Why Binge-Watching Is Bad | Hacker News Reader

Why Binge-Watching Is Bad

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6 pointsmosescorn11 comments

A similar argument has been made for commercials. "Without the breaks, the audience becomes less engaged over time! Watching with commercials makes the show better." I dropped my cable subscription because of my loathing for commercials. I'm not sure how much less engaged you can be than that. Watch however you'd like.

I read an interesting blog post via HN several months ago regarding the future of television formatting. The gist was that now that getting a show over the internet is starting to become a reality, the need for shows to run for a fixed duration of time or be released serially is alleviated. The storytellers can do whatever they please. I really enjoyed Netflix's new series Lilyhammer[1], and loved that they dropped the entire first season all at once.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilyhammer

having watched both dvds of shows and the same shows on television (same with hulu v. television) I prefer to watch the episode in its entirety minus commercial breaks, except for certain sitcoms. I think that Seinfeld and Friends may play better with the breaks.

Television (even The Wire) is not very important and the viewing habits of strangers does not merit this much thought. Watch, read, and listen however you would like to.

trollin and cruise controllin. respect

I'll concede that my comment was a bit curt, but disagreement is not trolling.

@Strangiato you really think television isn't important and viewing habits don't merit much thought? television and viewing habits both drive big $$$ and are vehicles for politics etc.

While true, television does drive most of society. Having such strong opinions on how people watch it is rather boring. Watch it how you like and move on. Or, don't watch it.

Television advertising has a large effect on society. Television viewing trends have a large effect on society. Specific television content doesn't (or shouldn't) have a large effect on individuals. Their preferred schedule for viewing television content has even less effect.

I am not a fan of tv. I think the current television offerings make the world a worse place, and I really only watch baseball and Breaking Bad. (I did like The Wire too.)

"shouldn't" is the operative term there.

tl;dr: the wait between episodes of a serialised tv show are really an integral part of the narration (build suspense, time to reflect, etc.)

many will tl;dr, few will win

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