Binging has been linked to restless sleep, bad eating habits, cardiovascular problems, blood clots, mood disorders, loneliness ... it's all the usual problems of a sedentary lifestyle, plus late night blue light exposure that shreds your circadian rhythm. The same problems are caused by long stretches of gaming, extended erotic Cats fanfic writing, or any other stationary activity, but Netflix pushes it perhaps more than anyone. That's why they autoplay new episodes, that's why they autoplay trailers, that's why they dragged their feet on providing the option to disable both. That's why they experimented with a random button to get you started on something -- anything -- and that's why they tried letting kids earn "patches" for watching episodes until angry parents shut that down. Shows are even written with the assumption that you finished the last episode seven seconds ago, not seven days ago.
It's nice to get a quiet moment once in a while, but ideally without training our kids for a lifetime of compulsion.
Until health concerns started rolling in, Netflix called binging a "universal value." Investors were told it was the crux of their business model and a key part of their long-term strategy, among other accolades. At least Hulu and Disney+ are using ads and features that explicitly court viewers happy to risk muscle atrophy, rather than saying "Remember not to do what our business encourages and needs you to do!" Don't get us wrong, we're as guilty of binging as anyone, but denying its side-effects is like KFC claiming that the customers who eat their food five times a week are all just bulking up for a bodybuilding competition.
54 Comments
The_Rocker
March 25th, 2020 • 25/03/20 • 5:09 am
To the surprise of no one, big tech companies lie to us.
Redd
March 25th, 2020 • 25/03/20 • 5:08 am
#2) Google and Amazon modifying their search results a little bit doesn't bother me so much as the fact that their search operators no longer work the way that they're supposed to (and haven't for quite awhile now).
I can't count the number of times I've tried doing something like using quotes on Google to find an exact match for a phrase and had it not work at all; or tried to sort items by price on Amazon and gotten seemingly random results.
Jeckel
March 25th, 2020 • 25/03/20 • 5:44 am
#4 For fuck's sake, it's BINGEING. Binging is the term for using Microsoft's Bing search engine.
It shouldn't require an editor for something so basic, it only requires the writer to have a shred of self-respect, which I guess is something that would be lacking in any writer still clinging to this sinking ship of a site.