Proving that the Netflix execs don't have the foggiest fucking idea what they're doing.

You gain viewers by engaging them - by giving them something so interesting that they can't be distracted.

If you dumb everything down, the most likely outcome is that rather than looking at their phones in addition to your show, they look at their phones instead of your show.

They dumb down their shows because I'm on the phone and I'm on the phone because their shows are so dumb that I get bored.

Soon they will reinvent the radio drama, but on TV with a story board or something.

The TV series, “Police Squad” was canceled because “people had to pay attention” to see/get the jokes. ☹️

If I'm looking at my phone it's because whatever's on the screen is not engaging my attention isn't it?

This has been around for a long time, before Netflix. My dad and much of his generation get lonely when the TV is off, so he leaves it on at all times on whatever, while working or watching sports. Network TV does this with predictable crime dramas and sitcoms, cables got Hallmark movies and reruns of family guy, etc. Half-tune is a popular format for pretty much most age groups.

I explicitly don't do this, but I do have podcasts for my second screen in a sense-- only I won't do them unless it's a grindy game or Minecraft or something, and usually the podcast is taking my cognitive attention. It's disruptive if it's a thoughtful activity, like scrolling social media (though I guess the fediverse is a little more engaging than slopbook or whatever).

The enshitification of thought.

I'm pretty sure this is why andor flew under the radar/gets mixed reviews. Even with friends who are huge Star wars nerds like me, I get 'but it's boring!' a lot, mostly because it builds up to the climax in each three-episode arc. There isn't necessarily a huge, inexplicable 'OK time for action' scene in every episode just because. To enjoy it you need to be plugged in, absorbing the dialogue and connecting the dots scene to scene to understand how the plot got to the action and why it's important, and if you do you understand the tension buildup. Otherwise it just seems like two episodes of babbling and then some stuff happens, while you're still staring at your phone. At no point do any of the characters stop and explain what's happening before or during an important scene, it's all show-don't-tell. One of my best friends is working on his PhD, super bright guy, huge Star wars nerd. Has all the baby yoda this, clone trooper helmet that. I finally understood when we were watching something on stream once and I'm like "what's that? That noise?" It was his other screen on in the background watching a Twitch stream :( now I understand he's never not had a second screen going with a stream lmao feel like I'm taking crazy pills. We might as well pipe video of that stupid railway running coin grabber mobile game directly to the cortex of every citizen atp

My mom stopped watching "the bold and the beautiful" for this exact reason. She was watching it from almost 40 years straight 😂

When I went to their house for lunch I could hear her shouting "what? Need to explain again the conversation from the beginning?? It literally happened just 5 minutes ago!! Noooooo! Can we just go forward with the plot instead of explaining what happened one minute ago??"

I watch one episode a month but indeed it's annoyingly repetitive. Not even "second screen" but something like "muted TV in a dentist waiting room with subtitles in another language"

This is how my mom explained me why it is annoying:

Before: ** plot twist happens ** => viewer is shocked

Now:

1. for 15-20 episodes before the "plot twist" is supposed to happen, characters insert "if [plot twist] happens it will be very bad for us" in their speeches.

2. The bad guy is shown preparing the "plot twist" for another 15-20 episodes

3. For another 15-20 episodes the characters still mention randomly in their conversations how bad if the plot twist would happen in their lives and let everyone swear that no, they can never let the plot twist happen.

4. Obvious "Plot twist" happens in slow motion over the course of 5 episodes

5. Characters talk about how the "plot twist" impacted their lives for 15-20 episodes

6. After 30-60 episodes, when characters are gathered at a family reunion on the coach, start reminiscing how the "plot twist" was so shocking and unexpected

7. For the next 15 episodes every single person present at that family reunion including some random security guard really needs to retell the "plot twist" from their point of view

That explains the latest season of Wednesday.

You could just treat it like a shitty audiobook. I half-expected characters to start describing their own facial expressions.

Second? Sheeyit. I'm 72 and well into third and fourth screen viewing. Mostly at work. The spreadsheets and PowerPoint crap just don't hold my fascination like the trailer park boys, Star Trek, or clash golf.

Netflix had some good years, then it seemed like they were starting to get pretty inconsistent, and now it seems like they're entering their straight-up slop era.

Yep. There are many shows now where characters keep repeating what just happened. Great for ADHD GF, annoying for me when I'm actually trying to just do one thing at once.

Fuck this timeline. We’re not cattle! Reclaim your time and Degoogle/big tech your life.

This style of writing predates streaming, though i'm sure it's more prevelant now.

Plenty of pre-internet shows have characters ham-fistedly repeating or summarizing the situation after ad breaks, or telling rather than showing their feelings, or telling you what's at stake.

Stupid characters who have to have the plot point explained to them in case the audience still hasn't gotten it are everywhere too, it's super common in sitcoms.

I feel like nearly every Netflix original I've saw in the last few years at friends houses feel like they're made for middle schoolers with the story devolopment and over explaining what they're doing/about to do on screen as if we can't see them

Heard about this a few times now and witnessed it too. I don't recall which movie it was, since it was forgettable, but the characters felt the need to remind me what was going on in the plot more than four times and I remember actually questioning my sanity. Like, do they think I'm this stupid and can't follow a simple plot?

do things like announce when characters enter a room

oh hi mark

Maybe in a few shows, but there are plenty others that turn into messes of a plot and are just poorly written. 

Idiocracy is slowly becoming a documentary

Having partaken in online discussions about Pluribus (which doesn't really do this), I can see where they are coming from (although I absolutely do not agree with it).

You go into episode discussion threads and regularly wonder "have we watched the same show?", because people will just absolutely not know about some absolutely pivotal plot point that happened or explanation that was done.

It's insane

I have phone shows and no-phone shows.

Tbf, its not just phones. At the end of the day, my mind is cooked. I just want to kick back and get fed entertainment. If I'm awake at the end of it, meh.

Yea, my wife hates watching shows with me 😆

On a tangential topic, why does almost every tv series changes after the first or second season?

Like not on just the story progressing, but the acting, the dialogue, the main "thing" stops being done and it just becomes a setting, that kind of thing.

Like a series about work, where they work on the first season, but on the next one they never work anymore, the theme is there, but gets different, work is just a thing they say they are doing while doing other things, maybe a scene or two they work.

Or the series keeps getting weirder and weirder, not on a change of topic, but the "events" keep getting more extreme, like they ran out of ideas.

Idk if it is something just I notice, but I keep seeing over and over: I like the first season, it seems like the hook, but on the next season it seems the same tv series, but with a different tone, like the company just says "yeah, but now don't talk about this, do that way because this tv series did this and made money" or the ideas were all made just for the first season.

Or I'm being dumb hahaha

You don’t have to watch Netflix. Plenty of good movies out there!

If you watch a lot of BBC stuff, you'll find that you can generally follow the plot without necessarily paying too much attention to the screen. In their case, it's because the BBC originated as a radio broadcaster and their script culture still reflects some of those old styles and practices. The fact that they maintain a robust radio play / audio drama production focus certainly doesn't hurt either.

Alternatively: Use 1.5x or 2x speed if you get bored and have trouble concentrating.

The only time I am on my phone while watching something else is when I throw on a random meme compilation on YouTube so I can get more memes per minute.

Pathetic, frankly.

People should try reading more books and watch less TV/streaming precisely for this reason. Also maybe if you want to watch a movie consider watching older movies.

This is a fascinating article/podcast that talks about this but is focused on how it impacts your attention span and has data: https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans

Mark: So I was very surprised to learn that TV and film shot lengths have decreased over the years. They started out much longer. They now average about four seconds a shot length. That's on average. If you watch MTV music videos, they're much shorter. They're only a couple of seconds. So we've become accustomed to seeing very fast shot lengths when we look at TV and film. Even commercials have shortened in length. Commercials used to be much longer. Now it's not uncommon to see six-second commercials, even shorter than that. Now it's a chicken and egg question. We don't know if TV and film have affected our attention spans on computers and phones. We don't know if our attention spans have affected the decision-making of film editors and directors. We don't know exactly if there is any causal connection we see these two parallel trends.

It could be the case that directors and editors are influenced by their own short attention spans when they create these film shots or it could be that they're creating short film shots because they think that's what the viewer wants to see. But this has become quite ubiquitous. In fact, on YouTube, there's a particular YouTube aesthetic which uses jump cuts. So when you're watching a YouTube film, the film becomes very jumpy. The natural pauses that people make when they speak it is removed. So the idea is to pack more content into a shorter amount of time. So we're seeing short lengths of content from all directions. It's not just what we're attending to on computers and phones.

Soaps are a bit like that too.

You'd think by now one of these digital media gurus would have invented some sort of feature where a user could replay a complicated scene or a subtle bit of dialog. Then their subscribers could properly appreciate more sophisticated cinematography.

It is a circle that keeps repeating.
Honestly there are only a few movies that I can actually watch, without doing something else.
Be phone, sodoku, fiber arts, working out, cleaning or ironing.
Being a non interactive medium - it has an uphill battle.
I almost prefer visual novels over most movies, and I hate visual novels. Now, Dispatch - that's the shiznit.

Of course they fucking do...

I'm 100% certain that neither COVID brain damage nor social media dopamine chasing have played any part in this.

/s

Ahhh of course engagement. The only factor that matters on the internet. The only metric the board can understand.

Don't make things good just min/max engagement. That way there will be maximum profits. Again the only real thing that matters.

If they're not really watching then it doesn't matter how simple or complicated the dialog is. Watch it once on second screen mode, if it's not awful enough to be bothersome then it's worth a second watch on first screen mode.