Each day after my long two hour commute from San Francisco, I have resorted to plopping my butt in a seat and switching on the TV, while almost automatically feeling a tingle of dopamine flood into my brain. And for the next three to four hours, sometimes more, I'm held captive by millions of pixelated flashing lights, numbing me from reality and into the fictitious universes of "Dexter," "House of Cards" and "OITNB," among others. After the TV goes off, I guiltily stare back down at my to-do list and it stares back at me patronizingly. I consider myself a fairly productive person, but Netflix has contributed to me becoming a fairly unproductive one.
It's sort of like having a bad boyfriend.
This is the type that distracts you from your own life goals while also making you feel like an undeserving slob bound to a couch for the rest of her days. Every time after I would finish binge watching, the world around me felt boring. I no longer received pleasure in doing the simple things I once loved and felt completely unmotivated to do anything but continue the endless cycle of television show after television show. The insane part of this mentality is that there will always be something new, and we will always be behind on another show. Period.
Netflix is the boyfriend that your family and friends don't like, don't want you to bring home to them and don't understand what you saw in him from the first place. He takes up all your time and doesn't provide you with much in return. You're always feel like the relationship is lacking, so you yearn for more, invest more time, only to come to the conclusion that what you searched for never existed there in the first place. He seemed appealing at first and promised to fill your own personal void, so you believed it. But it couldn't have been further than the truth.
Source: Vodka Cranberry Clooney
That, my friends, has been my experience with Netflix.
When I really think about the benefits, I can't really come up with many. The start of my rocky "relationship" with Netflix originates back to my junior year of high school when Netflix online streaming and "binge watching" had just broke onto the scene. It couldn't have come at more inconvenient time either. I was taking my first set of APs, and one of them was US History. The class made me feel prone to spontaneous combustion, which I often did. So to make myself feel better and "reward" myself with "studying," I would compensate my fear of failing by binge watching several episodes of "Heroes" and "Lost." Then when I would return to back to my work, I would nag myself until frustrated for all of the lost time spent, sending me into a mad frenzy to finish.
I also used Netflix as a way to get to know other people better. I could watch the show and have something to talk about the next time I saw them thus avoiding the awkward silence. But when I come to think of it, watching a show in order to get to know another person better doesn't make much sense. Television shows do not define a person. People are full of much more intimate details that are shared over time and trust. A show cannot tell you about a particular individual's passions, purpose or most life defining moments.
#deep
Netflix simply gives you a small fraction of their interests, when in reality, there is so much more to learn. Just thinking that I used Netflix as a way to bond with others is sort of depressing considering that I could have spent the same amount of time creating new experiences with them and actually getting to know them. It also reminds me that I actually don't know them that well.
Entertainment shouldn't be rid of entirely, but rather reevaluated and reprioritized in our lives. I personally need to reallocate time to the people and hobbies which actually affirm my beliefs and innermost passions, as well as theirs. Putting Netflix at the center of my life is like living in a state of paralysis. I've come to think of it as the equivalent of sleeping. You're not experiencing the world around you, but instead pulled away from reality as we know it (flashback to the "Doctor Who" Chris Eccleston Satellite 5 episode and also "Wall-E.")
Or even more depressing is that the memories you end up having aren't specific to you as an individual. You miss the opportunity to create your own personal memories because the episodes you watch are also seen by millions of other people. This lessens the spontaneousness of everyday life and diversity in each of our personal lives. It's essentially pre-decided when you watch. I don't know about you, but I don't want start off the "back in the day" speech for my grandkids with Netflix.
Albert Einstein once said that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
Okay, all right, you caught me.
That was a intentionally mis-attributed quote. It actually comes from a 1981 Narcotics Anonymous text, but I think it applies to this situation, which can be considered insane in its own respect. The "bad boyfriend" Netflix doesn't fix our problems or change our situations, but delays fixing them. True change comes from within.
So here it goes...
Netflix, it's not you, it's me.
I can't expect you to change your ways, but I can change my own habits by cutting you out of my life and doing something more productive. I hope you continue to create many more successful original TV series, I just can't watch anymore. I hope you understand but this is how it has to be.
#iaintsorry
Source: Giphy
