[ad_1]
Every time a friend tells us they ate an entire pizza at two in the morning, drank an entire bottle of whiskey, or took all the drugs that Hunter S. Thompson mentions in the first paragraph of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegaswe laugh, but we laugh with concern.
Because doing as much fun as it can be is sometimes a sign that things aren’t quite copastic. “Everything’s fine?” you tend to ask. However, when someone brags about binge-watching the entire first season of dragon house or some other show on a weekend, we’re like, “Fine.”
Now, obviously, drugs, whiskey, and late-night pizza are more immediately detrimental to your health, especially when you consume them all at once, as I did on Tuesday afternoon. However, it’s a bit strange how so many people feel the need to consume several hours of entertainment in one sitting like a duck swallowing without chewing.
Granted, I’ve done it several times. What was I supposed to do that day? Read? Do you see people? Grow as a person? That’s absurd. That time is better spent watching an entire TV series gradually get worse until the last episode prompts me to say, “God, that was a bad ending. What day is it?”
Why do we binge
Why do we do this to ourselves? The first response people tend to give in my unscientific study that I didn’t actually do is, “Because the show is so good, I just had to find out how it ended in one session.” you? Was that? A third question?
No show is that good (except the ones I’ve seen). Most of us won’t sit through a movie for more than 2.5 hours unless it’s really worth it, but we will sit through episode after episode of a show that we can feel worse after the first season.
You may have noticed something here. When people go on a binge frenzy, it tends to be with new or at least slightly newer shows. You rarely hear people say, “I got drunk watching everything Harry and the Hendersons last week” or “We can’t meet at the bar, I need to finish Baywatch nights. “
It’s not just the idea that television is better than it used to be, which is debatable. It’s that people feel the need to finish the new ones so they can say they’re done, tell their friends, tweet their opinion, and do anything else to let the cultural spirit gods know they’ve consumed the latest. Witness me!
I may have been binge-watching a show and missed the news when this law passed, but there seems to have been an executive order of Congress that says everyone has to watch the latest popular show that comes out, and we all have to watch it on the Same time.
Because if you don’t, you might miss a reference or not get the joke in a meme, and people will know about it, they’ll point the finger at you in public, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. People love to announce that they’ve finished a show. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to time travel. “I have seen the future, my friends. Come back now and save yourselves.”
Why does my back hurt?
When it comes to health, we know deep down that while binge-watching isn’t as bad as eating a whole wheel of cheese, it’s probably not good either. Binge eating is, by definition, indulging in something in excess. And look at the action itself: you are sitting in one place, with your eyes glued to a screen and immersed in a reality that is not real at all and repeats the same song every hour.
From a distance, you look like a person in a science experiment. One can imagine people in lab coats looking at you and commenting, “It’s about to blow.”
I could easily cite studies that say binge-watching is an addictive behavior that creates an unsustainable dopamine rush, tends to correlate with loneliness and depression, and can have a negative impact on relationships and sleep, but that you already knew instinctively. That’s why every part of your body hurts afterwards.
Binge watching can certainly be fun here and there when you have nothing to do and want to immerse yourself in a show that features really attractive people saying shy things to each other. It can be a way to relax sometimes, up to a point.
But beyond all of that, there’s one reason we know it’s probably terrible for us: that moment when the Wi-Fi cuts out in the middle of an important episode and you snap like a kid whose parents turn off the TV without warning. warning.
That’s a good time to walk away from your tantrum yelling at your Internet provider’s phone representative (“I’m going to give you hell!”), and go do something healthy with your time, like have a glass of whiskey while watching. flying cars out the window.
[ad_2]
