Monday, August 12, 2019

I grow old, I grow old



I keep seeing mention of this, and I've decided it's a generational thing.

My phone tells me about YouTube videos I might enjoy.  It will even broadcast them to my TV, so I can see it on a much larger screen.  AutoPlay makes sure the next video pops up after the last one, or I can skip around to other titles that might be interesting.  I get how this works.

I just don't get how it's addictive. Which doesn't make me a superior brain or something.  I spend way too much time watching re-runs of shows I never watched when they were on originally.  Mostly it's the "binging" aspect of broadcast TV, where digital channels allow local broadcasters (the big 3 affiliates, but everyone else who wants to) to have several channels on air, most filled with reruns of one type or another (the joy of seeing "Burns and Allen" is not to be negated, even at the price of so much more dreck on air than ever before).  I understand "video addiction."  Netflix relies on it, too.

I just don't get it.  I never watch the next thing up on Netflix, and I only watched some of the YouTube videos during the gap between "Infinity War" and "Endgame."  And most of that was crap, I soon realized.

I watch a lot of crap.  How YouTube is particularly addictive, however, is, I think, another media narrative.  Makes for a convenient story line and a "villain," but mostly it's same as it ever was.  When people passionately awaited the next installment from Dickens, it as little different from waiting for the next episode of GOT.  But somehow it has to be different now, because we're more...advanced?

Or is it just the arrogance of the present, convinced of our superiority over the past?

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