A high school friend who commandeered my camcorder at a party to record her talking to herself in a bathroom mirror to make us watch afterwards.
A high school friend who commandeered my camcorder at a party to record her talking to herself in a bathroom mirror to make us watch afterwards.
My brother knows if he recommends something to me—a YouTube video, a podcast, a show on the Dropout subscription service to which he gave me his password—it gets pushed down to the bottom of the list. I don't do it to spite him. He just knows it's how I work.
My brother, as eager as he is to share his little joys like this and tell me all about it, is at least understanding of me. I can be honest with him. He knows I won't watch something and he doesn't guilt me for it (usually).
That's not the case for most people. Most people see the consumption of media as a measure of cultural capital; that is, if you want to be a part of the conversation you have to know what people are talking about.
There used to be less of this to worry about. On network television in days of old there were three or four major networks with prime time lineups you needed to know, and you had to pick your side, filling up the three hours every day or else not absorb enough Culture with which to relate to others and make friends.
Then came cable, which widened options but also opportunities to catch what you missed later on in syndication. It didn't keep you any more up to speed, but it did help lower the long game FOMO with the relief that some time in the future you'd get to relive the era playing a different character.
VCRs, if you could coordinate which TV had them and ensure you watched whatever else on the ones that didn't, helped us keep on top of what we couldn't concurrently tune into. PVRs grew in the early years of the new millennium, which further reduced excuses based on commercial skipping alone.
Reality TV and specialty channels put out more content to keep on top of, but in a heavily gendered way of gossipy fauxp operas for the ladies and big buff sports for the mans, both way too alien to my nonbinary ass (another essay, another day) to follow.
For boomers and Xers (like the ones I'm exposed to most of the days I get paid to be alive) it hasn't gone far beyond that, but I'm a millennial and I supposedly have peers. For them there next was YouTube. Vine. Text-based social media added video upload options. Now there's TikTok, and whatever the fuck this Chinese app is that's opening western eyes to how much we're lied to.
It is overwhelming to my AuDHD self to even fathom keeping up (audio AND video?? in this economy??), being put on spot to watch whatever somebody suggests to me then and there just because it happens to be available, so I shove it all into the back of the queue. And I ignore that queue successfully.
I get some of my blankest stares when I try to explain why I can't watch a video somebody linked me to. If I like them and trust that they will understand me I explain why it's hard. I have friends who do understand and who send me things anyway, not because they expect me to watch and get back to them but because they are compelled to share things with people as a way of expressing "This is something I've seen and something I like" and feel better about themselves for sending the link. The success rate in getting me to see something shared via DM is probably 10% or less, but as long as there will not be any test on the subject I no longer say anything back.
It doesn't even matter if it's on a subject I like. Send me a link—demanding that I click it and invest time I cannot afford into understanding something the way you want me to understand it—and I will immediately react via pushback, whether I intend to be difficult or not.
You're asking me to look a vlogger in the eyes for an ungodly number of minutes. If you expect me to have the sound on (and that is almost always the case) you're demanding I place enough trust in their overall production skills that I will not end up wanting to march into the river; you're asking me to commit a lifetime to this person in order to hear their one of many stories at 1x speed.
You're demanding, by telling me I should click on a link you send, that I put myself in a specific mood, that I change my posture, that I make the effort of selecting the best device to view something on and ensure I'm sitting in the right room.
You expect me to set up a parasocial relationship with a mutual non-friend and that I report back with an insightful analysis of the subject backed up by an airtight logical argument like you are my fucking high school English teacher. If that's not what you're asking for, then what exactly is it you expect from me with this request?
Some may call this, if they care to pathologize neurodivergence, a case of pathological demand avoidance (another essay, another day). Some people who like me or are like me reword that as a persistent drive for autonomy. Some just think I'm being an asshole. But I assure you, the paralysis that ensues from what you have the privilege of claiming is "just suggesting something I thought you'd like" is not an intentional choice; however, my decision to stop apologizing for it is.
I will not play your game of entertainment tag where we compete for clout on who watches the best thing first and who knows the other person so well to spot things they'd like in the wild.
You cannot hand me assignments. And you don't know me as well as you think you do if you assume I'm going to take suggestions.