It's a bummer that there's a whole generation that doesn't know how much fun it was for everyone to watch and discuss the same episode of the same show at the same time week to week.
And yeah, now imagine everyone watching their own personalized media. Under the surface it's so empty.
Are there even any more shared cultural moments/experiences like that anymore? The closest thing I can think of is maybe large sporting events, but even then, they seem much less impactful than before.
There are still streaming shows that drip feed new episodes (S2E3 of Severance releases tomorrow for example) but it’s still somewhat diluted because there is so much content, it’s likely you don’t run into too many people who watch the same stuff as you. I can’t imagine a single show whose finale would have Times Square staring up at the screen like Seinfeld did.
This is something I've been watching and thinking about for many years as tangential to a primary interest. It's not all bad as there have been many benefits to these changes too. These aren't occurring in isolation, since many other changes with similar effects pile on top of eachother to amplify the issues.
There are the usual culprits that people talk about and others which people don't seem to think about much. Looking forward to reading the book mentioned in the article to see someone else's in depth thoughts.
I currently think status feed (WhatsApp, RSS) and discussions group (Messaging Apps, IRC, forums, Email threads) is the best way to connect socially on the web. Any algorithms that includes personalization is inherently selfish.
One great thing that I like to find is interest or curation lists. Like themed books, favorite music albums, software one uses,… Better than any recommendation engine.
I mean, this does still happen: there are many extremely major TV shows from the likes of Disney and Apple that are being released to streaming on a weekly schedule, and the world does in fact talk about them -- even on social media -- in lock step.
And yeah, now imagine everyone watching their own personalized media. Under the surface it's so empty.