"Bingeing"

With the introduction of Netflix, television watching has not been the same. What was once an experience is now a black hole of drama, comedy, or intrigue. Let me explain. When I was younger, the way we watched TV was as followed:

  1. Eagerly await your favorite night of the week because it means a new episode of your favorite show is on.
  2. Sit down on that night exactly at the time of premiere in order not to miss the opening. Make sure you have popcorn and other TV-watching snacks ready to go. 
  3. Avoid having to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of an episode. Use the very small commercial window to dash to the bathroom and go before the episode returns. 
  4. Repeat steps 1-3 every week until the season finale.
  5. Impatiently await the return of your show throughout the summer months, speculating in your head just exactly where that cliff hanger will go when the show returns. 


How society watches TV now: 
  1. Choose a show on Netflix and watch for eight to ten hours straight.

There's even a term for it: binge racers. "Netflix says 8.4 million of its more than 100 million subscribers have binge-raced at one point or another, and that the number is growing,"(Shamsian, 2017). Now Netflix gives you the opportunity to watch it all at once. To pause. To rewind something you may have missed. To stop and get up when you want popcorn halfway through. To "binge" a show until you've lost yourself in the world and can't remember who you are when it's over. There is less of an experience with this method of watching. "Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu have fundamentally changed the way many people watch TV" (Cakebread, 2017). There's no ceremony to it. It's just happening. You don't get together with your friends every Tuesday night to watch How I Met Your Mother. You watch 9 seasons all the way through on Netflix and then discuss afterward. 

Referenes:

Cakebread, C. (2017, October 10). Millennials are at odds with their parents over binge-watching TV. Retrieved January 12, 2018, from http://www.businessinsider.com/a-survey-shows-how-much-millennials-love-to-binge-watch-tv-charts-2017-10

 Shamsian, J. (2017, October 18). Netflix has a special word for people who binge watch an entire season of TV right after it drops. Retrieved January 12, 2018, from http://www.thisisinsider.com/netflix-binge-race-watch-tv-show-24-hours-2017-10

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