You’ve dined at The Cheesecake Factory, right? You greet the hostess, are led to your seat past the glass fridge displaying 112 variations of cheesecake. The waiter hands you a menu thicker than a car manual. Then he returns exactly 27 seconds later to ask for your selection from a seemingly infinite number of options.
That mind-numbing, eyeball-glazing experience of being besieged by infinite options and the ensuing analysis paralysis…this is the feeling I have when I watch television today. Today’s entertainment options are the equivalent of a hundred Cheesecake Factory menus.
Already grumbling to myself in 2017 about being buried alive by the proliferation of television content, I stumbled upon this article, the tinder to this fiery rant you’re now reading.
Netflix, already grossly excessive, is planning to rain down a deluge of content in the form of 700 new original shows in 2019. S-E-V-E-N H-U-N-D-R-E-D. I’m already overwhelmed by the state of my current Netflix cue filled with the same 70 sitcoms, movies, and documentaries I’ve been attempting and failing to watch for the last four years. As soon as I watch one of these shows and relish in the dopamine rush of finally axing it from my queue, I add three more shows or movies or documentaries back to it. The list never moves. It never shrinks. It’s an evil, mocking hydra of infinite TV show heads.
And Netflix is busy beavering away at making more content. Which brings me to my point:
We are caught in the middle of a television content arms race. And the collateral damage will be us.
As an early cord cutter, I’m not even a victim of 200+ channels of overpriced cable. But, in addition to Netflix, I have Sling, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Each of which (and many more) are competing for our dollars and attention by beating us over the heads with exceptional-television-content billy clubs.
That’s perhaps the scariest part about the TV-content arms race. Everyone has gotten really, really good at making arms. TV used to suck. So bad that you would actually turn it off and leave the house and interact with other mammals. But now, storytelling has exploded. It’s like all the writers are on LSD and they’re turning out some of the best work of their lives. Game of Thrones, Scandal, Mad Men, The Man in the High Castle. It’s insane how good some of these shows are, so insanely good that you are willing to sit there for 10 straight hours, devouring entire seasons at time Your brain and body, now accustomed to bathing in the soft, bluish glow emanating from the screen, is totally unphased by the process. YouTube. Hulu. Netflix. HBO. AMC. Prime. Multiple platforms and networks creating incredibly addictive TV shows. It’s the perfect storm turning viewers into zombies, zombies that merge with the fibers of their couch to create human-couch hybrid creatures. The creature has trained itself to break from the screen with great infrequency—minimal trips for releasing fluids and retrieving GrubHub orders. Its nest is composed of empty cans, oily pizza boxes, and a blockade of tissues and paper towels.
The problem is this: many of us have a treasure trove of goals and dreams. Some of us are adamant about achieving them.
We want to write books, start blogs, learn photoshop so we can make your own memes, figure out this bitcoin business. We want to be designers and trainers and photographers. We dream of quitting our jobs and opening Etsy stores featuring our own of handmade leather goods from ethically sourced cows.
I speculate that all of those dreams are in danger of being bulldozed by the TV-content arms race. Dreams, goals, success: these are all functions of time. It took time for me to write this. It takes time to research, build, design, investigate, learn, try, do, fail. It takes time to figure out which farms are treating your future handbags and handmade shoes with compassion.
If we are in zombie mode, inhaling seasons of Luke Cage, The Americans, The Walking Dead, This Is Us…where does that leave our goals and dreams?
I think about the artists and achievers of the decades prior. Would George Washington Carver have uncovered the absurd number of uses for the peanut if he was being zombified by Black Mirror? Would Henry Thoreau have written such powerful poetry and essays if he was hooked on Power? Actually, that’s a bad example—Thoreau would have said “Screw this!” and tossed his flat screen out of the window and into the woods. Would Stephen King be so prolific if he began his career during an era of infinite streaming distraction? He’d probably be watching The Walking Dead.
How harmful is the proliferation of content to dreamers and makers, songwriters and producers, novelists and guitarists, coders and knife makers? If some voice in one of the nooks and crannies of your noggin says Very!, then it means we must, in this present day, operate with absurd levels of discipline.
Previous generations required less discipline because they had few opportunities to exercise it. Five channels to choose from. Two movies in theaters. One station on the radio. The village storyteller only told stories on Fridays from 6-8, weather permitting. There were caves to scrawl on, but it was a real pain in the ass to make paint. These fewer options served as tinder to the fire of productivity. Humans sat their butts down and read a book or wrote one. Or made beautiful horseshoes. Or custom knives. Or wrote plays. They became craftsmen. They dedicated themselves to mastery. The made such beautiful, ornate, long-lasting things that we still marvel and cherish today.
If you have something to build or be or do, it is this simple: you need to live your day with the discipline of a Buddhist Monk.
I’ve begun watching TV Friday through Sunday (except for NBA playoffs). Sometimes, it sucks. As if the machine knows that I’m trying to unplug from the matrix, it sends me 117 people who ask: “HAVE YOU SEEN THAT NEW SHOW?! OH MY GOD IT’S SO GOOD! I earmuff myself and run away like a whiny child: “Nooo! STOP TALKING TO MEEEEEE!”
But you know what? I get stuff done. Stuff that will matter in 5 or 10 years (I hope) when an episode of The Defenders likely will not. Am I still experiencing TV FOMO? Absolutely. But, as time passes, I struggle less and less, like a fish removed from breathable water. At first, I flopped around erratically. Now, I’m lying more still, taking my last few empty gulps, accepting my fate.
I conclude with this: remember that your time is the collateral damage of a war being waged by a handful of billion-dollar behemoths that need your monthly remittance to fill their coffers. At its essence, this is it all it is. Shareholders are swimming through gold like Scrooge McDuck. But at what cost to you?
