Re:The Acceleration of Addictiveness
by pyre on Monday July 26, 2010 @09:18PM
(#1549921)
I think that people tend to watch more TV with less enjoyment when it's just a cable stream into your house. I think that people don't end up tending to things like channel-surfing. It's hard to plop down on the couch and watch whatever happens to be the 'best thing on' when the video is on-demand and you have a choice in the matter. This is the same reason that so many people felt liberated by things like TiVo. It allowed them to just tell TiVo what they liked to watch, and they didn't have to worry about gathering around the TV set at a time specified by a channel's scheduling selections.
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Just another day it dawned on me that an important part of the overwhelming success of television (specially cable television) is that it's another unpredictable-rewards skinner box. There are the good shows you know and expect (and their fixed schedule induces lots of tradeoffs, like "why get up now if X is in half an hour") and the possibility of finding something nice zapping is akin to a slot machine.
Video on demand makes it easier to watch a specific content, but harder to just zone out in front of the tv, which is the most addictive and destructive activity.