This interactivity is intoxicating. It turns a solitary act into a communal ritual. Yet it also fragments our attention. We are so busy documenting our experience of the media that we rarely experience the media itself. If the 20th century was the age of the appointment (tune in Thursday at 9), the 21st century is the age of the binge.
This has created a golden age of niche content. It is now possible to spend an entire evening watching obscure Japanese carpentry restoration videos, followed by a deep dive into the lore of a 1980s cartoon, followed by a stand-up special filmed in a Brooklyn basement. Popular media is no longer a monolith. It is a million splintered galaxies, each one perfectly tailored to a specific taste. xxxxnl videos
Streaming platforms like Netflix, TikTok, and YouTube have perfected the art of the mirror. They do not ask what you want to watch; they analyze what you have watched, for how long, at what time of night, and whether you replayed that specific fight scene three times. This interactivity is intoxicating
The dominant business model of popular media is no longer originality; it is . Studios are terrified of the unknown. They would rather invest $150 million in a "known quantity"—a reboot, a sequel, a cinematic universe—than $10 million in a weird, original idea. We are so busy documenting our experience of
Today, we don’t watch entertainment. We inhabit it.