Last Friday evening, after a week of tolerating gatherings that might as well have been teleconferences and coworkers who think loudness makes up for ability, I wedged myself into my armchair for what should have been a straightforward enjoyment: viewing something on the tube. Two hours later, I was still scrolling through choices, my supper well on the way to becoming a relic of the past, having committed to nothing except the alternative lifestyle of indecision. The liberation from network schedules and cable packages that the streaming era promised has not panned out.
“You can watch what you want, when you want it,” they told us. But they neglected to mention that this freedom would come with a tidal wave of mediocre choices and that at least some of us would find salvation in the pushed playlists of yesteryear. My streaming queue is a deathbed of good intentions.
Documentaries that I should watch to become a more informed citizen. Foreign films I should appreciate to consider myself culturally literate. Classic series everyone references that I’ve somehow never seen.
All of them sit there, silently judging me as I bypass them for the comfort of rewatching “The Office” for the seventh time. My friend Patricia, who prides herself on being up-to-date with the best television shows, keeps a spreadsheet to manage her viewing. A spreadsheet.
For television. She color-codes by genre, adds columns for how critical (and how) people are of the shows, and includes notes on which of our mutual friends has recommended which title. When she showed me this contraption during brunch, I nearly choked on my overpriced avocado toast.
“It’s the only way to stay organized,” she said, discussing it as though she was revealing nuclear launch codes rather than a failsafe method for television viewing. She color-codes by genre, adds columns for critical ratings, and includes notes on which friends have recommended each title. Absurdity hit new heights when she said they had to schedule periods in her calendar for watching TV.
“Tuesdays, 8-10 PM: Watch Scandinavian crime dramas.” Is this entertainment or homework? Something told me that whatever this was, I didn’t want any part of it. And part of me felt bad for the woman on the phone, hoping she, too, wouldn’t be held to some nonsensical standard of scheduling fun.
I managed not to laugh when I told her that my method involved lying on the couch, remote in hand, and scrolling through channels until something caught my eye or I fell asleep, whichever came first. The platforms themselves are no help, inundating us with algorithmic suggestions that seem to stem from a deep misunderstanding of human taste. Because I once viewed a documentary about penguins, I am now regularly told that I might enjoy “gritty crime dramas set in Alabama” or “romantic comedies featuring bakery owners finding love in small towns.” Elusive, right?I am under attack by the streaming service.
It has no understanding of me, and yet it keeps trying to push things onto me. Next, there is the strange math involved in the watchlist. My watchlist right now has 94 titles on it—a number that defies logic when you consider that I watch, at most, about three hours of TV a week.
Even under a very conservative estimate, I would need roughly seven years to watch everything on that list, assuming I add nothing new. Yet every week, I add to the list, as if I were gathering acorns for a winter that would never end. A show review consumed an evening.
I read them all, watched the trailer, and perused its rating on three different websites. Then I watched the first episode. It was twenty minutes in when I realized I wasn’t in the mood and switched to a different program—an episode of a cooking competition I’ve seen twice before.
So that’s two hours of research for twenty minutes of viewing. If I applied that same level of due diligence to my financial investments, I’d be writing this from my private island. Then there’s the unique pressure that seems to come with it.
Every time I go on social media, I see friends discussing their favorite parts of whatever show it is that we’re all apparently supposed to be watching. They’re posting screenshots and making all kinds of references that I don’t understand. Do I not understand them because I haven’t seen the show?
Or is it a not-understandable show even to those who watch it? And what’s with the hashtag #TheShowThatEveryoneIsWatching? If I don’t watch it, will I still be part of the friend group?
My colleague Robert recently trapped me by the office coffee machine to express his astonishment—genuine astonishment—that I hadn’t viewed some program about chess. “You HAVE to see it,” he insisted, with the kind of fervor I reserve for recommending life-saving medical procedures and not for fictional accounts of people pushing carved pieces around a board. When I asked him if the appeal was in the psychological tension and the remarkable period detail, he looked at me with some confusion and said, “Exactly!” So I added it to my watchlist.
With gusto. Decision fatigue is real. I spend my days making important decisions related to work, finance, and whether it’s time to replace my ancient mattress.
By evening, my poor brain can’t take much more and demands that I just veg out in front of the TV. But even vegging out requires decisions, and I am given too many to choose from to consider that even my simple act of watching a TV show can be optimized. I have, of course, created coping mechanisms.
The method of “close your eyes and pick” has resulted in some quite interesting discoveries and some quite baffling wastes of time. The “most popular” filter works occasionally, though it often leads to shows that seem designed by algorithm rather than human creativity—as though someone fed a computer the plot elements of twelve successful series and asked it to come up with something with mass appeal. “It’s about a troubled detective with a drinking problem who can see ghosts, but only on Tuesdays, and also there’s a conspiracy involving the government and possibly aliens.” Compelling.
My neighbor Tom, a guy with simple tastes and a decisive character, has solved my problem for me by watching exactly one show at a time, from beginning to end, before picking another. When I asked him how he chooses, he looked at me as though I’d inquired about the mechanics of breathing. “I pick one that looks good,” he said.
This never occurred to me, trapped as I am in the modern viewing experience’s option paralysis and commitment phobia. Perhaps most revealing is how streaming has affected our sense of time. “I’ll just watch one episode” has become the entertainment version of “I’ll just have one chip”—a fib we tell ourselves that, if we’re lucky, doesn’t end with us in the emergency room.
And yet, with Netflix increasingly becoming the kind of person who doesn’t know when to shut up, asking us every few hours if we’re really still watching, we might be moving toward an apocalyptic future where all our time has been turned into streaming. Of course, the streaming services know what they’re doing. That’s why they release whole seasons at once, changing television from a weekly rendezvous into a race with spoiler-filled finish lines.
I went to a dinner party recently where the host issued this stern directive as we were about to sit down: “No discussing the finale of [popular show] because Carol hasn’t finished it yet.” Carol, looking guilty, explained she was “only on episode seven.” The table reacted as though she’d committed a minor crime. In what world is being two episodes behind on a show about fictional people in implausible situations a social failing? While I compose this, my watchlist swells evermore.
People I know assure me of their unreservedliking for certain programs and proffer them as even more watchable than the stuff I already watch. Brouhahas in the press announce the arrival of “can’t miss!” new shows, which I then feel I must add to the list, if for no other reason than to maintain some simulacrum of a shared cultural vocabulary. Meanwhile, my various viewing platforms, with the kind of straight-faced absurdity we might also find in the prospectuses of investment bankers, continue to insist that I may enjoy their latest offerings just as much as the old things I used to like.
Tonight, I will once more settle into my sofa with the remote in my hand and confront the paradox that has become so familiar it seems almost a part of me: with all the content out there, how can I see what seems like so little of it, and why do I have such a strong urge to see more? I will know the answer: because the past couple of years have been so good for the digital art of watching and for those of us who do it. When I say my sight has been limited, I will be talking only really of my range of vision.
inevitably rewatch “The Office.”
Maybe that’s the true revolution of streaming: not the liberty to view any content, but the liberty to squander many minutes making our way through the content-selection process before we finally give up and rewatch something we know is already good. Not quite the promised land of fresh, surprising entertainments, but definitely a space we can inhabit.
