Binge watching: it’s America’s new favorite pastime. Paradoxically, it’s also the worst.
Just recently, for instance, I found myself emerging from a Discovery Channel-induced fugue at three in the morning, practically entombed in snack detritus (wrappers, empty Gatorade bottles) after watching six hour-long episodes of “Alaskan Bush People,” arguably the worst show in the world. I was horrified, to say the least.
But let he among us who has never over-watched cast the first stone, alright? It’s not a moral issue, anyway—watching a bunch of TV doesn’t make you a bad person—nor is it a question of intelligence. There’s nothing objectively wrong with it. Binge watching culture surrounds us even when we aren’t living under social distancing orders. We all participate, so we’re all “guilty.”
It’s an almost universal experience, in fact, with industry kingpin Netflix now available in 191 of 195 countries worldwide. The four without, according to the site, are China, North Korea, Syria and Crimea; curiously, this would appear to imply an active Netflix viewership in Vatican City, a country with a population of 618. What are they watching over in Vatican City?
Right now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the online streaming business is positively booming; with the majority of us quarantined at home, freshly unemployed and bored out of our skulls, a good binge-watch session is easier and more tempting than ever.
Nothing like a little global crisis to make you want to sink down into the couch and get totally strung out on the latest Netflix original series. “Just a little something to take the edge off,” you say, and, before you know it, you’re marathoning all seven seasons of “The Sopranos” like your life depends on it.
Or “The Real Housewives,” “Chopped,” “That 70’s Show” or whatever it is that helps you shut your brain off for a few precious hours when the going gets rough and you don’t really feel like doing anything, but you’re not tired enough to go to sleep. The right binge material can feel like a local anesthetic on the frontal lobe.
Sometimes we over-watch because it feels good, but mostly we do it because it feels like nothing at all. It’s mind-numbing, that’s the right phrase. It’s a form of escape.
And I know that lately it seems there’s a lot worth escaping. We weren’t prepared for something like this to happen, not as a collective society nor as individuals. Clearly we lacked the appropriate risk prevention measures, the structures to cope. This pandemic feels big and scary and unpredictable, and it’s difficult to know what to do. It’s difficult to want to do anything at all.
So, it’s like, “hey, let’s watch TV and forget about everything.” But, eventually, once that local anesthesia wears off, you’re going to wake up and realize that you’ve just wasted six hours of your life on “Alaskan Bush People.”
When that finally happens, this is what it’s going to be like: you’ll feel just as miserable as you did before, only now you’ll have even less time to figure out how to actually deal with it.
Grace Pulliam is a 19-year-old creative writing junior from Zachary, Louisiana.
