Binge Watching
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So my roommate is someone that is a totally different generation and totally different everything than me (26 year old girl, college grad, traditional work life) and is super social. She never turns on a television whatsoever during the week because she is either at work or going out in the evenings or sleeping. Being social takes away her viewing time. Maybe she's also a special snowflake, but calling everyone that doesn't do the proposed activity can't all be snowflakes. Especially when I'm proposing that the concept itself is only for special snowflakes.
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So let's use stats. The most watched show in the US right now is BBT with just under 21m viewers. That's not 21m interested viewers, that's not 21m "really like the show" viewers. That's 21m people for whom the television was on in their house. The number of people who like it, are engaged, paid attention, etc. is a fraction of that.
The US population is over 330m. So that means that only 15% of the nation even sees the show, at all, let alone at the same time (DVR offsets, different time zones, etc.) on a weekly basis. And as that is a show equally for kids and adults, it does spread out over the group pretty well compared to some other shows.
So when you go to work, think about that only 15% of all people could have seen that one show. ANd that's not 15% for a show per night, that's the top show of the whole year. Six nights a week there is no show with even 15%.
So let's say that the overlap of those that see a show, those that are able to pay attention and those that care enough to discuss it (what's there to talk about in a show like that?) is 5%. That means 19 out of 20 people in your office have no means of discussing an overlapping show with you (or this one, anyway.)
Now that remaining 5% has to meet up at work, and decide that that will be the topic of conversation.
THe numbers show that this shouldn't be something happening with high regularity.
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@JaredBusch said in Binge Watching:
@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
@JaredBusch said in Binge Watching:
people are stupid when it comes to spoilers. I mean fuck, just because someone tells you Han dies, does not ruin the entire movie.
Or that some walking dead person did something does not ruin the entire episode because you still have the entire show to see the detail and context.
I will disagree with you, mostly. Some spoilers are less important than others.
My friend ruined The Matrix for me by telling me it was a computer world - that was the whole big reveal of the movie! WTF! sure, the rest was fine, but not coming to that understanding as you're meant to by the director definitely takes something away from the viewing experience..
That's a great example. That movie was terrible and depended solely on you being surprised there. If you rewatch the movie without the surprise, it's pretty bad.
That reveal happened at the beginning of the movie and has nothing to do with making the point of the movie. @Dashrender is wrong on this. If knowing that the movie was a computer world ruined the entire remaining movie then you simply never liked the movie to begin with.
It was a huge part of the movie. If you go in knowing that, then the rest of the movie is just the ride of sluffing off oppression. But if you don't know that, you spend a good portion of the movie learning to accept the possibility that our world isn't real, it changes the dynamic of the first time viewing experience.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad movie. I kinda like the first one, the rest, yeah don't bother.As for @scottalanmiller opinion that the movie is bad, that is again his opinion, not an immutable fact.
Agreed
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@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
Heck, if we wanna believe Star Trek, TV watching all but completely dies out at some point in the future
Star Trek is a good example .... that would have been one of those shows that we would have talked about places... but it was not shown at the same time even in the 1980s because it wasn't on a network.
Eh? Where was it shown when you were watching TV? It was on Fox in Omaha, and only Fox. So anyone in my peer group and the people I worked with, I wasn't an international traveler back then, heck not even an outside my city traveler. So those I would converse with normally were all seeing it the same way I was. Unlike today, there are any number of ways to watch something.
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@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
But dumping an entire season has completely changed the dynamic. Now you might not watch a show for months after it was originally released, removing the social aspect of the show almost completely.
That's almost always been the case. VHS and DVD did this a few eras before Netflix did.
Not for a first showing. Where there people who saw it for the first time on VHS and DVD, sure, but this wasn't common in my social circles.
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@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
Heck, if we wanna believe Star Trek, TV watching all but completely dies out at some point in the future
Star Trek is a good example .... that would have been one of those shows that we would have talked about places... but it was not shown at the same time even in the 1980s because it wasn't on a network.
Eh? Where was it shown when you were watching TV? It was on Fox in Omaha, and only Fox. So anyone in my peer group and the people I worked with, I wasn't an international traveler back then, heck not even an outside my city traveler. So those I would converse with normally were all seeing it the same way I was. Unlike today, there are any number of ways to watch something.
It was independent when I was a kid. Fox was one of the more popular networks to pick it up later, but that was because they lacked their own content. It was Paramount and syndicated. So anyone that wanted it could shot it, it was never a Fox show. So it was a Saturday show where I was, Thursdays for a lot of people.
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@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
But dumping an entire season has completely changed the dynamic. Now you might not watch a show for months after it was originally released, removing the social aspect of the show almost completely.
That's almost always been the case. VHS and DVD did this a few eras before Netflix did.
Not for a first showing. Where there people who saw it for the first time on VHS and DVD, sure, but this wasn't common in my social circles.
In your social circles is always key. These things disrupted the "everyone seeing it at once" things. Some people recorded on VHS and watched days or weeks or months later (but showed up in the viewer stats, which shows why those aren't the facts we expect them to be) and later many (lots in my social circles) waited for things on DVD so that they could binge in comfort when they had time.
Yes, your special circumstances easily allowed for this to happen that you overlapped enough to discuss shows all the time even though the viewer numbers and stat suggest that this would be difficult. I'm just saying that it seems like, and mathematically appears like, a relatively special case.
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Here is another way to look at it.... maybe modern binge watching like Stranger Things as shifted which social circles see the effect. I propose that it has always been a special snowflake that could have this happen and that you and @JaredBusch just happened to fit that one traditionally (or in the 1990s.) And today the circles that get this have shifted to other ones that you are no longer in.
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Interesting - I'm willing to accept that my social group might be different from others. Since I don't study this stuff, I have little to no exposure to other social circles, so knowing if they talk about shows or not is something I don't know.
But it seems like it would be far more likely that people would be than not, but that my just be my social bias.
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I think you still get that social aspect of the "we are all watching this together" with binging, especially in conjunction with social media. So while your personal social circle might not have that shared experience, countless others are in online communities (like this) that are all taking it in at the same time and are discussing it. I know I watched things like Stranger Things and Making A Murderer and immediately went to Reddit or other popular communities to talk about it even if my personal social circle hadn't finished it.
There's also a delayed sense of that special feeling of watching it together. "Have you seen ____? I just finished it, what do you think?"
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Sorry, but to expand on my last point--I'm more than willing to discuss shows I've already watched, especially if someone has just finished it. I like hearing about their flash reactions and how they're processing the story and compare it to what I think.
What I'm trying to say is: I got a really good theory that Mike's dad from Stranger Things is up to something nefarious and I want to discuss it.
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@ChrisL said in Binge Watching:
What I'm trying to say is: I got a really good theory that Mike's dad from Stranger Things is up to something nefarious and I want to discuss it.
Dude, spoilers... I may still remember that by the time I get around to watching.
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@ChrisL said in Binge Watching:
I think you still get that social aspect of the "we are all watching this together" with binging, especially in conjunction with social media.
I feel like you get it more. Now less mainstream communities, which is a lot of people, can participate too.
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@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
@ChrisL said in Binge Watching:
I think you still get that social aspect of the "we are all watching this together" with binging, especially in conjunction with social media.
I feel like you get it more. Now less mainstream communities, which is a lot of people, can participate too.
I AM THE VOICE OF A GENERATION, SCOTT.
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@ChrisL said in Binge Watching:
Sorry, but to expand on my last point--I'm more than willing to discuss shows I've already watched, especially if someone has just finished it. I like hearing about their flash reactions and how they're processing the story and compare it to what I think.
What I'm trying to say is: I got a really good theory that Mike's dad from Stranger Things is up to something nefarious and I want to discuss it.
I watched 1.5 episodes of that show and had to get out... bored me to near death.
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@Kelly but I'm right and he's wrong, so all is good.
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@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
I watched 1.5 episodes of that show and had to get out... bored me to near death.
I could not finish the first episode. So I am not sure if it is just me or what. The premise did not seem bad.
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@Dashrender said in Binge Watching:
What I'm trying to say is: I got a really good theory that Mike's dad from Stranger Things is up to something nefarious and I want to discuss it.
I watched 1.5 episodes of that show and had to get out... bored me to near death.
STICK WITH IT! I thought the first couple of episodes were boring, the third one was just ok, and from 4 onwards I was on the edge of my seat. In the final episode I was crying like a baby.
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@scottalanmiller said in Binge Watching:
So let's use stats. The most watched show in the US right now is BBT with just under 21m viewers. That's not 21m interested viewers, that's not 21m "really like the show" viewers. That's 21m people for whom the television was on in their house. The number of people who like it, are engaged, paid attention, etc. is a fraction of that.
The US population is over 330m. So that means that only 15% of the nation even sees the show, at all,
21m is not 15% of 330, it's 6%. The top show in the UK is Bake Off which gets 14m viewers from a population of 64m, or 21%. That's a huge number of people watching a show. I believe that's only people watching it live as well. We definitely have far more of a shared TV experience here. It's obviously less than it was - over 30m people saw Den serving Angie divorce papers in Eastenders in 1986 - over half the population.
I guess a small country has a less diverse cultural landscape.
