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My new Netflix show is an endless loop of toasters with wings flying through space. There will also be bread doing some flying.
Telenovelas were always the thing. They are what they are because they were designed to be watched while doing other things without feeling regret when the other thing requires attention.
Telenovelas and soap operas are cheap to produce. Netflix meanwhile raises prices every year.
The tiktok-ification of netflix is coming. Good. Let the internet burn so we can start over.
It's the opposite. Episodes are lengthened with plot points being repeated through dialogue. Hour-long TV shows were really 40 minutes due to advertising, meanwhile on Netflix they are 50-plus minutes. Longer shows = more watch time recorded, which is Netflix's main KPI. Tiktok and others get long watch times because it's more like flipping through channels.
Binge the next season of "Ow! My balls!", now on Netflix!
When I was a child I looked down on my mom for watching crap.

Later I realised that as a therapist she just wanted to shut her brain off after dealing with incest stories all day long.

Soon Netflix will have Subway Surfers running alongside the movie.
So back to old TV? Pre-internet old TV series were always slow and clear enough to allow you to follow them even if you were paying half attention
For this exact reason, I have an Android TV box with a 1TB USB stick that plays TV shows from the 90s and 2000s on shuffle. As most of those shows are in 480p resolution max, you can store a lot with 1TB.
I found out recently that my partner was "listening" and half looking at a TV show while preparing herself for work. I was quite surprised and asked her if she had run out of podcasts but she told me that show was so addictive she preferred running it in the background than waiting for it. It obviously made her inefficient at everything, preparing herself and following the show.

I've often found most US TV shows were overexplaining everything already. Maybe I have an higher cultural, technical and medical knowledge than the baseline of US TV viewers but lots of dialogs are already filled with what feels to me as unneeded explanations in general that would feel completely weird in a real life dialog.

I am like the opposite of the binge watcher, after one, two episodes at the maximum, I just want to do something else. It works well with my habit of watching movies and TV shows on a projector as it has a kind of ritual to it, you shut off the blinders, turn on the projector and sit comfortably on the sofa. My partner often do not understand how I can I just say "that's it, let's do something else" and shut off the beamer when the show obviously make sure it ends the episode with a moment of uncertaincy/suspense.

This is a pathetic example of what happens when entire generations are attention-starved from never not having a screen in front of them...
Note that you're describing all generations from Gen-X onwards. Old folks are just as much infected with this brainrot nowadays.
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