> primary purpose is to convey information, not artistic expression

It’s to entertain. Same as Hollywood. You have to get into the grunge of any medium to find content whose primary purpose is artistic expression.

The purpose of art has never been to entertain, even if art can be entertaining. The fact that so many people think such a decadent idea shows how debased our society has become by way of the profit motive.

This is an insane way to think about art. Of course art exists that entertains, and it is art. To say that art can't entertain is an absolutely drab way to look at things - it almost assumes that only negative emotions can be transferred through art.

Well, nobody said that.

> purpose of art has never been to entertain, even if art can be entertaining

Sure. But the purpose of mass-market movies is to entertain, and has been since the broadcast era.

Repeatedly referring to "art" is misleading.

Think of what good movies & television do as storytelling and I think you'll agree it better fits the narrative at hand.

Seems to me like you’re taking a narrower definition of ‘entertain’ than the parent post.

They can do both. Werner Herzog is a master of this. Check out Lessons of Darkness.

Had any of the examples been Lessons of Darkness or Grizzly Man or Burden of Dreams, this conversation would have gone quite differently, but since none of those films were released on Youtube they were not even an option to begin with.