Writers complain more than almost anyone else on the planet. Writers always think it is unfair what they are receiving pay-wise and that they never get the credit they deserve. Writers, who spend their careers attempting to create something that will bring happiness and joy to others are ironically, some of the most selfish people in the world. Unless you lived under a rock, you would be aware of a large writers strike that took place in 2023 from May through September. The strike was carried out with the goals of increasing writer pay (mostly in the streaming service area), increasing job security, and limiting the use of A.I. in the writing process. The strike took 148 days, resulted in the loss of 45,000 jobs, and caused an estimated loss of $6.5 billion to the economy of California. I understand and fully support the limiting of A.I. in the writing process, it continues to develop at an extremely fast pace, and I understand the fear that A.I. causes to the writing community. Complaining about pay will always be stupid to me. Everyone in the world wishes they could be paid more, but complaining because in 2020 when you signed the MBA (Minimum Basic Agreement), setting a minimum wage for only network TV writers, even though we were two months into COVID and streaming services had already been on a heavy upswing in 2019, is beyond stupid. Poor negotiations originally led to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to be so far apart when the MBA expired in May of 2023 that it resulted in a strike. Yes, there is no guarantee that we wouldn’t have had a strike in 2020, but also at that time people were locked in their houses and had nothing to do, it was arguably when the WGA should have had the strongest pull since people needed entertainment during that time. Similarly to pay, we all want job security that guarantees us employment, but for the WGA to request a duration of employment and mandatory staffing for all contracts that would require a minimum number of writers for a minimum amount of time whether they were needed or not is flat out ridiculous. The other awful thing about the strike no one talks about is that it impacted so many other people. Directors, actors, and business owners were all negatively affected by this strike, yet they all had to be supportive of it since any time anyone spoke out against it there was so much unnecessary and unwarranted backlash they were forced to apologize. The WGA also has a history of striking, going on strikes in 1960, 1981, 1988, and 2007. Those 5 strikes have a combined duration of 640 days, or 1.75 years. Look at other industries to really see how dumb writer strikes are. When construction workers strike, infrastructure breaks down, if accountants were to go on strike, major businesses would lose millions of dollars and it could create trickle down effects that impact most citizens. If pilots go on strike, the world is grounded and people can’t get to where they need to be. All of these examples are strikes that would cause actual damage to the world, meanwhile, writers are striking what seems like all the time and to the everyday person the impact is that we get shitty media for a little while.