Against Netflix
forourposterity.com
forourposterity.com
Edit: the very negative reactions so far in this thread are an example of what I mean. But I do get it, since prior to quitting myself, hearing something like this probably would've pissed me off.
If anybody has recommendations for books like Zombie (fiction) or Children of Time (a novel told in part from the perspective of an advanced, non-human society), I'd be very happy to hear them.
There is something about removing the high stimulus of TV watching that allows my brain to appreciate being productive. It's been easier to be motivated to do things I truly want instead of defaulting to the veg state each night.
The nerve of people spending their time how they want vs. being constantly productive. It's simply unacceptable.
The difference is (to paraphrase what the author says) playing video games excessively is already frowned on. Watching Netflix is not.
The knife-edge their is the addiction factor for some games. So it depends.
That's what those marketing dollars are for. There is a practically infinite supply of free games, but somehow parasitic pay-to-win dark-pattern companies stay in business.
"constantly productive"
I hope that everyone feels like they are making constant progress towards their own goals. If someone wasn't they might bury their head in a stream of constant distraction. Wouldn't that be a shame?
"Netflix (and its imitators) produce too many TV shows that are too good—and too easy to binge"
Really? I have to search pretty hard to find any of the original programming from Netflix, Prime, etc, that's "good". There's some, but it's pretty scarce. They seem to be deliberately targeting volume of content to cover the widest variety of niches...not quality.
It's probably more the fact that they can be so aggressively binged that the author is criticizing. Maybe the word he was looking for was "addictive". Shows are not especially good, but they can be very addictive when leveraging cliffhangers, plot twists, etc.
During lockdown I have scrolled through it every single day and if I didn't know that lockdown was extremely profitable for companies like them I would have thought they were on life support there has been so little content added over the past few months.
Decided to cancel it this week, going to invest in a Plex server instead.
The first set of new movies on Netflix were indie films which had 2-3 people in them. Then after work-from-home settled into a routine, they finished production of films that were already filmed in 2018 but were unedited. After that, they began to release shows from S. Korea, where the lockdown was lifted enough for production to continue.
> George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
> This is a useful thing to know, perhaps a useful thing to point out when you find yourself thinking that possibly George is, indeed, your bitch, and should be out there typing what you want to read right now.
> People are not machines. Writers and artists aren't machines.
> You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.
[1] https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.ht...
> Yglesias, turn off the TV! Write more books instead! Heck, write more tweets, if you prefer!
If all the "great minds" stopped watching tv (and by extension reading tweets, reading books, listening to shows...) who would be left to enjoy their work?
We will eventually end up in a state where there will be no longer possible to have a cultural homogeneity as we have today (e.g.: a very sizeable population has seen game of thrones and can discuss it). This approach would bring that moment closer.
I think the article is saying to spend time reading things that give rise to creative ideas rather than things that are just a time suck, i.e. Netflix.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
The world has changed, and it seems the author has not realized it. Many people who own land had to use lawyers/contracts to get it and may not even own the water or mineral rights. The world isn't simple. It's still harsh, but is so now in the courts and bureaucracy instead of in the fields and natural perils.
sounds like you might be on the "wrong" side of the political spectrum in 2020.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_portion_cap_rule
Are you living in 2014 still? When has anything like the failed soda drink ban happened since then?
I'd say it's the idea (for both sides depending on the specific issue) of living with the psychological weight of knowing that additional taxes and restrictions are constantly suggested which would impact your lifestyle.
I'm flagging this ridiculous shit and you should too. Either this is a poorly-written satire piece, or it's a troll-fest waiting to happen.
It's okay to consume media in moderation. Netflix, flying a kite, fishing, game night with friends, and so on. If that is all one does, it interferes with Maslow's other needs.
I don't see a need to go to battle against Netflix, however, but perhaps teaching discipline and moderation in schools would be beneficial to society as a whole.
Sam Harris had a recent podcast episode on this topic. The discussant brought up the interesting point that cost of binging has decreased. Economics 101 would suggest that if we were rational and preferred more show consumption that we will consume more. A handy heuristic. So, if you personally find your consumption is too high relative to your production, their suggestion was to increase the costs to consume.
I had many months of 60 hours work weeks earlier this year so I've just been binging sci-fi on my Kindle and it's been great. I've enjoyed it much more than Netflix.
I don't blame anyone for binging TV. We don't all need to spend our nights writing a novel or the next great app.
When our family was younger we spent a year or so very proud of the fact that we NEVER watched TV. Then I heard a quote "when you watch TV your brain activity level is lower than when you are sleeping." I thought that sounded wonderful and immediately went out and purchased a TV.
I thought HN was above such small-minded nationalistic prejudice.
Watching TV is cheap. Going out to eat, to bars, etc is increasingly expensive. Hobbies like gardening require land. Hobbies like AutoX and track days generally require consumables, tools/accessories, and insurance. Even just regular street insurance and health insurance are a major cost. All while wages have stagnated for decades.
Why claim that we are wasting great minds by watching TV? Would people actually be doing productive things otherwise? I would think it would be alternate relaxing things.
I find most shows on Netflix to not be that good. I drop them within minutes.
It might also be because I used to have better access to arthouse cinemas that played more experimental, independent titles, while now I'm at the mercy of whatever is available on streaming services. So I end up just supplementing that by watching weird stuff on YouTube, which is somewhat suboptimal.
Just saying that, because there still are some art houses here (although not sure if that's still the case post-corona), but most of their films don't intrigue me. Sometimes they do, and I'm always a bit bummed to see that the venues are half-empty when I go.
Edit: With more thought this might be the same thing to the consumer actually. They don't care how good the average TV show is, just how engrossing the hours of TV they watch every day is. With so much content it's never been easier to make those hours engrossing to you, even if it feels like the average / median TV show isn't really improving and possibly getting much worse.
There are a lot of people out there, and Netflix is like a catalog of the different kinds of things they can want. It's hard producing content that hits me personally where I live, and I'm always grateful when they do. It happens a few times a year.
I'm glad other people are also getting their stuff. Clearly a lot of people are finding enough to make them happy. I'm sure Netflix would love to produce more shows that manage to hit a wide range of people. I think that they did bottle such lightning again with Queen's Gambit.
I'm old enough to remember when this was said about cable TV, video games, social media, etc. One thing I always wonder is how do you know "great minds" are succumbing to this insidious threat? Maybe it is only mediocre minds and one of the factors that make "great minds" exceptional is self-control over base instincts like entertainment?
I'd argue there actually much more diverse content to consume in Netflix with a large portion being 'educational' and 'informative'
I am notorious for watching the pilot for a show and deciding "that was great! i've had enough!" and never finishing it.
I believe the last episodic show i've genuinely finished was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and even then, i haven't seen any of Korra and have no desire to.
That is, apparently, partially due to the creators being jerked around by the production company. It's very good nonetheless, and if you have time to kill, I'd say it's worth a try. You'll know in a few episodes if it doesn't work for you. (It was in some ways rather too dark for me.)
The other voice argues that I will be healthier and more capable of producing the things I actually want to produce if I can just stop being so damn stressed about "wasting" an evening playing video games every once in a while. Why buy into the myth that the meaning of life is maximizing productivity?
Some people have biases against specific forms of media (video games and TV take especially big punches) they feel are the Fentanyl of art in a world that otherwise would be glasses of wine. In the end it always feels like a debate about the right ratios of consuming vs. producing, which I feel like is worth reflecting about but will be different for every personality.
Instead of just keeping in mind "I need to be productive!" people (probably) should do whatever they want, fight their fights and strive to do what they love.
Do you think the work of a genius would be better if at some point in their life we (society) had put him in a cell and obligated him to create more "awesome stuff" 24h a day?
The tiny amount of friction induced by having to explicitly click on "Next Episode" gives you perhaps a few extra seconds to consider if you really need to watch another episode, or perhaps get some other shit done.
Stop making terrible sci-fi like Another Life and invest in quality shows like The Expanse which are long lived and remembered.
Sure, I could afford to watch less tv. I do have many hobbies writing, photography, etc. That I don’t as much as I’d like because of TV. However, I’m one person and TV is a great way for me to hang out with my SO. My beef w/ this is blog post is the fetishization of productivity. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. We’re getting a covid vaccine in under a year. I’m pretty sure Netflix isn’t stopping us from continuing to develop. It’s okay for people to take their shoes off.
I’ll concede that the alcoholism comparison is fair in the sense that it is addicting. However, you don’t see too many people losing their job or destroying their relationships because of Netflix.
I guess what I’m saying is that the answer is balance.
That rarely happens to me with TV or video games. I haven't read a fiction book in about 10 years because I swore them off entirely. I typically watch about an hour of TV as I wind down for the night, and I often play hours of video games if I can (often child care obligations interfere). But at least I can do those things without losing sleep.
The radio, likewise, was considered too compelling by some.
So TV (including streaming) hours watched per year for the last decade or two?
His opinion on how adults spend their time is meaningless. Flagged.
I'm sorry, but in my humble opinion, just because you don't agree with the content of a linked post, it doesn't mean it's not worth of a constructive discussion here on HN and should be flagged. This is ad hominem.
Saying "you have bad hair therefore your argument is bad" is ad-hominem.
Saying "This person has never worked a 9-6 office job while supporting 2 kids, a stay-at-home-partner and a mortgage; therefore they are unqualified to make such statements on how adults should spend their time" is a completely legitimate argument to make, it is not a personal attack.
Imho, I don't think flagging should be used as a tool for silencing content that you disagree with.
In terms of intellectual maturity, undergraduates are no different from older adults, and the outside perspective can be valuable.
I think one could complain that the author doesn't credit some of the positives/educational or artistic value in video media (then again, netflix's 'hit engineering' is not necessarily optimizing for those if they don't increase addictive engagement) and that maybe he should consider reading and reflecting on things like Bertrand Russell's essay, [In Praise of Idleness](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)
But anyhow, after you finish the Mandalorian, reflect on how much you liked it maybe, and then reflect on what it cost you. If you aren't working on a cure for cancer or something, maybe it was in budget, but asking the question either way seems like a good practice to consider adopting
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...