I watched a documentary titled something like Stock Manipulation Game on U-NEXT.
It covers the incident around a certain U.S. ticker from a few years ago: GameStop.
GameStop is an American company — the world’s largest retailer centered on games.
For a Japan-local image, think something like GEO. (GEO is mostly used-game CD buyback and rental, so the business model differs, but still.)
Individual investors overseas saw that GameStop stock was being shorted by hedge funds, and piled in buys to fight back.
Retail-business tickers rarely move like that. Sensing that the unnatural move meant hedge-fund shorts were in, internet users started talking about it on Reddit — a U.S. board a bit like 5ch — and it began from there.
Buy orders flooded in mainly from individual investors online, and the stock rose to about eight times its earlier price.
As a side note: Michael Burry, the hedge-fund investor who bet against the economic system and made a fortune in the Lehman-era film The Big Short, also went long this time — impressive as always.
As Finance 101, learning from cases — like the Lehman shock in Inside Job or The Big Short, or this GameStop story — is the easiest way in.
It is perfect material for understanding capitalism in a fun way. From this alone you can learn about stocks and securities trading, interest rates, housing, social class, consumer psychology, and the various stakeholders and players in the economy.
Stock Manipulation Game is a documentary that unpacks the GameStop incident through interviews with individual investors, hedge funds, analysts, and more.
Serious subject matter, but done as a humorous documentary interviewing lots of people — we could use more of that format.
Inside Job on the Lehman shock is similar, and those works are incredibly fun. Above all, the pacing is good.
It is not a hard structure — it is a reproducible format — so I wish Japan had more of this too.
You often see takes like “Korean dramas go viral worldwide and are fun — why are Japanese dramas no good?”
Setting aside whether that is fair, I do not watch Korean dramas; I just want more humorous documentary programs like this.
And domestic economy shows are still too stiff. PIVOT is popular lately, but that is talk-interview format — different again.
I do not fully understand it, but maybe in Japan broadcasters’ rights deals leave less freedom?
I do not watch overseas economy shows daily, but from the clips inserted into documentaries, the vibe looks really interesting.
I like watching baseball, so I sometimes watch translated overseas sports-news videos — even setting aside high production values, the pacing is good and the talk with stats is clearly higher-quality entertainment.
Such a waste. I think there is demand for this kind of video-making.
By the way, this blog that covered GameStop stock is extremely fun — recommended:
A Berlin-based IT engineer’s blog: “Aren’t those net articles that shook world finance the best English study material?”
And when I watched this, I realized: doesn’t U-NEXT have a lot of interesting titles?
According to the article below, it is #2 in domestic share.
U-NEXT takes #2 domestic video-streaming share for two years running; TBS content contributes to growth
Above all, I think their title-selection sense is top-tier.
Cases where I think “I want to watch that” and it is only on U-NEXT are extremely common.
The overseas drama I love, Silicon Valley, was exclusive to U-NEXT too, I believe.
Previously Amazon Prime held the deal and U-NEXT took it — at that point I felt U-NEXT was really sharp.
That is when I signed up for U-NEXT as well.
(Well, Prime Video is a spin-off of Amazon Prime, so maybe it is not the main product. Precisely because of that, what deserves praise about Prime Video is that it is still a strong enough service to stand on its own.)
Among domestic originals: I like combat sports, so the Yamamoto “KID” documentary Yamamoto KID — Love and Dreams: IT WAS ALL A DREAM was also good.
A fight-fan friend of mine joined U-NEXT just to watch it.
On documentaries, MUSIC BOX — artist-focused docs — is also U-NEXT exclusive.
A friend who likes Juice WRLD told me about MUSIC BOX, and I got hooked on Juice WRLD. I listen a lot.
Juice WRLD was a genius artist who died young of drugs at 21.
Even in the documentary, when he appears on radio (or a podcast?), he improvises an insanely cool flow and makes a song on the spot — literally a genius.
I am not deeply into music, but I thought: this is what “genius” means as a human being.
The impact on the world despite dying at 21 is enormous.
Songs are even still being released after death. There are supposedly about 2,000 unreleased tracks.
Good or bad aside, lyrics also hint that he himself had “planned” dying at 21.
Back to the point: it makes sense U-NEXT is #2 domestically, and it will probably become #1 someday. A wonderful service.
For a while streaming services proliferated into a red ocean.
Against Netflix’s overwhelming original quality, others pushed originals too, specialized in sports, or locked exclusive live draws — differentiating well.
Watching U-NEXT, though, their exclusive-license delivery and licensing strategy feel extremely skilled, as I wrote.
The long-tail coverage is truly, truly excellent.
A total of the long tail. Their “comprehensive content power” seems extremely high.
As someone on the margins of marketing, I got the insight that covering what customers want = covering the long tail.
Services like this are wonderful personally, and they clearly serve the world — so I want them to grow hard.
That is all for today.
Writing about something I find fun really comes out with high energy — writing itself is fun too.
Originally this started as a P.S. at the end of another post — “isn’t U-NEXT interesting?” — and I could not stop, so it became its own post.
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