It's funny because yesterday a friend of mine mentioned that after this very busy weekend he planned to lock himself in his apartment with his girlfriend and marathon watch an entire season of some TV show he really likes. We started talking about how different this was from when we were kids, when we'd wait from week to week to see what happened on our favorite show. And though there was something vaguely unsettling about the New Everything-on-Demand way, we freely admitted that as consumers of entertainment it's waaaay better. I'd made the argument that there was value in the suspense generated by the long wait between episodes, but even as it came out of my mouth it sounded lame. Like the telephone naysayer complaining, "Remember the golden glory days when you'd wait for the horse to arrive with your messages? This new telephone thingy just sucks all the thrill out of life!"
As a kid, I had VHS copies of my favorite movies (Brazil and Time Bandits were two I remember) and I watched the fuck out of those tapes, over and over again, because there was often nothing interesting to watch on the three networks/12 stations our antenna could capture. (We were poor folk without cable.) If me as a kid could peek into the future and see a time of Youtube and Hulu and Netflix and literally more movies and TV shows than I could ever possibly watch in a thousand lifetimes, my little brain would probably explode with joy.
Obviously, this glut of watchable stuff has the effect of devaluing entertainment. I never watch the same movie twice anymore because there's just too little time and too many new movies and shows. I can't remember what I watched last month. The very act of watching a movie - something once such a huge deal - is unmemorable, even if the movie is very good.
What it'll mean in the long run, I really don't know. But it's interesting.
It's funny because yesterday a friend of mine mentioned that after this very busy weekend he planned to lock himself in his apartment with his girlfriend and marathon watch an entire season of some TV show he really likes. We started talking about how different this was from when we were kids, when we'd wait from week to week to see what happened on our favorite show. And though there was something vaguely unsettling about the New Everything-on-Demand way, we freely admitted that as consumers of entertainment it's waaaay better. I'd made the argument that there was value in the suspense generated by the long wait between episodes, but even as it came out of my mouth it sounded lame. Like the telephone naysayer complaining, "Remember the golden glory days when you'd wait for the horse to arrive with your messages? This new telephone thingy just sucks all the thrill out of life!"
As a kid, I had VHS copies of my favorite movies (Brazil and Time Bandits were two I remember) and I watched the fuck out of those tapes, over and over again, because there was often nothing interesting to watch on the three networks/12 stations our antenna could capture. (We were poor folk without cable.) If me as a kid could peek into the future and see a time of Youtube and Hulu and Netflix and literally more movies and TV shows than I could ever possibly watch in a thousand lifetimes, my little brain would probably explode with joy.
Obviously, this glut of watchable stuff has the effect of devaluing entertainment. I never watch the same movie twice anymore because there's just too little time and too many new movies and shows. I can't remember what I watched last month. The very act of watching a movie - something once such a huge deal - is unmemorable, even if the movie is very good.
What it'll mean in the long run, I really don't know. But it's interesting.
Great great fantastic movie. One of Robin William's best roles, only possibly surpassed by his turn in World's Greatest Dad.
On the topic of splintering/niche: that's actually something that concerns me. Subcultures and schools of thought/music are germinated on the streets by likeminded people huddled together far away from corporate vultures. Nowadays the second anything new starts to get any traction, all the suits are trying to figure out how to exploit it - and usually end up killing it with dilution/perversion of original concept/driving away the creators. Can you imagine if punk were starting to be a thing now, and kids were discussing it beneath big links with "Buy Punk on Amazon.com!"?
