Between access to infinite music, infinite movies and TV, infinite gaming, and infinite news - and that's just leisure - I'm not sure how much time I have left for a finite life.
1. There is infinite content for me to consume.
2. I have a finite life.
3. Even if I spend my entire life trying, I cannot consume all content.
4. Since I cannot consume all content, there will be content that I will not consume that I would have enjoyed.
5. I want to spend my life doing some things other than consuming media.
6. Given 4 & 5, "I would enjoy it" is no longer a sufficient condition for me to consume some media.
7. Given 6, my feelings of FOMO have gone down considerably. What's to be afraid of, when there's always another product to fill the same "mild enjoyment" void?
Especially in recent years, it feels like the market is being flooded with content (especially TV shows) that SHOULD be hits, but just fall flat; a recent example is the LotR TV show, which, while pretty, doesn't seem to be the runaway success they were hoping for.
The enormous supply means that the act of curation becomes very important in today’s world.
With Apple Music, at least, I keep a clear distinction between my personal library and the rest of their offerings. That at least gives me a sense of shape and dimension to my library. To be clear, my personal library is a mixture of music I have bought and music I added from the AM library.
To do this, I unchecked "Add songs to library when adding to playlists." This makes Apple Music not add every single song in every playlist you follow to your library.
Now, I can browse my curated selection of music and playlists, OR I can play music from Apple's playlists, etc. When I discover an artist I like, I can then purposely add it to my library.
I wish I could do this type of curation with Apple News and Apple TV.
Every now and again you'll find something you want to give a chance to, and for those things do slow down, take it in. But don't waste that on any random thing just because it's new and being pushed hard by some giant media conglomerate.
Or alternatively give it five-ten years before you engage with any cultural product. Time is a very effective filter for quality.
It’s perfectly acceptable to bounce off a book after five pages. Off a podcast with poor production quality. Off a song after the first measure.
Tastes differ, so don’t feel bad if you dislike something the zeitgeist adores.
Only consuming media which hooks you instantly is a good way to achieve the media equivalent of a sugar-only diet.
I don’t have an answer for this to be honest, it’s just an observation.
The radio was like that before streaming services. Don't know if you like country music? Just pop on the country station when you're alone in your car and try it out. If it doesn't work out, switch to hip hop or classical, or alternative. Worst case, you wasted 5 minutes of your time while you were driving anyway. Best case, you have a new genre of music to explore!
That said, I'm don't have ADHD and am heavily skeptical of anything coming from big corps, so I already aggressively tune out most things, so maybe it's not that easy for others.
Obviously she didn’t. My father in turn never picked up a love for the beetles nor reading. So, while appealing to our lamentations about “kids these days”, your hypothesis is flawed.
People, even in times of media scarcity, still developed loves and hates. Evolving your tastes is much more intentional than just not having a choice.
I’m not saying: You’ll like anything if you give it time.
I’m saying: There are things that you may not initially like, which you will like if you give it time. Which means that if you never give anything its proper time, you’re likely missing out on things you may have otherwise learned to appreciate.
Let's say you'll only ever keep watching if a film begins with an explosion. Surely, if this how the audience behaves, then every film produced will quickly converge on beginning with explosions.
But if every film begins with explosions, maybe you become tired of all the explosions. Eventually you'll come to associate an explosion-heavy start with mediocre formulaic films, and your behaviour will reverse: maybe you'll now refuse to watch any film that begins with explosions.
Surely it's all just an endless cycle of fashions and counter-fashions, culture and counter-culture? The studio gives us what we crave, and we eat it all up until we're sick and want something else, and then some avant garde artist gives us something else, and if it works and is popular then all the studios steal it and the cycle repeats?
In as far as art isn't 'productive' per se - ars gratia artis and all that - to what end should you suffer through art you don't enjoy?
most streaming music use is background noise. having somr music on, classical or otherwise, while im something else, doesnt lead to anu sort of content fatigue.
yeah there is new stuff, but when we speak of "classical music", we're really talking about long-dead people
Dvorak isn't going to be composing any new works, you can actually listen to everything Dvorak ever created and then you're "done"
I could listen to different recordings of Canto Ostinato all day, it sounds like a completely different piece if someone else plays it.