19 minutes ago, Vee said:

Gay story and Black story on soaps is still few and far between today, because outside of DAYS they don't cater to the more coastal online contingent much; they cater to red state demographics.

That is 100% accurate but I think it has to do with executies catering to the lowest denominator for fear of antagonizing even a small part of what is left of the audience.
They are afraid to move in any direction because there is so little audience left that they are afraid offending even a small chunk of it would be the end of it all. They don't see the potential upside of being bolder in telling stories about other demographics; that they could gain more with black and modern young audiences that they would lose with conservative housewives.
It is unfortunate that social media, in that sense, has not managed to drive that point home. But that shows yet another way that social media in itself cannot move things if the underlying social change is not ready. And it doesn't, sadly, seem to be yet in the business offices of soap studios.

Just now, FrenchBug82 said:

That is 100% accurate but I think it has to do with executies catering to the lowest denominator for fear of antagonizing even a small part of what is left of the audience.

It is, yes.

But the social change is ready, and the shows would find a more blended audience with what they lost on new platforms like streaming. The networks and shows don't care because they don't care about evolving the genre or their shows; they just want to keep them onscreen marking time for as long as possible. Y&R especially is coasting on past acclaim, it's a dead cell. The only show vaguely attempting to do more for the future is DAYS, and they're not exactly delivering great quality.

14 minutes ago, Vee said:

It is, yes.

But the social change is ready, and the shows would find a more blended audience with what they lost on new platforms like streaming. The networks and shows don't care because they don't care about evolving the genre or their shows; they just want to keep them onscreen marking time for as long as possible. Y&R especially is coasting on past acclaim, it's a dead cell. The only show vaguely attempting to do more for the future is DAYS, and they're not exactly delivering great quality.

I'd even surmise that social media might HURT Days there.

See: the reaction to Beyond Salem. Which was great fun and all and got a good reaction online but probably ends up encouraging RC in his worst instincts and masking the need for better more interesting stories for the gay characters, for example.
Same with the possession or the Lisa Rinna/ED reunion. It gets good buzz but it is not a substitute to good long-term writing. So in that sense, social media hurts if they confuse buzz with good audience response.

I think the Luke death is more directed at traditional media than social media but it is a similar miscalculation of courting buzz and publicity at the expense of storytelling.

7 hours ago, Vee said:

They would never have executed Luke and Laura the same way today. Going for the rape twist at all and the way they bumbled around it with romantic foibles, jealousy, a lot of discussion among the two of them, etc. for over a year afterwards would never have hap....

Exactly!

19 hours ago, FrenchBug82 said:

I mean this is a very interesting question but to me it conflates "social media" with broader changes in social mores.
We tend to blame social media for a lot of societal ills - and by making it easier for people to communicate it does amplify voices that it once took a lot more time and work to grow. It is sometimes a good thing - like the progress popular culture is making on race or sexual tolerance - sometimes a bad thing - see the anti-vaxx disinformation and political conspiracy theories.

But in the end social media only reflects the society it is part of. It is not social media itself that makes a lot of the material that once flew by harder to imagine today and inversely it is not social media that makes stuff that wouldn't be OK then OK now.

Where I do think it might make a difference is to allow many opinions to express themselves so that executives realize it is not one-sided. It is usually the people pissed off about a storyline enough to write who get the last word so something like Neil/Victoria on Y&R back in the day was kiboshed because the racists cared enough to scream while everyone else shrugged because it was a pairing like any other.
Today the pushback if racists tried it online would be a lot more vocal and I reckon might shore up the resolve of a writing team if they wanted to go there. But the underlying truth is that our society is also collectively a lot more open to interracial relationships as a non-issue fact of life than it was even twenty years ago. So social media is not just the only reason it would be easier today.
Same for gay plots: it was once the homophobes who wrote in. Now the huge fanbase for these couples get to scream even louder online.

Of course, I did not mean to imply that social media has only negative or only positive aspect. I don't know how my original post came through, but I do agree that social media has both positive and negative aspects, as you said.

Reading the comments, I definitely see some points you are all saying. And of course there is not much change coming from social media in terms of soaps, because lets face it, there is not that many people that watch soaps. This is why I meant in the past, if social media existed, when Luke and Laura's wedding was watched by 30 mil people and they were all discussing it online, would that have an impact if you had such a huge number of people talking one way or the other. 

Someone said that we can only speculate and that we cannot know for sure how things would be.. well yes That was the point of my post. Just to bring some discussion and speculation... we are not writing a scientific report here, it's just a soap message board with speculation and discussion 

To give just some background on why I came to think about this topic.. Emily in Paris (show on Netflix). For those that are not familiar, season 1 came out last year and it was found to be very bad by many, depicting the French in a negative way etc. Then the Golden Globes nominated Emily in Paris in whichever categories and apparently the backlash was so huge that it started changes in Golden Globes that happened. Now, to be honest, I was not following this story when it happened last year, I was watching a video this year that this happened, so if the video was misinforming, I could be also wrong. 

Anyway, my point is, this type of backlash got me thinking about changes and impact on soaps in the past.

Of course, someone else said that it is all about the cash. I completely agree, because even in case of Emily in Paris, the show was not cancelled because of the backlash, season was released by Netflix, because even if it was so hated online, the show was still watched by a lot of people, thus generating cash for Netflix to order season 2.  But some things were changed in season 2 as a response to the critiques of season 1, so I guess backlash did help at least a bit...

But some new stuff happened in season 2 that got even Ukrainian government to respond, so lets see what happens in season 3