Take last Sunday. It was 3 o’clock – at night. Technically, Saturday hadn’t ended yet and was stretching itself out into the next day. Tucked away in my room, I had been watching a web series on my laptop for a few hours. A wrinkled packet of chips lay close by as both proof and company. Some lukecool coffee in a mug with ‘Jack Daniels’ scribbled on it got my occasional attention.
As I struggled to suppress those intrusive yawns, I realised that sleeping would be an irresistible need soon. Until that happened, however, I shut myself off from the world to watch the web series in rapt silence. See my problem?
I had my first experience of binge-watching – or watching back-to-back-to-back-to… – episodes of web series on Netflix and Amazon Prime roughly four years ago. With the Covid lockdown full on like Betal on Vikramaditya’s shoulders, life had turned into incarceration. In such a situation, I found refuge in a show on an OTT platform that was far removed from all the grim and scary news.
Even after the pandemic crawled away and normalcy returned, one thing lingered like a happy virus: binge-watching. And over time, a refuge turned into indulgence, turned into habit, turned into addiction.
Is it possible to consume an entire season of a web series with a complex storyline and, say, eight sets of 1 hr-long episodes in one sitting and remember what one was watching in some detail later? Whenever I have binge-watched, I’ve reckoned that I have forgotten a significant part of the experience soon. Sometimes, too soon. The content of an elaborately designed web series does have a lot to offer – characters that evolve slowly, multiple subplots, flashbacks, foreshadowing…Which is why patient viewing with a few breaks in between is ideal OTT viewing. Attempting to binge-watch – and then succeeding – is honestly unnecessary for the entertainment experience. That is, unless one wants to test whether or not one has a superhuman memory, or can withstand new nifty interrogation methods being devised at Guantanamo Bay or in some dank room below the Kremlin. What OTT marathoners may actually be suffering from is FOMO. This is especially a possibility with every second person seemingly knowledgeable about the latest releases, and giving must-watch gyan in various WhatsApp groups you’re also hooked to.
If there is a conversation on an opulent period drama series, for instance, you must be seen as having the smarts and enough info to be able to belt out on your phone, ‘Bridgerton looks as grand as I had expected. In fact, grander. But have you seen The Gilded Age? It’s honestly even better!’ If not quite telling you much about either period drama shows, the WhatsApp messages let you know what’s in and what’s not in your groupthink group.
Confined to our comp screens during our droneworking hours, we all need to lead passive lives in our free time. Binge-watching makes this low effort content intake so very possible. It’s being spoon-fed to conveyor-belt entertainment. What could be more relieving after dronework?
I was once shocked upon hearing that a friend’s daughter was addicted to online chatting. Reluctant to leave her room, she would apparently call her mother on the mobile even when she was in the next room. Is the binge-watcher a variation of that malaise – except instead of someone else/others on the ‘other side,’ here it’s being part of a one-way chat of TV shows?
Considering we can access OTT platforms anytime we want, it would make more sense if we watch an 8-hr season over three days, instead in a single sitting. But then, when was binging ever about rational behaviour? Surgeon general-bhai, do suggest a statutory warning for us bingers as well.
