Can We Just Talk About…the Netflix Time Suck

Imagine, if you will: a glaring white screen, bleary eyes, incessant yawning, and weakened muscles. The body is making its last exasperated attempts to signal the brain that it’s time to go to sleep. Yet, clawing through that, is a relentless will to stay awake. The screen is flashing a conspicuous countdown…3 (I should press pause, you groggily think)…2 (can’t think hard enough to move my hand)…1 (Oh God…it’s happening again). “It” referring to that moment where you can’t reconcile the person who began watching the pilot episode of ‘Orange is The New Black’ to the person nearing the finale…IN ONE SITTING.

You’re suddenly questioning your sanity as you are huddled in sheets, hunched over and mumbling incoherently at your laptop.

You’re not crazy (take my non-professional word for it). If you can relate to such a scene, you my friend, have been pulled into the powerful the ‘Netflix Time Suck’. Generally affecting the cord cutter and millennial crowd, the NTS leads to chronic sleeplessness, irritability towards fictional characters (I’m talking about you Piper Chapman), and an overwhelming sense of emptiness when the binging ends. But can we just talk about how, despite these clearly uncomfortable physical and psychological “ailments”, that the NTS is maddeningly awesome?

Why? First things first, Netflix is free for not three days, not one week, but for an entire month when you first sign up. Those eight glorious dollars saved translate into a Starbucks Venti Java Chip Frap (go ahead, treat yourself!) But I digress. The real reason I love/hate the NTS is that it perpetuates the viewing of an unprecedented volume of media delivered in an unprecedented amount of time. Watching an entire season in three days or so? Sounds like the perfect way to keep a pulse on the shows emerging in TV’s golden age. Or in my case, training to become the ultimate pop culture warrior, harboring obscure facts in case they create a TV junkie’s Jeopardy.

So switch into your pjs, bulk up on electrolytes, take those eye drops and queue up your favorite show because time flies when you’re having fun power binging through gripping television drama ‘Breaking Bad’ (I think that’s how the saying goes) 🙂

D.