[dylan604]

What you describe is exactly how I felt about regular broadcast/cable. What you wanted to watch when you had time to watch might not have been on, so you channel surf until you find something. Maybe it was something you found interesting, or maybe you just got tired of surfing and just left it on whatever pissed you off the least. Very similar to doom scrolling a streaming platform’s listings where you realize you’ve just spent 15 minutes looking at the menu but not actually watching anything.

[rightbyte]

Ye. It is a kinda strange phenomena. As if bad shows are a lesser emotional commitment or something.

[dylan604]

I think it's less commitment and more of just waving the flag and just putting something on to just be mindless and zone out for a bit. The mental exhaustion of scrolling through banal entry after banal entry of pablum content just wears on a person. It's definitely first world problems though. I've started to just hit the power button when I find myself in that state and finding something else to do. Even if it's just playing with the four legged roommates.

[bombcar]

At least with YouTube you can end up in weird and interesting rabbit holes (I recommend “moving large things with trucks” and “blowing up buildings” and “railway snow clearing”). Sometimes you even learn something.

All the cable/Netflix slop ends up being basically the same story.

[martin_ky]

I'm also finding that I'm getting far more value (both entertainment and educational) from YouTube than Netflix.

Lately, several months go by without me even touching Netflix. I'm at the stage, where I keep the subscription because of maybe one show in a year which I then watch in a week, when it's finally released.