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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

Stephen Fry described TV as the nation’s fireplace, with the implication that shared viewing of a common canon strengthens cultural connections with other people.

It’s like how millennials can drop a Simpsons quote into a conversation with their peers and everybody gets the reference.

Peak TV has annihilated this. Nobody watches the same stuff anymore.

Did you catch the latest season of Current Thing? No, because there’s no Current Thing any more, there’s a thousand of them.

The more we watch, the more isolated we become.

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Good time to mention that 120 MILLION people watched the series finale of MASH.

To this day it's still in the top 10 of most viewed television events with the other being primarily sports events (e.g. Super Bowl etc)

And it's still one of the best pieces of television ever made. My own personal canon would be that, _Ozymandias_ (Breaking Bad), _The Pine Barrens_ (The Sopranos), and honorable mention to the finale of _Blackadder_. What's anyone else's nominations?

Gotta mention Succession as a very recent example of great TV and great season finales.

...and that was after 11 seasons!

as estimated by a sampling of 1700-5500 homes.

    1980 1,700 audiometer homes and a rotating board of nearly 850 diary respondents
    1985 Nielsen meters TV viewing in more than 5,500 U.S. homes

Are you saying that viewing number is dubious because the panel is small?

~2000 is a pretty decent sample size. The viewing numbers you should be skeptical about are the very small ones which will have huge error bars, not the huge ones.

Less pessimistically, we now have content for a broader diversity of tastes - greater than ever before. As a result, people can choose to watch shows socially with friends, as well as have content just for themselves. And consuming that content can lead to finding new social groups based on shared interests, if they do desire.

I find the diatribe of "things got better, we got worse" so... boring and antisocial? You never magically made friends, you have always had to make them. There are now tools specifically to help you do this, and your pool has become unrestricted to the geographical region of your job. It's easier than ever, it's more likely you're just overwhelmed by the change.

But even that's fine - I made a new friend today while out and about. Just from talkin' like "the good ole days".

What We Do In The Shadows is extremely queer and has managed to develop significant reach, and that makes me happy. I thought some of the jokey bi stuff in the first season would be throwaway like usual, but they keep dialing it up.

The writers are very well-versed in the vampire meta, and it shows.

Idk. On one hand all the main characters are gay or bi (I think Collin is?). On the other it’s almost entirely a non issue. The vampires have no concept of gay culture at all. As a straight guy with no particular connection to in group lgbt culture this seems preferable. It’s often culturally alienating. What we do in the shadows is comfortably normative

Afaik, overall, we are more lonely then ever. People are not making friends, they are sitting home lonely and isolated.

> There are now tools specifically to help you do this

Out of curiosity, not disagreeableness, which tools are those?

There are definitely still Current Thing's though - Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Squid Games. They'll come and go. There's also the 'in-joke' kind of references from more niche shows that can form a stronger connection than the big thing of the day.

If you think that Game of Thrones counts as Current Thing then you've fallen behind

I thought about this recently. Ideas is what in theory kept American society going. For a while, as the society started to lose track of what it wants to be ( and people in charge not exactly keen on educated populace ), it was the idea of American destiny and uniqueness and freedom and so on.

Shared TV space replaced those 'shared values' state tried to indoctrinate people with 'shared current thing', which had to indoctrinate people to state propaganda AND sell stuff for companies.

Those shared values have to replaced with something.

I want to say something pithy like 'but now its memes or tiktok shorts', but I can't get sufficiently worked up.

No, it's just that one discusses these media in different venues than the public square. For example, if I watch something, I will inevitably find people talking about it on various fora, such as its subreddit. In that way, one is still able to latch onto the common canon. And this is even before saying anything about cultural phenomena like Game of Thrones.

Stuff that comes out weekly seems to do better on cultural impact. ~Everyone's seen the Invincible memes.[0][1] I see What We Do In The Shadows references all the time.[2] There are a few shows I've never watched, but know bits and pieces about through stuff like this.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-the-neat-part-you-dont

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/look-what-they-need-to-mimic-...

[2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2470104-sheher-theythem-cool...

Given that I subscribe to meme groups, participate in #meme slack groups - and am bombarded by memes incessantly in twitter - I was surprised to see that I didn't recognize any of your memes.

Hahaha this is hilarious and a massively unintentional strengthening of a point being argued against.

Many of us haven’t seen those shows or memes your bubble is your bubble only. That is the entire point and thrust of this comment thread.

Then this comment comes in and is all ‘actually we’ve all seen these’ and we are all like…… nah?

I have not seen the Invincible memes.

That's the neat part, you have now.

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