I think the same applies to entertainment broadly: movies, podcasts, tv shows.
Instead I think that the real attention span is not consumer-based, but rather based on interaction with the subject matter. Simply put, I think the level of engagement with a material has to be on a certain level before you can claim it takes attention to consume it.
Yes, a Stranger Things season lasts 8 hours front-to-back, but if you zone out for an hour in between they're still looking for the alien mystery and they're not suddenly going to die because you didn't think along with all the plotpoints.
Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly.
I think that nuance is missing if you just say the words "attention span". "Attention" may just be the wrong word, and so I think nothing is really solidly refuted here, and I do indeed think that the attention span is dead.
> Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly.
Zoning out university lecture was extremely normal when I was studying over 20 years ago. You did not died either. You kept making notes in a zombie like state and then reread the notes later on. Or you checked textbook or you asked friend for notes. It would be pretty rare for your memory to be the only source of learning later on.
There was no need to understand and acquire the lecture content right at place during lecture. In all likelihood, there was never ever such need.
With big lectures I remember details about the lecturer more than the class material. The professor's style, tone, gravitas. Their anecdotes.
An important part of the package there really is about marshaling student attention. Getting out of the home, going to a dedicated place of learning with others, restraints on distraction. Similar issues affect WFH/remote. Or various other psycho-hacks like wearing special uniforms, daily rituals.
Perhaps ADD correlates with cultural looseness around all such formality.
I think it’s just really hard and rare to make great things and easier to make short, acceptable things that are successful to a lesser, but marginally acceptable level. I call this the “machine learning effect” as it’s regression to the mean and good enough, but not great. The most frequent place I see this is in Amazon recommendation engine where they don’t want you to buy a great book so much as they just want you to buy something, and a perfect transaction is where you only like the book enough not to return it and come back to buy another because you’re unsatisfied.
What’s neat is that there’s probably an ffmpeg script that if you just give me the clip times I can assemble from my own files.
(Am I correct that you, too, find the "yup, they're not in mordor, and they're increasingly miserable" scenes tedious?)
I love spending time with him on our home server, but trying to keep up with him is sometimes just as frustrating as helping him with math homework.
Attention disorders are about a deficiency in executive function, including a reduced ability to control one's attention (as opposed to just being a lack of attention). When disinterested, this leads to an inability to focus/concentrate. When it's something you like, this leads to "hyperfocus," whereby it's tough to pull away and behavior can be obsessive/addictive in nature. This latter symptom seems to receive less attention (edit: no pun intended :)). (And individuals and specifics differ.)
This is an oversimplification and I'm being a little loose with the vocabulary, but I wanted to at least briefly comment on the perceived "sketchiness" you mention.
AIUI, this is a very common but false belief; it is in part based on hyperfocus being a common feature of ADHD, but hyperfocus on something isn’t (though its often mistaken for) liking it. (It’s also probably based in part on “activities” that are themselves tolerant of lack of consistent focus and task switching.)
Both of those things work because people do other stuff while listening/watching. There are very, very, very few 12+ hour streaming-series "movies" that are improved by paying close attention the entire time, even if you split the watch into two or three sessions—most are better if you check out from time to time, talk to someone, go to the other room to do the dishes, mess around on your phone, play some Switch, whatever.
It's only solidly refuted if those aren't skipped to death, or "followed" while the person does 4 other things at the same time. And of course if those represent the main way content is consumed nowadays, and not like a mere small percentage of our consumption. And if the person doesn't watch them while still having the attention span of a goldfish, and e.g. missing any longer narrative threads...
I watch a lot of made-for-TV staff on DVD and see a similarity – in football terms it's just time wasting. Long pauses usually filled in with music to give the illusion something is happening, sex scenes, gratuitous violence, people taking offence with unrealistic ease, longshots, slow shots... Anything to hide the fact that there is a lot of empty air. (Oh yes, and the three minute intro that also recaps what happened last time).
It all suggests there's a lot of tolerance for "something happening on screen" independent of whether it's worth watching or basically nothing at all.
This. I pretty much stopped watching all new shows made after 2015 or so (with Succession being the exception), as it feels like, during the TV shows gold rush, a lot of not very talented writers and directors got to make their own shows due to huge demand from the studios. In reality, making something many hours long and yet packed with actual interesting content is a Herculean task, so it feels like these untalented people are trying to steal any piece of time they can get, by every mean of stalling possible (sex, violence, "poignant" long shots etc.). It's almost like watching workers paid by the hour, and not by result.
Combine that with the fact that most movies and shows nowadays are targetting people who are at most 30 years old [1], and I'm really no longer interested.
[1] That's my theory anyway. Young people are the perfect audience - they have more free time and are significantly easier to impress with what is often in reality a poorly done rehash of things that worked in the great movies, shows or books of the past. They're still young enough to experience a given concept for the first time in their life, so they'll be moved by it. They're also significantly more susceptible to fads (don't belive their own taste as strongly, because it's not yet well developed), so it's much easier to manipulate them with marketing, paid reviews etc.
Also, Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes? There is like one or two per series and they are fairly mild.
After watching two series of it I could not discern any overall plot at all.
> therefore parents theory about binging marathons and collective attention deficit disorder is somehow wrong?
That's not what I was saying, and I was not disagreeing with him, and as I said, I upvoted his post. What I was saying was that to produce volume you may have to compromise heavily on other aspects.
> I do not even see what people should watch to not be adhd for you
I was not complaining about anybody else's viewing habits. People should watch what they want that entertains them. I was talking about my particular experience and wondered if it was shared by others. Seems that somebody agreed with me.
> Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes?
Like I said I watch other, contemporaneously made, things as well on DVD.
On its face, it's a sci-fi/horror film that contains a classic good vs evil fight against a monster. Within that, there's a pretty compelling narrative about the corruption of power, man's arrogant willfulness to play god, themes about fatherhood, family, the strength of love (romantic / platonic / familial,) the temptation of evil, nature vs nurture, and sacrifice.
On the whole though, the plot is more a vehicle for its themes, especially those centered around love, family, and the good and bad of humanity than your average murder mystery plot, but there are a handful of plots to pick from, and tbh, most of them are more worthwhile than the most obvious one, but it's hard to meaningfully categorize these stories as "empty air" however much they may not be _for you_.
I can only speak for myself and that's what I did. It bored me but if it worked for you that's great.
I haven't binge-watched a series in the 20 years since the one time I ruined "Twin Peaks".
One episode a day or one a week really is a good cadence.
But there is a lot of genuinely good stuff out there too. You just have to recognize mystery boxes and bail.
In short, "boring" bits when used skilfully are important, they help to set the expectations and amplify the subtleties. It's a bit like "dynamic range" for the plot: if there's no change in pace, everything becomes bland and boring. But also I do recommend watching that video essay, it's really good and goes much deeper than I can do in a short reply.