There are certain parts of the world that really have little to no bearing on the rest of it. NZ is perhaps Exhibit A of this; Iceland is perhaps Exhibit B. Nothing that happens in NZ even affects AU, let alone anywhere else. That makes it a great place to live if you have the money and like the peace and solitude, but if NZ ceased to exist the rest of the world wouldn’t notice. Both Australia and NZ fail to recognise this often and both suffer from extreme FOMO on the world stage (Australia more than NZ, but Australia is also a much larger player internationally - what with ore exports etc).

This is an AI slop article about an extremely niche market that would struggle to support itself in even the world’s largest music markets, and it’s written as if New Zealanders have lost something valuable.

Nobody needs to know nor does anybody care which local music producers signed with which label, yeah? Like, that isn’t a news market that can support itself. Ditto for a news market that’s focussed on last night’s hipster band playing at the local grease hall. And if it wasn’t AI slop I’m sure an actual person from Wellington wouldn’t write it as if it was, which is half my point.

NZ’s economy is atrocious and crime and drugs and poverty and a massive brain drain over the past 10 years are huge problems and writing about them might be interesting if it were done by a person who actually did research and understood the problems. AI slop ain’t it.