HBO Max with ads comes in at $9.99 a month– $2 more than a typical Disney+ subscription– shows that HBO is still about high-quality content for a high price. Finally, the merger deal with Discovery is going to drive a lot of subscribers– especially if they dissolve Discovery+ in favor of a more robust all-in-one home. This is a direct challenge to Disney’s dominance in the second generation of streaming, and will make for a huge drive of subscribers. I still think HBO Max can beat out Netflix, it’s just going to take a clearly defined strategy– and some slip-ups from the top two. 

Group Two: The Wild Cards 

Hulu

Hulu is in a weird position right now. While The Handmaid’s Tale, Love, Victor, PEN15, the Animaniacs reboot, and MODOK is a fine original lineup, it’s not exactly a showstopping group. But there are promising originals in the future, from American Horror Stories, How I Met Your Father, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to reality shows booked with both the D’Amelio and Kardashian families. None of these originals really appeal to me, but I’ll admit it’s a good enough lineup to keep them going. But their content from partners like FOX, ABC, Sony, PBS, and DreamWorks are going to have to continue to carry them– especially with NBC and ViacomCBS content leaving for their own streaming services and one of their biggest shows in Seinfeld heading to Netflix in 2022. A price drop or straight-up merger with Disney+ could be in the cards, but for now, this is one of the weirder players in the streaming wars.

Amazon Prime Video 

This company is rich with a capital R, so continuing to invest in streaming for movies, TV, music, and video games is going to continue. Being free with Amazon Prime will allow this service to continue to survive. But whether it’s going to do anything with that remains to be seen. They’ve got The Marvelous Mrs.Maisel, The Boys, and Invincible as headlining originals, but like Hulu, their strength mostly lies in their vast back catalog. But with partners pulling out, they’re going to have to pivot to bigger series to keep people interested. Good thing is, Amazon has The Lord of The Rings, A League of Their Own, and even an adaptation of popular video game series Fallout coming. I don’t see this service going away anytime soon, but it’s not going to take the world by storm either. But they purchased MGM for $8.4 billion as I was getting ready to finish this article, so I guess they’re serious about this. 

Peacock

Peacock is yet another weird one, and haven’t quite done enough to set themselves apart from the competition. NBCUniversal doesn’t seem to be all-in on the service, but they’ll probably stick around– Peacock has The Office and Harry Potter, and that on its own might be enough for some people. Shows like the Saved by the Bell reboot, Rutherford Falls, Girls 5eva, and The Amber Ruffin Show have been modest successes if nothing else, and future titles like a Battlestar Galactica reboot have promise, but nothing is really selling me about Peacock right now. For one thing, the “free” tier they offer is not a lot more than a glorified free trial, except with no time limit, almost no original programming beyond the first couple episodes, and with ads. Peacock needs to push more people to the Premium tier, as it’s a fairly good Hulu alternative for $4.99 a month with ads, and less to the very limited “free” offerings. Peacock will stick around as long as NBCUniversal understands they’ve got a long way to go and sells their more appealing tiers more often. They have The Office, but as even Netflix learned, that’s not enough. I don’t think Peacock is going anywhere, but they need to have more standout originals and have a much clearer direction in order to stand out.

Group Three: The Unnecessary Ones

Apple TV+

Apple TV+ is another case of the gigantic company dipping their toes into streaming, and is perhaps the most confusing one we’ve seen outside of Quibi. The only original I really love from Apple is Ted Lasso, and other headliners like The Morning Show, For All Mankind, Dickinson, Central Park, and the film Cherry have a niche audience at best.  Things like a new Jon Stewart series, the Fraggle Rock reboot, Come From Away, and The Shrink Next Door have promise, but none of these sell people on Apple’s service. Their back catalog outside of originals is also pretty barren– they’ve got Charlie Brown and the Fraggles, but not a lot else. There’s not much of a reason to buy Apple TV+ right now, and as much as I love Ted Lasso, I wish he and Charlie Brown were just on Netflix. 

Paramount+

You might have known this one as CBS All Access or as that one commercial that played too much during the Super Bowl. ViacomCBS actually has a pretty big library, but they don’t quite have the movie library that NBCUniversal does. To me, this service is just a lesser Peacock right now. Their original headliners are Star Trek, a spinoff of The Good Wife (The Good Fight), and, I don’t know, the Rugrats reboot? To be fair, they’ve got reboots galore in development (iCarly, Frasier, Dora the Explorer, The Fairly Odd-Parents), and for some reason ViacomCBS thinks they can adapt the award-winning green man shoots things video game known as Halo into a television series. But unless you really like Star Trek, there’s not a lot here. Sure, they’ve got a limited amount of live sports similar to Peacock, but both of their offerings are so all over the place that it’s not worth much of a mention, especially because of the last service we need to talk about. 

ESPN+

I am a huge sports fan, but I still don’t understand ESPN+ for the life of me. I love 30 for 30 and would love if live sports pivoted to streaming– after all, when that happens, cable will be officially obsolete. But ESPN+ is pretty unclear about what it offers. They have a lot of soccer and a little bit of baseball, but even when NFL games come over, it won’t really be enough. Not only that, no one’s going to pay $5 a month for Peyton’s Places or the return of NFL Primetime (which should’ve been on cable, let’s be honest). Not only that, the weirdest streaming service in the world in ESPN3 is still active, but most of it is behind a paywall. Plus, people that want to pay a premium for more ESPN articles don’t always want to sign up for a streaming service to do so, and vice versa, so selling them separately might be a nice option. It would make a lot of sense for ESPN+ to fully merge into Hulu so both services can stay relevant. If they combine Hulu’s back catalog and originals with 30 for 30 and actual live sports, Hulu will make the case as the strongest challenger in terms of variety to Netflix, except for the fact that they don’t have the best family-friendly content, which stays on Disney+. Sure, it makes sense to have three separate streaming services so that people pay for all the Disney they can consume (each sold separately), but from the average consumer’s perspective, combining all three services for the price of an HBO Max subscription makes all the sense in the world. They’re already bundling Disney+, ESPN+, and ad-tier Hulu right now, after all! An all-in-one Disney home might be overwhelming, but to truly dethrone Netflix, it might be their best bet. 

So that’s a general recap on the state of streaming so far, but it’s going to be a while once we see the hierarchy of services actually take shape. I’ll bet that at least two of these services won’t last too long– my money’s on Paramount+ and ESPN+– but we’ll just have to see how much streaming the average consumer can take. Services like Quibi got absolutely destroyed, and there aren’t many major entertainment companies left that aren’t attempting their own streaming services. I don’t see more than 5 or 6 of these services really sticking with everyone long-term, and it’ll be fascinating to see where this weird world of watching goes next. 

By Sammy Bovitz

On March 26th, 2021, the musical trio known as AJR released OK Orchestra, a 46-minute, 13-song experience that can best be described as, well, okay. And in the years leading up to that release, my relationship with the group’s music has been very odd. As I slowly discovered that some of my friends or acquaintances enjoyed the band, I attempted to try out their music as both an attempt to be a good friend and simply to see what all the fuss was about. Their band name, album art, and overall tone is relatively unassuming, and the overall beats backing the lyrics are satisfying enough that, when stripped down to mere instrumentals, many of their tracks are fairly serviceable. But where AJR really sets themselves apart is in their lyrics, and it’s both their greatest strength and most glaring weakness.

For example, let’s take the track “Netflix Party.” When I first came across AJR in 2019, “The Office” was still fresh enough in my mind that I was purely enjoying it and not thinking critically about the show as much as I would later. I had also just finished watching season 7, the final season that’s generally seen as quality by both fans and critics. The song “Netflix Party” is about one of the band members’ journey growing up with the show. At face value, a first listen to this song is pretty enjoyable, especially for someone who is currently enjoying the show, say, through Netflix. But songs like AJR’s have lyrics that are always at the focal point. Obviously, lyrics are important to every song, but, for example, a younger version of me enjoyed the production behind “Blurred Lines” while remaining blissfully unaware of the song’s misogynistic message and copyright infringement. That song, at least in my view, isn’t really about the lyrics: it’s about delivering a fun pop song with a tune that is easily memorable and can be danced to. But “Netflix Party” is about telling a narrative through a song, and while it’s intertwined with fun beats, it’s not mainly about the beats. So on multiple listens, lines like “The one where Dwight became the head of sales/My eighth grade graduation wished me well,” don’t trigger nostalgia or relatability as much as they simply confuse.

Let’s look at a few more examples. “Sober Up” is initially about discovering that your old friends have matured and grappling with that, but on multiple listens, the line “My favorite color is you/You keep me young and that’s how I wanna be,” is so bizarre. It could be a nod to band member Ryan’s synesthesia, but that’s about associating visuals with sounds, not people with a visual concept like a color. The line “My favorite color is you,” whether isolated or given as much context as possible, makes absolutely no sense- and it’s one of the main refrains of the song. “Break My Face” is a bizarre and oddly charming song on first listen, but after that it’s just plain irritating. The pre-chorus of “What doesn’t kill you/Makes you ugly/Life gives you lemons/At least it gave you something,” is attempting to turn cliched phrases around, but it doesn’t feel genuine or interesting as much as it is frustratingly downbeat and “rebellious,” which contrasts with the fairly upbeat nature of the song’s production. “3 O’Clock Things” was one of the “good” songs on OK Orchestra in my view (more on that in a bit), but with lines like “It’s kinda funny how I paid for college/When YouTube was an option,” multiple listens just make the song worse. 

I do not think I am an expert in music production in any way. If you asked me to write a song, I would fail miserably, as I just don’t operate like that creatively. But I can speak from the experience of someone in AJR’s target audience, which is– whether intended or not– insecure millennials or teenagers. That is to say pretty much every millenial or teenager, but I digress. 

AJR’s songs seem to aim for relatable lyrics and catchy yet experimental tunes, and they seem to position their entire style as both refreshingly bizarre and very accessible. That’s something that grabs a lot of people around my age, as in a world where more people attempt to make creative projects for a living ever, it’s shown that it’s incredibly attractive to be positioned as weird while still having mainstream appeal. “Relatable content” is something that people seem to love, and AJR fits that niche perfectly while still being experimental enough to be “weird.”

Again, none of this is to say that AJR’s music is bad or that it’s simply a cookie-cutter experience. Like most songs, the lyrics are probably based on stories from the band member’s lives or of their general thoughts on the life they’re living. They struggle as both creatives and as representatives of Generations Y and Z, who, like many generations before them, feel both a sense of insecurity and a desire to move forward and create a world they want to see. And that is something that, at its core, can make for some fairly, well, relatable music. At their core, what AJR seems to be showing with their main themes have wide appeal. But it just comes down to how those themes are executed that feels off. The band feels like it’s in a constant tug-of-war between their desire to get weird and a desire to make things that they– and the thousands like them– can relate to. 

Let’s get back to OK Orchestra. Of the 13 songs on the album, four are singles from the past year or so. Those songs are all okay and fairly inoffensive, but of course, things like the chorus of “Way Less Sad” don’t make a ton of sense on multiple listens. But my least favorite song on the album has to be the hilariously titled “OK Overture.” It feels like random sounds and snippets from the album were just thrown at a wall with little attention to what would stick for the listener, and it’s a fairly good indication of the album to come. Overall, AJR’s discography follows some core themes, but the albums themselves are more a collection of songs, and thus their “best” work is probably enjoyed without the context of the full album. I went into OK Orchestra with an open mind, but quickly found myself skimming through some tracks and skipping others entirely. The album’s songs are best enjoyed standalone, but again, once the production begins to get repetitive and the only thing left to latch onto is the lyrics, the band completely falls apart for me as a listener.  

AJR at face value should be just another indie band, but the content of their lyrics and in the way they carry themselves– see the reveal for the album Neotheater— make them very appealing to younger people. And yet that’s why they frustrate me so much. Their surface-level relatability makes them have the appeal of a mainstream pop artist while still being “quirky” enough for their audience of teens and millennials to eat it up. I’m not saying that AJR is evil, I’m simply saying that their success confuses me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to Google how to successfully defend against pitchforks. 

An experiment by Sammy Bovitz

I really do not like Instagram. I find its addiction loop and the way it twists people towards a new and lower form of communication awful. Sure, there are apps that are worse in this way (see: Snapchat and TikTok), but Instagram succeeds on a larger scale by pulling from everywhere while seeming more inclusive than the more Gen Z-driven apps. Its Facebook-derivative posting, the “Reels” it ripped straight from TikTok, and a direct messaging system that takes cues from Snapchat provides an odd blend of features that appeals to nearly everyone. But the way I see people using Instagram goes beyond frustration– it makes me sad. 

People relentlessly ask for likes and comments and saves and follows and any form of what is ultimately empty validation. Some people that seem like the happiest, most attractive people on the app are likely to be eaten alive by their own self-doubt and lack of self-worth, because Instagram uses metrics that try to quantify how popular you are. Likes, comments, followers, likes of your comments, replies to your comments, number of direct messages, and views of your story are all tracked and available for you to see. This creates a feedback loop of small bits of dopamine traded for a massive amount of anxiety about your body or your skills as a photographer or how many friends you have. It’s why I deleted Instagram from my phone in September. And yet, I still found myself checking direct messages or posts from time to time on my computer because there was a small percentage of posts or messages out there that I actually enjoyed seeing or reading, worthwhile stuff that I couldn’t really see anywhere else buried under meaninglessness. But when I reinstalled the app in January, I took a look at how dominant the “Reels,” shop, and search pages were and deleted it after 3 minutes.  

A month later, that little return to the app was still bothering me. So, I came up with an idea for an experiment, and after about 15 minutes, decided to do it. I was going to start taking pictures of no value with some things that people just scrolling through will like and move on with their day. No overly long captions, no promotions, no need to really comment, just things people can like and move on with. That’s the thing about the app– some people just double-tap for half an hour a day as a matter of routine. I couldn’t exploit attractiveness in order to gain extra likes or comments (just ask my highly nonexistent girlfriend!), so I instead reposted the day’s post on my story with attention-grabbing emoji and hope for a secondary stream of mindless likes from that. I told myself I would post daily for 5 days and write dumb captions to have at least a little fun while doing so. From there, I’d hope to boost my comment count by relying on some friends that would hopefully realize what was happening and reply to each one, incentivizing repeat likes and comments on future posts. 

As a baseline for this experiment, I used my post promoting my Black Student Union roundtable on this paper back in June. It was probably one of the most fulfilling conversations I had in 2020 and helped me retain perspective as I tried to figure out how I could contribute to social change and how my peers at school thought those who have privilege should go about things. 52 likes, 3 comments. On February 22nd, I started my experiment.  

This first day was really telling in terms of how funny yet how sad the results were in the 24 hours after the selfie I took without turning the camera to selfie mode. By the time the next day rolled around, I had already gotten 71 likes, 130 story views, and 5 unique comments, performing a lot better than a thoughtful conversation on a timely issue. This could signal things about how people choose to portray their activism on social media, but that’s a discussion for another day. Though it was a fresh post after 8 months without one on Instagram, my theory about mindless likes looked to somewhat be there. All I had to do was make slight tweaks and take similar photographs of nothingness with short captions and I thought I would be okay. 

The next day I made sure to tag LeBron James and promise daily content with a picture I captured by throwing my phone onto a couch. I did expect slightly diminished returns and I got them, receiving 54 likes and 115 story views, though I did get 6 unique comments this time rather than 5. Still, this was a pretty large interaction, with the majority of the likes and comments coming in the first few hours. 

Day three came with a 2-second video of the floor as I walked. While 7 different people commented within the first hour, the post wasn’t as successful as the first two days– likely due to the fact that some prefer to watch the video before hitting the like button. Still, it approached and matched that original 52 likes at a healthy pace, plus got a few more that evening to hit 55. 

The fourth day came with a popular meme template without anything filling it in. It hit 50 likes a little quicker than the previous day, and finished the day with a quite solid 58 likes. 6 unique commenters also weighed in before the day was done. 

The fifth and final day was a blurry picture vaguely related to Marvel Studios’ megahit WandaVision. 7 unique commenters entered the fray in the first few hours, though that could’ve been because of my call to action to comment “lol SPOILERS” out of sheer boredom. That aside, the final post finished with 54 likes. Every single post that I sent out that week with literally zero substance was deemed better than my roundtable with the Black Student Union. Somehow, in my quest to get mindless likes, I succeeded: my posts added up to 294 likes over 5 days.

I don’t know if this is “impressive,” nor do I really care about how this performed relative to an influencer. I have a private Instagram account and I’m not necessarily popular or attractive. But why should I care? Why should you care? Social media sites can be a way where people can genuinely express themselves, find connections, or just share photos they took or works of art they created. In theory, apps like Instagram should be amazing. But with posts that the current culture encourages, that’s not happening right now.

There are exceptions, sure, with plenty of people just posting whatever they want. But every time I see the acronym for “like my recent,” I get upset. Who cares how many people like your post or comment or message you directly or follow you on TikTok or subscribe to your YouTube channel or anything? Sure, it’s possible things like YouTube subscriptions could be important in a future career, but that is years down the line, and most jobs do not rely on social media relevance.

I’m not telling you to delete every social media app you have. In this time, that might not be possible for a teen that wants to be social. But please stop using likes and comments as a barometer for how much people actually like you as a human being. The only time I’ve truly enjoyed social media is when it actually simulates real human interaction, but that’s rare. No matter how many times you get a follow back, or a comment from a person you barely know about how attractive you are, or open up your phone to ten direct messages, it won’t ever come close to having real interactions with real friends in real life. If I can get 300 likes from doing absolutely nothing but getting mindless clicks and having a few friends in on a joke, who cares how many followers you have? At the end of the day, the people that truly care about you won’t have to comment “so pretty” to let you know that you’re beautiful. 

By Sammy Bovitz

One day, I was surfing YouTube for random videos, as one often does when they are bored in the 21st century, and decided to rewatch the old Sesame Street WIRED “Autocomplete Interview.” 

I decided to really scrutinize what everyone’s favorite marionette monsters were saying this time, and at around the 5:00 mark, I heard the Count say something that caught my ear. It was a throwaway line, but it somehow hit me hard when the Internet asked his age. He responded by saying “I am 6,523,728 years old… next October.” 

This video was released in February of 2017. If we assume this was filmed a week or so before its release, this means that as of this writing, Count von Count from Sesame Street is 6,523,732 years old– because remember, he turned 6,523,728 years old in October 2017. 

HOW IN THE WORLD IS THAT POSSIBLE? 

The Count is a vampire, sure, but vampires as we understand them aren’t invincible. He says that he has an “unquenchable thirst for numbers,” but could a steady diet of math really sustain him for more than 6 and a half million years? If he were to eat nothing but an invisible, numerical version of alphabet soup for that period of time, 3 meals a day, would there ever be a day where life would no longer be worth living? Does he actually subsist on counting, or does he need blood like his former co-worker, Dracula? 

What makes this even more ludicrous is the fact that numbers, as he counts them today, have only been around in civilized form since the start of, well, civilization. Specifically, that’s Sumer, a Mesopotamian civilization that got really boring to learn about after a few weeks in middle school history class. According to HISTORY.com’s estimate, Sumer was first settled, if we’re being generous, around 4,500 BCE. That’s around 6,500 years ago, which is a long period of time if you’re not SIX AND A HALF MILLION YEARS OLD!

Sumer contains one of the oldest recorded instances of mathematics as we know them today, so that means the Count is either lying to us about his age or he invented counting hundreds of thousands of years before humans did. 

Earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old, which means the Count has been around for about .014% of the planet’s existence. That may seem like very little, but let’s take an example of an old dude who’s left a pretty big legacy on the world at large. Let me see, how about, uhh, Jesus Christ! That’s probably a good one. If he were still alive today, he’d be 2,025 years old, meaning Jesus would only have been around for .0000044% of Earth’s existence. By comparison, the Count might be the oldest influential creature on Earth. 

But for argument’s sake, let’s assume this Muppet vampire is not lying to us and is actually over 3,000 times older than Jesus. What might that say about what The Count has seen, and how much has he had the privilege of counting?

Let’s go by standard human metrics and assume his childhood was 18 years, meaning for the other 6,753,714 years, Count von Count has been an adult. What would he have been able to count? Well, he would have been able to count a number of members of one of the first big steps in human evolution. Around this time is when chimpanzees and humans stopped having common ancestors. There’s not exactly anything to count there, so let’s go on. 

The Count would already be around 1,500 years old by the time he would be able to count hippopotami, and would be 3,500 old by the time he could count swordfish, and yes, he is over 4,000 years older than the species Homo habilis, one of the earliest species that would eventually evolve into the very dumb Homo sapiens– the species he is around 6 million years older than. Finally, around the time that the Count could count all 5,500 years of his existence, he could celebrate by counting the first wolves. Of course, this also means that by the time Jim Henson himself was born, the Count was already over 6.7 million years old. And yet, he chooses to spend his time with a 3-year old and someone who literally lives in a trash can. He could be– and count– so much more. 

Which brings me to my next question: if I were the Count, what would I do with my boundless knowledge of all of human existence plus an additional 6 million years? Well, I would share it! If the Count has subsisted on basic counting before the concept was invented and is over 3,000 times older than possibly the most beloved dead guy on Earth, then he NEEDS to be a historian. The Count’s perspectives on the dawn of human existence and civilization, and all major world events, past and present, would be fascinating. But no, he just wants to count to 20.