It's interesting to me, this paradoxical era we live in. I mean in terms of entertainment, purely, for I am shallow and not entirely invested in discussing deeper, harder topics at this particular moment. So let's just take entertainment.
It's been a personal pet peeve for some time now how series take longer and longer to develop a new installment now. In the good old television days, for instance, you had season 2 to look forward to a year or so after the first one, but now, with streaming platforms taking over, it's become the norm to go 2-3 years between series. I remember when this was highly strange - I remember it was a point of discussion about some show or another - Squid Game or some such - that the next series would only come years later. It was surprising to many, but now it's just become common.
The same is true for books - I'm currently reading Brandon Sanderson's latest installment in the Stormlight Archive. I remember when the previous one came out, how excited I was and so on, but this was years ago. 2020, to be precise. To be fair, a similar three years had gone by between that book and the previous one, but still.
We live inside a paradox. Our attention span is famously rapidly decreasing. Online "content" is now pushed to be short - typically under 10 seconds - because it's assumed people won't pay attention for more than 10 seconds. Seconds.
And yet, it's also the era of years going by, expecting you to remember what's happening in these programmes.
Do you?
I struggle. I don't care enough to occupy valuable brain space with many of these things. Occasionally, for something I consider top-notch, I probably will, but for the most part... not really. Also, it seems to me to be a matter of entitlement - like if it takes you this long, fine, but if it's becoming custom and/or you're trying to prove your importance by letting people wait for you, which I personally think is the case with many of these Netflix thingies and Sanderson's work now, then I'm not really game. Stepping beyond the paradoxical demand here, for me, it comes back to the boundless knowledge that opens up before us.
There is such a great access to any and every kind of information I could hope for. Why on Earth would I litter my own mental space with subpar stories? They're fun enough to unwind with in the moment, but you can't really expect me to remember across years and years who was whoever else's love interest of secondary or tertiary character in some entertainmnet for the masses.
But coming back to the stark difference between our inability to focus and this demand to focus, it does make me wonder. Why? It's not that most of these products are that great - and I understand it takes time for visual effects and such other post-productiony things, but I assume in the era of "i want it now", we could have these quicker, if people really wanted to.
Do we enjoy the wait? Or is it perhaps simpler? If we're always busy waiting for a delivery of dopamine in the future, we can safely put our thinking minds on hold. We are always waiting to be entertained and as such we're too busy to consider the mediocre, unfulfilling existence we inhabit right now.
I don't mean you specifically, nor necessarily I. I mean the people who have been well conditioned to know that worth is equivalent to keeping up with the trends and the times. Social validation is, by its very nature, dependent on you being "up to date" with all the happening things.
It's a thinking that's easy enough to slip into. I'm waiting for the latest Squid Game to come out. Then the next Wednesday. Then the next House of Dragon or whatever else, on and on, jumping from one delivery of a cheap thrill to another.
This isn't to mock or put down the people who watch these. I do too. That's how I know. But I worry, also, at the constant demand on our increasingly rarified ability for attention.
Keep your eyes on the trending shows and artists and sagas and movies, etc. It's asking to keep your attention so much focused externally that I wonder how much time this leaves you with for other, perhaps more meaningful endeavors.
I'm always the annoying viewer who keeps asking others or Googling - which one's this? is this one the one who...oh, no?...then who the fuck was that?
