> Yglesias, turn off the TV! Write more books instead! Heck, write more tweets, if you prefer!
If all the "great minds" stopped watching tv (and by extension reading tweets, reading books, listening to shows...) who would be left to enjoy their work?
We will eventually end up in a state where there will be no longer possible to have a cultural homogeneity as we have today (e.g.: a very sizeable population has seen game of thrones and can discuss it). This approach would bring that moment closer.
There's a little irony, but I feel like the Netflix Originals aren't really written, but carefully designed to appeal to the masses. They always felt a bit artificial to me.
I think the article is saying to spend time reading things that give rise to creative ideas rather than things that are just a time suck, i.e. Netflix.
"Netflix (and its imitators) produce too many TV shows that are too good—and too easy to binge"
Really? I have to search pretty hard to find any of the original programming from Netflix, Prime, etc, that's "good". There's some, but it's pretty scarce. They seem to be deliberately targeting volume of content to cover the widest variety of niches...not quality.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I also struggle to find shows I find "good", but hey, to each their own.
It's probably more the fact that they can be so aggressively binged that the author is criticizing. Maybe the word he was looking for was "addictive". Shows are not especially good, but they can be very addictive when leveraging cliffhangers, plot twists, etc.
This. They produce medium to low quality stuff en masse. Also them notoriously pulling the plug on their shows completely disincentives investing time in it (I typically wait till season 3-4).
Yeah that surprised me, I'm absolutely blown away with how little fresh content I get on Netflix.
During lockdown I have scrolled through it every single day and if I didn't know that lockdown was extremely profitable for companies like them I would have thought they were on life support there has been so little content added over the past few months.
Decided to cancel it this week, going to invest in a Plex server instead.
Well they were kind of on life support because during the lockdown no new movies or shows were being made. Actors had to abide by lockdown rules too.
The first set of new movies on Netflix were indie films which had 2-3 people in them. Then after work-from-home settled into a routine, they finished production of films that were already filmed in 2018 but were unedited. After that, they began to release shows from S. Korea, where the lockdown was lifted enough for production to continue.
Video games are more of a time-sink for me than Netflix, but I comfort myself in the fact that at least video games are interactive, i.e. not "turn-my-brain-off" moments.
I disagree that video games are frowned upon. For certain demographics (young men, 12-35), it's expected behavior. We actually celebrate women getting into video games (iOS / Android "casual" friendly games).
My exact reaction.:) I have friends that openly state that they have "learned valuable life lessons from playing RPG games". From 15 years on I don't watch TV. I stopped video games after WOW madness. Result: Now I play guitar reasonably well, painting is more fun than ever, reading books is like morning coffee:)
It's logical. From 100 000 players, one eventually will be bored and start asking more interesting questions, first by finding workarounds in game logic, then moving to "how things work" and so on. But in reality games in mass are "gambling lots" filled width "dark UX" patterns, maximising user engagement for profit. Nothing more. Indie game development is full with horror stories and successful ones are rare.
Video games also have another use (if approached properly): fighting depression. They are essentially the antithesis of the depressive cycle. You have a goal, you do something to meet it, you get another goal... This active approach can actually be used to rewire the brain out of passive descent into proactivity (now go exercise, go learn, go eat properly).
The knife-edge their is the addiction factor for some games. So it depends.
That's what those marketing dollars are for. There is a practically infinite supply of free games, but somehow parasitic pay-to-win dark-pattern companies stay in business.
"constantly productive"
I hope that everyone feels like they are making constant progress towards their own goals. If someone wasn't they might bury their head in a stream of constant distraction. Wouldn't that be a shame?
My wife and I recently quit watching TV altogether -- we used to watch a movie nearly every night -- and have switched to reading. We are both sleeping better -- a lot better. I find myself wanting to recommend it to everyone I know who has trouble sleeping, but it's quite tricky (maybe even impossible) to talk about quitting TV without coming off as horribly snobbish/elitist.
Edit: the very negative reactions so far in this thread are an example of what I mean. But I do get it, since prior to quitting myself, hearing something like this probably would've pissed me off.
The good thing about this is that there is an endless amount of books out there as well. As the article author says, some people are running out of shows to watch on Netflix. You will literally never run out of books to read.
That's a good point. It's easy to 'never run out of books'. It's quite easy to 'run out of books in the particular category I like'.
If anybody has recommendations for books like Zombie (fiction) or Children of Time (a novel told in part from the perspective of an advanced, non-human society), I'd be very happy to hear them.
Well, widen your horizon then, read something completely different. Alternate history, real history, a classic or 2, hard science (without the fiction part), some philosophy, etc. I tend to move from genre to genre to avoid getting stuck in a rut, something I started doing when in primary school after having read half a bookshelf of adventure/western style books and getting thoroughly fed up with the genre...
Did the same and quit TV completely about 10 months ago. Fairly quickly after, I noticed that I am reading books every day and sleeping better (I now fall asleep consistently at same time every night.)
There is something about removing the high stimulus of TV watching that allows my brain to appreciate being productive. It's been easier to be motivated to do things I truly want instead of defaulting to the veg state each night.
Same. For all the supposed great shows and films out there, I watched a total of zero minutes of TV or films this year - down from dozens/hundreds of hours last year.
I probably watch 1-2 shows over the course of the year on netflix, with an occasional film here and there if I'm interested. And all of them together with my partner, who watches many more shows and films than me.
To me it seems like all of modern streaming media (what's on Netflix, HBO, ...) basically collapsed to be this amorphous blob that mostly hits the same stylistic and emotional notes, regardless of genre. I might be getting old/jaded.
It might also be because I used to have better access to arthouse cinemas that played more experimental, independent titles, while now I'm at the mercy of whatever is available on streaming services. So I end up just supplementing that by watching weird stuff on YouTube, which is somewhat suboptimal.
I have not experienced the "old age" of arthouses. But from talks to older people in the "scene" it's become a lot of mishmash and the same old story over and over that it's really rare to be intrigued by it.
Just saying that, because there still are some art houses here (although not sure if that's still the case post-corona), but most of their films don't intrigue me. Sometimes they do, and I'm always a bit bummed to see that the venues are half-empty when I go.
Agreed. I think the medium has fully matured at this point and is no longer that interesting. There was a bit of a revolution when adult movie fare moved to TV 15 years ago and ideas/plots/characters were given hours of fleshing out instead of 2-3 hours but that has seemingly run its course. I think what we are seeing now is just tail interests being served by the explosion of content, more so than TV quality being better than ever.
Edit: With more thought this might be the same thing to the consumer actually. They don't care how good the average TV show is, just how engrossing the hours of TV they watch every day is. With so much content it's never been easier to make those hours engrossing to you, even if it feels like the average / median TV show isn't really improving and possibly getting much worse.
I'd say "not for me" rather than "not good". Presumably they're for somebody. Netflix gets no jollies out of producing a bunch of content that nobody wants.
There are a lot of people out there, and Netflix is like a catalog of the different kinds of things they can want. It's hard producing content that hits me personally where I live, and I'm always grateful when they do. It happens a few times a year.
I'm glad other people are also getting their stuff. Clearly a lot of people are finding enough to make them happy. I'm sure Netflix would love to produce more shows that manage to hit a wide range of people. I think that they did bottle such lightning again with Queen's Gambit.
I think it's at least a little bit insulting to tell adults how they should be spending their time. Whether someone else is productive with their "free time" or not is simply none of your business.
I wish I could understand your political comment. I've become so sick of politics and see both "sides" as being wrong, that I don't even know which is being referenced.
regulating the minutiae of people's everyday lives = big government aka leftist aka democrats. remember when Michael Bloomberg tried to pass a "public health" regulation telling New Yorkers how big their soda was allowed to be [0]? it's that.
I don't understand, this was repealed very fast and now you are trying to use slippery slope argument to say democrats are going to somehow regulate how many hours of TV you can do in a day?
Are you living in 2014 still? When has anything like the failed soda drink ban happened since then?
I'd say it's the idea (for both sides depending on the specific issue) of living with the psychological weight of knowing that additional taxes and restrictions are constantly suggested which would impact your lifestyle.
Sure, I could afford to watch less tv. I do have many hobbies writing, photography, etc. That I don’t as much as I’d like because of TV. However, I’m one person and TV is a great way for me to hang out with my SO. My beef w/ this is blog post is the fetishization of productivity. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. We’re getting a covid vaccine in under a year. I’m pretty sure Netflix isn’t stopping us from continuing to develop. It’s okay for people to take their shoes off.
I’ll concede that the alcoholism comparison is fair in the sense that it is addicting. However, you don’t see too many people losing their job or destroying their relationships because of Netflix.
I guess what I’m saying is that the answer is balance.
For me, fiction books are the worst of all of them. When I get into a series of fiction books, I tend to get so obsessed that I stay up all night reading, often multiple nights in a week.
That rarely happens to me with TV or video games. I haven't read a fiction book in about 10 years because I swore them off entirely. I typically watch about an hour of TV as I wind down for the night, and I often play hours of video games if I can (often child care obligations interfere). But at least I can do those things without losing sleep.
Yes. Somewhat famously, Socrates said that writing would breed forgetfulness. And that children could not understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
The radio, likewise, was considered too compelling by some.
A lot of the shows aren't really that great, in my opinion. It's that the alternatives have become less attractive, mostly due to costs and liabilities.
Watching TV is cheap. Going out to eat, to bars, etc is increasingly expensive. Hobbies like gardening require land. Hobbies like AutoX and track days generally require consumables, tools/accessories, and insurance. Even just regular street insurance and health insurance are a major cost. All while wages have stagnated for decades.
Why claim that we are wasting great minds by watching TV? Would people actually be doing productive things otherwise? I would think it would be alternate relaxing things.
I think every generation tries to make this argument or one similar, which boils down to "a significant portion of the population is devoting it attention to something that didn't exist 20 years ago and that's very bad!".
I'd argue there actually much more diverse content to consume in Netflix with a large portion being 'educational' and 'informative'
We recently started a routine in our house where at 7pm we turn off the TV. My wife is going through a master's program and studies. My son, like many others right now, is doing distance learning high school so he needs a bit more time to study, which is what prompted this.
I had many months of 60 hours work weeks earlier this year so I've just been binging sci-fi on my Kindle and it's been great. I've enjoyed it much more than Netflix.
I don't blame anyone for binging TV. We don't all need to spend our nights writing a novel or the next great app.
When our family was younger we spent a year or so very proud of the fact that we NEVER watched TV. Then I heard a quote "when you watch TV your brain activity level is lower than when you are sleeping." I thought that sounded wonderful and immediately went out and purchased a TV.
"Look, if that’s what the Europeans want to do, they should go for it. But part of what makes America special is a certain harshness—first embodied in the Puritans and their quest to settle America’s unforgiving wilderness. Great achievements, new ideas, ingenious inventions emerge from a culture that prizes travail and perseverance, not one that prioritizes comfort and ephemeral satisfaction."
Where's this wilderness that I can go lay claim to and homestead?
The world has changed, and it seems the author has not realized it. Many people who own land had to use lawyers/contracts to get it and may not even own the water or mineral rights. The world isn't simple. It's still harsh, but is so now in the courts and bureaucracy instead of in the fields and natural perils.
The author of this essay is a college undergraduate[1]. He has never had a real job. He has never raised children. He has never really been responsible for anything. He's never been tired (no, staying up all night to finish a school assignment doesn't count).
His opinion on how adults spend their time is meaningless. Flagged.
Well, I'm an adult who's had those experiences you mention, and my experience has led me to similar conclusions to those of the author. I don't think it's fair to discount what he's saying by referencing his identity rather than the content of his ideas.
>His opinion on how adults spend their time is meaningless. Flagged.
I'm sorry, but in my humble opinion, just because you don't agree with the content of a linked post, it doesn't mean it's not worth of a constructive discussion here on HN and should be flagged. This is ad hominem.
I find it quite unfortunate that an ad hominem attack has removed this post from public discussion (due to the flagging). I thought HN was above such things!
It is not an ad-hominem, ad-hominem is a personal attack on your character, ignoring the argument. All of those things the parent posted are accurately used to discredit your argument.
Saying "you have bad hair therefore your argument is bad" is ad-hominem.
Saying "This person has never worked a 9-6 office job while supporting 2 kids, a stay-at-home-partner and a mortgage; therefore they are unqualified to make such statements on how adults should spend their time" is a completely legitimate argument to make, it is not a personal attack.
It is only a fair response if you think having a 9-6 office job while supporting two kids necessitates, as a matter of course, an over-reliance on Netflix. (It does not.)
You are making sweeping generalizations in your article, and are trying to say "this is what everyone should do". Your article was flagged (by multiple people including myself) because it's massively, incredibly pretentious; not because one commenter is making ad hominems.
>You are making sweeping generalizations in your article, and are trying to say "this is what everyone should do". Your article was flagged (by multiple people including myself) because it's massively, incredibly pretentious; not because one commenter is making ad hominems.
Imho, I don't think flagging should be used as a tool for silencing content that you disagree with.
There's a lot of articles on HN I disagree with, I'm not flagging them. I flagged this one because it's especially trash, and cannot lead to useful discussion. The comments were immediately heated, too.
I'm willing to bet that an undergraduate can study adults more than I can. I am after all tired and busy, so my self-reflection is limited to oppining on HN.
In terms of intellectual maturity, undergraduates are no different from older adults, and the outside perspective can be valuable.
Some have the experience of undergrad as one of whimsical lack of responsibility (myself included), but there are many students out there juggling classwork, jobs, families, etc. It can also be very stressful in the moment, whereas hindsight paints a rosier picture (myself included).
I'm 31 now with two small children and a wife. College still stands as the most stressed out period of my life. I got shingles in the final months leading up to my graduation.
I guess it's uncomfortable to accept that all choices you make DO have some sort of opportunity cost, and I guess I am not too surprised by the backlash against this 'college kid' on this thread. But I think the point he makes is worth raising and reflecting on (and maybe if you focus on temperance and not abstinence, it's a little easier to consider).
I think one could complain that the author doesn't credit some of the positives/educational or artistic value in video media (then again, netflix's 'hit engineering' is not necessarily optimizing for those if they don't increase addictive engagement) and that maybe he should consider reading and reflecting on things like Bertrand Russell's essay, [In Praise of Idleness](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)
But anyhow, after you finish the Mandalorian, reflect on how much you liked it maybe, and then reflect on what it cost you. If you aren't working on a cure for cancer or something, maybe it was in budget, but asking the question either way seems like a good practice to consider adopting
I quite enjoy Netflix. I use it for occasional white noise when I am working. I enjoy their content, and wish there was more of it.
It's okay to consume media in moderation. Netflix, flying a kite, fishing, game night with friends, and so on. If that is all one does, it interferes with Maslow's other needs.
I don't see a need to go to battle against Netflix, however, but perhaps teaching discipline and moderation in schools would be beneficial to society as a whole.
Sam Harris had a recent podcast episode on this topic. The discussant brought up the interesting point that cost of binging has decreased. Economics 101 would suggest that if we were rational and preferred more show consumption that we will consume more. A handy heuristic. So, if you personally find your consumption is too high relative to your production, their suggestion was to increase the costs to consume.
Binge watching is great... I can watch a series in a week or two, and be done with it... compare that to having to be at home, every tuesday at 9pm, or setting the awkward vcr controlls, hoping the timer setting will actually start recording at the right time, and then watching at some other time... Then waiting for 3, 4 months for the next season, forgetting what happened in the last, etc.
Speaking for myself, i don't find this personally convincing.
I am notorious for watching the pilot for a show and deciding "that was great! i've had enough!" and never finishing it.
I believe the last episodic show i've genuinely finished was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and even then, i haven't seen any of Korra and have no desire to.
Korra is promising but doesn't quite deliver. It sets up a more mature world that engages seriously with a lot of the difficulties inherent in the whole Bender and Avatar classes of people. It's more political and interpersonal. But it's also less fun, and especially after the second season, rather muddled in its storytelling.
That is, apparently, partially due to the creators being jerked around by the production company. It's very good nonetheless, and if you have time to kill, I'd say it's worth a try. You'll know in a few episodes if it doesn't work for you. (It was in some ways rather too dark for me.)
Next up: Against Sugar when using Netflix. How much health is lost when people eat chocolate instead of vegetables during Netflix? Am I being ironic? Who knows, you still "read my blog".
So for me this pandemic has caused me to be bored with Netflix, TV, all of it. There is zero that holds my attention. I find nothing of interest on Netflix anymore. My friends say have you seen bla...it’s amazing. I cannot make it past the first 2 episodes without being bored. I am working on reading, finish some games I never finished and just spending time with the family playing games.
It's not Netflix's fault that one lacks will power to turn off the screen and chooses to watch eight hours of content vs doing other tasks. There's also nothing wrong with watching eight hours of content if it is one's intent.
I've talked about this before on here [0], and would suggest to the author that he might want to consider disabling "auto advance to next episode".
The tiny amount of friction induced by having to explicitly click on "Next Episode" gives you perhaps a few extra seconds to consider if you really need to watch another episode, or perhaps get some other shit done.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] thread> Yglesias, turn off the TV! Write more books instead! Heck, write more tweets, if you prefer!
If all the "great minds" stopped watching tv (and by extension reading tweets, reading books, listening to shows...) who would be left to enjoy their work?
We will eventually end up in a state where there will be no longer possible to have a cultural homogeneity as we have today (e.g.: a very sizeable population has seen game of thrones and can discuss it). This approach would bring that moment closer.
I think the article is saying to spend time reading things that give rise to creative ideas rather than things that are just a time suck, i.e. Netflix.
"Netflix (and its imitators) produce too many TV shows that are too good—and too easy to binge"
Really? I have to search pretty hard to find any of the original programming from Netflix, Prime, etc, that's "good". There's some, but it's pretty scarce. They seem to be deliberately targeting volume of content to cover the widest variety of niches...not quality.
It's probably more the fact that they can be so aggressively binged that the author is criticizing. Maybe the word he was looking for was "addictive". Shows are not especially good, but they can be very addictive when leveraging cliffhangers, plot twists, etc.
During lockdown I have scrolled through it every single day and if I didn't know that lockdown was extremely profitable for companies like them I would have thought they were on life support there has been so little content added over the past few months.
Decided to cancel it this week, going to invest in a Plex server instead.
The first set of new movies on Netflix were indie films which had 2-3 people in them. Then after work-from-home settled into a routine, they finished production of films that were already filmed in 2018 but were unedited. After that, they began to release shows from S. Korea, where the lockdown was lifted enough for production to continue.
The nerve of people spending their time how they want vs. being constantly productive. It's simply unacceptable.
The difference is (to paraphrase what the author says) playing video games excessively is already frowned on. Watching Netflix is not.
The knife-edge their is the addiction factor for some games. So it depends.
That's what those marketing dollars are for. There is a practically infinite supply of free games, but somehow parasitic pay-to-win dark-pattern companies stay in business.
"constantly productive"
I hope that everyone feels like they are making constant progress towards their own goals. If someone wasn't they might bury their head in a stream of constant distraction. Wouldn't that be a shame?
Edit: the very negative reactions so far in this thread are an example of what I mean. But I do get it, since prior to quitting myself, hearing something like this probably would've pissed me off.
If anybody has recommendations for books like Zombie (fiction) or Children of Time (a novel told in part from the perspective of an advanced, non-human society), I'd be very happy to hear them.
There is something about removing the high stimulus of TV watching that allows my brain to appreciate being productive. It's been easier to be motivated to do things I truly want instead of defaulting to the veg state each night.
I find most shows on Netflix to not be that good. I drop them within minutes.
It might also be because I used to have better access to arthouse cinemas that played more experimental, independent titles, while now I'm at the mercy of whatever is available on streaming services. So I end up just supplementing that by watching weird stuff on YouTube, which is somewhat suboptimal.
Just saying that, because there still are some art houses here (although not sure if that's still the case post-corona), but most of their films don't intrigue me. Sometimes they do, and I'm always a bit bummed to see that the venues are half-empty when I go.
Edit: With more thought this might be the same thing to the consumer actually. They don't care how good the average TV show is, just how engrossing the hours of TV they watch every day is. With so much content it's never been easier to make those hours engrossing to you, even if it feels like the average / median TV show isn't really improving and possibly getting much worse.
There are a lot of people out there, and Netflix is like a catalog of the different kinds of things they can want. It's hard producing content that hits me personally where I live, and I'm always grateful when they do. It happens a few times a year.
I'm glad other people are also getting their stuff. Clearly a lot of people are finding enough to make them happy. I'm sure Netflix would love to produce more shows that manage to hit a wide range of people. I think that they did bottle such lightning again with Queen's Gambit.
sounds like you might be on the "wrong" side of the political spectrum in 2020.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drinks_portion_cap_rule
Are you living in 2014 still? When has anything like the failed soda drink ban happened since then?
I'd say it's the idea (for both sides depending on the specific issue) of living with the psychological weight of knowing that additional taxes and restrictions are constantly suggested which would impact your lifestyle.
Sure, I could afford to watch less tv. I do have many hobbies writing, photography, etc. That I don’t as much as I’d like because of TV. However, I’m one person and TV is a great way for me to hang out with my SO. My beef w/ this is blog post is the fetishization of productivity. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. We’re getting a covid vaccine in under a year. I’m pretty sure Netflix isn’t stopping us from continuing to develop. It’s okay for people to take their shoes off.
I’ll concede that the alcoholism comparison is fair in the sense that it is addicting. However, you don’t see too many people losing their job or destroying their relationships because of Netflix.
I guess what I’m saying is that the answer is balance.
That rarely happens to me with TV or video games. I haven't read a fiction book in about 10 years because I swore them off entirely. I typically watch about an hour of TV as I wind down for the night, and I often play hours of video games if I can (often child care obligations interfere). But at least I can do those things without losing sleep.
The radio, likewise, was considered too compelling by some.
I thought HN was above such small-minded nationalistic prejudice.
Watching TV is cheap. Going out to eat, to bars, etc is increasingly expensive. Hobbies like gardening require land. Hobbies like AutoX and track days generally require consumables, tools/accessories, and insurance. Even just regular street insurance and health insurance are a major cost. All while wages have stagnated for decades.
Why claim that we are wasting great minds by watching TV? Would people actually be doing productive things otherwise? I would think it would be alternate relaxing things.
I'm flagging this ridiculous shit and you should too. Either this is a poorly-written satire piece, or it's a troll-fest waiting to happen.
I'd argue there actually much more diverse content to consume in Netflix with a large portion being 'educational' and 'informative'
I had many months of 60 hours work weeks earlier this year so I've just been binging sci-fi on my Kindle and it's been great. I've enjoyed it much more than Netflix.
I don't blame anyone for binging TV. We don't all need to spend our nights writing a novel or the next great app.
When our family was younger we spent a year or so very proud of the fact that we NEVER watched TV. Then I heard a quote "when you watch TV your brain activity level is lower than when you are sleeping." I thought that sounded wonderful and immediately went out and purchased a TV.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
The world has changed, and it seems the author has not realized it. Many people who own land had to use lawyers/contracts to get it and may not even own the water or mineral rights. The world isn't simple. It's still harsh, but is so now in the courts and bureaucracy instead of in the fields and natural perils.
His opinion on how adults spend their time is meaningless. Flagged.
1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/leopold-aschenbrenner/
I'm sorry, but in my humble opinion, just because you don't agree with the content of a linked post, it doesn't mean it's not worth of a constructive discussion here on HN and should be flagged. This is ad hominem.
Saying "you have bad hair therefore your argument is bad" is ad-hominem.
Saying "This person has never worked a 9-6 office job while supporting 2 kids, a stay-at-home-partner and a mortgage; therefore they are unqualified to make such statements on how adults should spend their time" is a completely legitimate argument to make, it is not a personal attack.
Imho, I don't think flagging should be used as a tool for silencing content that you disagree with.
In terms of intellectual maturity, undergraduates are no different from older adults, and the outside perspective can be valuable.
I think one could complain that the author doesn't credit some of the positives/educational or artistic value in video media (then again, netflix's 'hit engineering' is not necessarily optimizing for those if they don't increase addictive engagement) and that maybe he should consider reading and reflecting on things like Bertrand Russell's essay, [In Praise of Idleness](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)
But anyhow, after you finish the Mandalorian, reflect on how much you liked it maybe, and then reflect on what it cost you. If you aren't working on a cure for cancer or something, maybe it was in budget, but asking the question either way seems like a good practice to consider adopting
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
It's okay to consume media in moderation. Netflix, flying a kite, fishing, game night with friends, and so on. If that is all one does, it interferes with Maslow's other needs.
I don't see a need to go to battle against Netflix, however, but perhaps teaching discipline and moderation in schools would be beneficial to society as a whole.
Sam Harris had a recent podcast episode on this topic. The discussant brought up the interesting point that cost of binging has decreased. Economics 101 would suggest that if we were rational and preferred more show consumption that we will consume more. A handy heuristic. So, if you personally find your consumption is too high relative to your production, their suggestion was to increase the costs to consume.
I am notorious for watching the pilot for a show and deciding "that was great! i've had enough!" and never finishing it.
I believe the last episodic show i've genuinely finished was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and even then, i haven't seen any of Korra and have no desire to.
That is, apparently, partially due to the creators being jerked around by the production company. It's very good nonetheless, and if you have time to kill, I'd say it's worth a try. You'll know in a few episodes if it doesn't work for you. (It was in some ways rather too dark for me.)
So TV (including streaming) hours watched per year for the last decade or two?
The tiny amount of friction induced by having to explicitly click on "Next Episode" gives you perhaps a few extra seconds to consider if you really need to watch another episode, or perhaps get some other shit done.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22256625