Fairytales can hold a powerful sway over us. As a child whose father had just died, I cried for years. Not knowing what to do, my mother told me that when I grew up, I would meet Prince Charming, who would sweep me off my feet and make-up for everything I’d missed. I stopped crying and turned my head toward the future. You can bet that letting go of that fairytale took a toll.
Here’s another fairytale I think is equally destructive. A filmmaker that I recently overheard on a discussion list said he was planning on offering streams of his movie for free and getting 600 million people to view it.
600 million. That’s nearly twice the population of the entire United States or about 25% of all internet users on earth.
His question on the list was what platform to use. No queries about how to attract 600 million viewers which he evidently saw as realistic, only whether to use Vimeo or YouTube. Another post responded that if he expected to reach over 600 million people, he should post information about his film on a few websites!