Feeding The Content Beast And Navigating Through Its Stomach

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 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. House Of Cards. Unbreakbale Kimmy Schmidt. Dear White People. Black Mirror.

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

Good old network television still produces 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. John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee.

I just listed 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 eyes.

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 hold award show parties? 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 groundbreaking statement to make, it’s merely 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 that doesn’t have a bucket underneath it to catch the newly made confetti. A bucket that eventually gets filled, and needs time to empty before you can start filling it again.

Instead, we’re shoving papers through an industrial strength shredder that’s launching its debris into space. Into the vast, ever-expanding void of nothingness.

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 a pretty big name) dropped a joint album (pretty big deal) in similar fashion back in June and no one is talking about it.

Drake dropped an album late summer, even had the luck of one of his songs becoming a viral social media challenge. Yeah. No one’s getting out of their car and dancing while it rolls away anymore. The only way you’d get any views for doing such a dated thing now is if you juggled torches and had your (social media famous) Pomeranian steering the car.

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 the one he dropped August 31st.

It’s not just celebrities feeling this crunch. 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 big ass in a bikini on the beach? Boring. Post a twerking video.”

“Okay, your followers enjoyed your twerk video, 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!

Lol, just kidding. It’s to push advertisements and big accounts that they profit off of, choking out smaller content creators in the process.

But still, the fact remains. We’re being bombarded with media at the moment. A bukkake of content, being shot into our faces, metaphorically speaking. (Absolutely don’t Google that word if you’re at work. Or anywhere, really, if you don’t already know what it means).

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 all either ends up having a viral two week lifespan, or it gets completely overlooked or 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 like 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. Enjoy the content. Embrace it. However much of it you can stomach. However much the algorithm shows 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. This is fine. I don’t need to see all 500 butt pics. I’m sorry…fitness inspiration pics.

I’m sure The Handmaid’s Tale is a kick ass show, especially in this fucked up climate we’re in.

I’m sure Game Of Thrones has the incest and dragons corner of television in an absolute stranglehold. Good for them. I don’t have the time to watch it.

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 space.

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