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Comment by saucymew | Hacker News Reader

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed.

Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-form films.

Social media/TikTok videos own the top of the attention economy ladder now, not movies. This trend is not reversing anytime soon.

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Here's an alternate interpretation: they're watching television now rather than movies. Because the kind of character development and depth of storytelling that can happen in 20 or 50 or 80 hours goes far beyond what you can do in 2 or 3.

And the idea that young people can't watch long things due to a lack of attention goes directly against the evidence of the increasing habit of binge watching.

Forget about watching a mere movie for just 2 hours at a time. Try 4 or 5 hours instead, where you can cover almost half a season of a drama. You immerse yourself in the world for an entire evening, the way people used to do with novels.

For me the sweet spot has always been miniseries like band of brothers, where it’s basically an 8-12 hour long movie.

Great point, ultimately we're describing two different outcomes on where the current audience are spending their time on vs movies.

You posit television series, if I could add to that list, it'd be live streams, YouTube, Discord, etc.

All of these competing content genres are eroding the cultural cache and expected value of long film projects.

> All of these competing content genres are eroding the cultural cache and expected value of long film projects.

Serialized (as opposed to episodic) TV series are long film projects; crafted in ~10-hour chunks rather than ~2 hour ones.

But I wonder if their knowledge of TV is also as deep.

When I was a kid the TV was filled up with a lot of repeats of TV shows. Things that had been create 10,20 or even 40 years before. I'd watch them because there were not many other options (probably because new shows were too expensive to waste on offpeak timeslots)

I wonder what percentage of today's kids would recognize any of the below shows beyond the name (or more-recent revivals) let alone have watched a large number of episodes.

https://www.classic-tv.com/shows/decade/1960s

or even:

https://www.classic-tv.com/shows/decade/1990s

As someone born at the end of the 70s, and not anywhere near the US, I was kind of surprised by how many of those 60s shows I knew. (which also says I never realized they were that old...)

Among younger generations, binge-watching is very frequently done by having the video going in one window, while doing something else like Discord in another window. Or having the video playing on a laptop while browsing TikTok on one’s phone. It is no counterevidence for declining attention spans.

Do you have actual evidence for that?

Because sure, if you've got Property Brothers on in the background while you do other stuff, that makes sense. You can go in and out.

But if you're watching Squid Game, or The Last of Us, or Yellowjackets, or even Wednesday -- you'd better be paying attention to every frame. Modern dramatic TV demands your full attention in a way that The Golden Girls didn't.

The idea that younger generations are binge-watching Yellowjackets while browsing TikTok doesn't make any sense.

I wonder if the shift has more to do with movie theater attendance absolutely tanking for COVID-19. Even in 2023 ticket sales have been significantly less than the relatively constant rate for the few decades prior. The advertised/direct fill in was of course streaming services but these lean away from the typical blockbuster film content or even full length films at all. I'm not ruling out new social media content trends as a factor in the trend change completely, or as an alternative fill in, but short form social media content doesn't really explain why the "why" for a recent shift. After all, it's not like TikTok invented quick social media content it's just a popular modern choice.

In my final semester I wrote/directed a short film with friends that I met in the university’s filmmaking club. Most of them were Freshman or Sophomore.

I was looking forward to discussing some deeper and more obscure films with them, and they did have more knowledge of, for example, Lynch’s work than most people I talk to. However, they overwhelmingly talked about the new Star Wars saga and Marvel movies.

It's kind of inevitable. I grew up hearing movies decried as brain-rotting, imagination-killing junk food preventing everyone from reading a good book like nature intended. Of course the medium would be dethroned by something even more accessible.

When there's something even more convenient people will latch on to that instead. Expect nostalgia for the good ol' days when social media used to instill community values and awareness into the youth.

> The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth

Exactly, same as it ever was.

I own a projector and good surround-sound setup, and have a circle of friends who call themselves cinephiles. Sometimes they will suggest some film for me to put on for everybody. Nevertheless, virtually the moment the film starts, they take out their phones and then keep only half an eye on the film. I don’t even bother mentioning this out loud as a problem, I feel like it would just make me look like an out-of-touch weirdo.

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