Feeding The Content Beast

Netflix

I’m often told that I have to check out The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s said that the Hulu series is a searing commentary on the current state of our republic, and a scary look at how a society can slowly slip into a fascist blackhole.

I’m also told Game Of Thrones is amazing. Anything, on HBO, really.

Game Of Thrones. Westworld. Big Little Lies. Veep. Insecure. Barry.

What about Netflix? Ozark. Stranger Things. Orange Is The New Black. Daredevil. Bojack Horseman. Unbreakbale Kimmy Schmidt. Dear White People. Black Mirror. Even their original films generate buzz. Bird Box anyone?

FX is producing quality shows, too. Atlanta. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. American Horror Story. American Crime Story. The Americans (Boy this network really loves America). Fargo. Baskets.

Good old network television still churns out the hits as well. NBC’s This Is Us, The Good Place, The Voice, Superstore, Saturday Night Live. ABC’s black-ish, Modern Family, Fresh Off The Boat, Grey’s Anatomy, How To Get Away With Murder.

Not to mention all the late night hosts that are killing it in this political climate. Both Jimmys, Seth Meyers, The Daily Show alums John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, and The Daily Show’s current host, Trevor Noah.

I’ve just listed about 40 shows. If you’re still reading this, you’re a better person than I am, because several times throughout this introduction, I considered closing my laptop out of pure nausea at the sight of so many different shows being hurled at my eyeballs.

And that’s not even scratching the surface. There were 487 scripted shows on television last year.

487.

And that’s just scripted shows!

What if you like sports? What if you’re an award show junkie? What if you’re feeling a sense of existential dread and want to watch cable news?

There’s obviously not enough time to watch everything on television - and while that’s not exactly a new complaint, it’s a piece of a much bigger problem.

We’re living in a content bubble. Whether it’s television, film, music, video games, or social media - everyone is making something, all the time.

We’re putting things through a paper shredder without a bucket underneath it to catch the waste. A bucket that needs to be emptied on occasion, and on such occasions, allow for the paper shredder to catch its breath so the motor doesn’t burn out.

Instead, we’re shoving papers through an industrial strength paper shredder that’s launching its debris into space. Into the vast, ever-expanding void of nothingness. Where there’s room for anything and everything to be made and consumed.

Content has the shortest shelf life its ever had.

Remember when Beyonce randomly dropped Lemonade and had the world buzzing about it for over a year? Yeah…well; her and her husband Jay-Z (who’s also a pretty big name) dropped a joint album (pretty big deal) in similar fashion over the summer, and it was a cultural moment…for a hot two weeks.

Drake also dropped an album this past summer, and even had the added benefit of one of his songs becoming a viral social media challenge. Yeah. No one’s getting out of their car and dancing to “In My Feelings” while said car slowly rolls ahead anymore. The only way you’d get any social media buzz for doing such a dated thing right now, is if you juggled torches while you did it, and had your (social media famous) Pomeranian steering the car for you.

And even then…eh.

You’ll get your clip played as a fluff piece at the end of a local news broadcast. And people will forget about it inside of a week.

Our cultural attention span is completely shot. Major political scandals that would bring a normal administration to its knees are wiped clean within three days, replaced with a new political scandal.

We’re numb to it all.

A major artist drops an album at midnight? Cool. Let’s have it trend on Twitter for two days, quote lyrics from it, watch the subsequently released music videos on our phones, and forget about the entire project two weeks later. Then demand that artist give us another album next year so we can do it all over again.

Hell, Eminem released two full length albums within an 8 month period, and people are already over both of them.

It’s not just celebrities feeling this pressure to produce content on a consistent basis. Any model, photographer, makeup artist, etc who uses Instagram to network/make a living is feeling it too.

“Wow, amazing aerial view of a state park! What else ya got?”

“Is that the milky way I see hovering over that canyon? Holy shit! Okay, what else ya got?”

“Showing off your squat gains in a bikini on the beach? Nice. Now post a twerking video.”

“Okay, your followers enjoyed the twerking video you put in your Instagram story, but that was 22 hours ago. Your story expires soon. Better put another one up.”

The pressure to constantly produce content, engage, and stay active online is very real.

It’s gotten so bad, tech companies have designed algorithms to help show you what it thinks you want to see, completely hiding things they deem an unnecessary waste of your time, since you can’t see everything.

Just kidding. The algorithms were really made to push advertisements and big accounts that they profit off of, choking out smaller content creators in the process. They know you’re being bombarded with content, so they need to make sure you don’t miss out on any ads in the process.

But still, the fact remains. We are being bombarded with content at the moment.

You’ll read this piece, chuckle at how relatable it is, and forget about it by tomorrow. Nothing will change. This is going in that industrial space shredder with all the other garbage. Regardless of how quality the content actually is, it either ends up having a viral, two week lifespan, or it gets completely overlooked and forgotten about. It is what it is.

How do we endure? The obvious answer would be to unplug from our phones every now and again, but we know that’s virtually impossible in today’s day and age. FOMO is a real thing. We always want to be in the know. We crave the attention we get when we make a new social media post. We enjoy seeing our likes and follow counts go up. We like getting text alerts. It’s euphoric for a lot of us.

So I say, go the other way with it. Embrace the content. However much of it you can stomach. However much the algorithms choose to show you.

Out of the 700+ accounts I follow on Instagram, I’m pretty sure 500 of them are butt models. I’m sorry…fitness personalities.

Of those 500 profiles, I’m maybe shown 10 different actual accounts in my daily feed. That’s fine. I don’t need to see all 500 butt posts. I’m sorry…fitness inspiration posts.

I’m sure The Handmaid’s Tale is a kick ass show, especially in this hellscape of a moment we’re in.

I’m sure Game Of Thrones has the incest and dragons corners of television in an absolute stranglehold. Good for them. If I can make time to watch it some day, I will.

Between sleeping, eating, living my life, and harassing Republican congressmen on Twitter, I’m pretty booked.

I sleep easy knowing I won’t read, listen to, or watch most things that are out there in the deep bowels of Content Space.

I’m merely a solitary astronaut, clinging onto any interesting chunks of debris within my flight path.