The New Norm.
Quarantine is a time to learn about ourselves. We have free time that some have never experienced before. Families are being reunited at home under strenuous circumstances as parents are jobless and the kids aren't in school. We're being brought together in the worst way imaginable without the choice of wanting to or not. But let's hop out of the gutter for a moment and talk about what's going on at home.
Streaming services are at an all-time high. Netflix stocks just recently rocketed past Disney, which is astonishing. PlayStation just gave out two (four total) free games to gamers on the PlayStation 4, as well as supporting small indie developers with some cash to keep them afloat (read about the Play At Home Initiative). The world is working together to keep things as normal as possible in a not-so-normal time.
I've been sitting in my room playing video games or working everyday, all day, for about a week straight. The good side of working from home is that the company I work for was prepared for the virus. The bad side is now that I'm a little less busy, I don't really feel like working and would rather put my time towards doing things that I normally wouldn't have time for.
If binge-gaming were a thing (which I believe it is, but I couldn't find anything for it), that's probably what I've been doing. This isn't about video games though, this is about binge-watching, so let's get on with it.
Binge-watching, as defined online, is the act of watching episodes of a series (TV or online) consecutively for a long amount of time. Watching 3-4 episodes of a show isn't binge-watching, but watching a season within a day definitely is.
I'm not really a binge-watcher. I haven't watched a show all the way through since I watched all of Breaking Bad in 2015. I binged the first five seasons of Game of Thrones before the sixth season began a few years ago, but that's about it. Right now, the current craze is around Tiger King (which I have no doubt someone will talk about in one of their blogs) but like I said, I'm not a binge-watcher.
I'd like to specifically address content creators that are based online. They are likely the biggest benefactor of the quarantine boredom crisis as they continue to create content for a trapped populace. If you happen to follow a creator online, check how often they are uploading content now and compare it to how often they were uploading six months ago. I'm willing to bet there's a difference since now they have all the time in the world to create content. If that's not the case, they're likely falling into the same routine as I, where relaxation is the new norm for now. Whatever the case, if they're still creating content, they are doing it for us.
When I was in high school, every night as I went to bed I browsed YouTube and fell asleep watching a series of some kind. Usually, I would watch someone play NCAA Football 14 where they would rebuild a bad team (often the University of Alabama-Birmingham). These series would go on for years, about a decades worth of seasons in-game would be at the cusp of my fingertips to watch at my own pace. I could get through a season every other day, with each video being about 20 minutes long. The takeaway from this is that binge-watching was already a thing (we knew that), but it's the new norm now. It's all people are doing, it's all they're talking about. We all want to go back to normal, but will life ever be the same after this is all said and done?
We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment