[curun1r]

> But what's missing is a shared cultural experience

This is my problem with the proliferation of streaming platforms when it comes to movies and TV. We’ve arguably got more and better content than we’ve ever had. But I find myself far less motivated to watch it. I used to watch content anticipating the conversations I’d have with friends and colleagues. Now, whenever we try to talk about it, it’s 30 seconds of, “Have you seen …?” “No, have you seen …?” “No.” Until we give up and talk about something else.

It’s made me realize that the sharing it with others part was always my favorite part of listening/watching and, without that, I can’t really become emotionally invested it the experience.

[chokma]

> It’s made me realize that the sharing it with others part was always my favorite part of listening/watching and, without that, I can’t really become emotionally invested it the experience.

Perhaps this is a factor in the rise of reaction videos where people consume the content with you and react to it. A somewhat shallow experience, but someone pretending to genuinely like the same music video as I do is - in the vastness of the internet - slightly better than consuming completely alone.

[jedberg]

I find that I've mostly made up for that part by participating in online discussions.

But that leads to a different problem -- When Netflix drops an entire season of something, I feel like I have to have time to watch the whole thing, or I don't watch at all. Because I don't want participate in the online discussion having seen less than everyone else.

I end up watching the shows that drop one episode a week far more often than whole seasons at once.

[ghaff]

I'm not at all sure that dropping an episode a week like Apple TV+ tends to do is a bad thing at all.

[AngryData]

Im the complete opposite and never watch anything that is on-going because I hate waiting around for every episode and having series drawn out over months. And even after they have completed there is usually little fanfare or noticed that a season is complete and so it is only a 50% chance I will watch it at all even if I am interested in it because all the talk about it has since died and it is forgotten about because it was going on for months already.

I didn't mind what Andor did as much though for season 2 releasing 3 episodes at a time. If it had just been 1 episode at a time I probably wouldn't have seen it until a year or two from now after all discussion was dead.

[sunrunner]

With the recent surge in mindshare around language models and generative AI in general, one of the ideas that keeps coming up is unique content and experiences that are either tailored to the consumer or are at least unique for that person in some way.

But I wonder if this is missing something that you've touched on, the function of cultural artefacts as a means of connection (and perhaps trust building) through a known shared experience. Whether it's watching a TV show, reading a book, listening to music, playing a game, all of these activities essentially have two functions. The first is the thing itself (I'm enjoying this book, song, game, etc.) but the second is the opportunity to _connect with others_ around that, which only really works when some majority of the thing is known by everyone.

This doesn't say that there isn't value in unique experiences, except that these unique experiences are always unique _in the context_ of a shared and known thing.

Roguelikes are perhaps a good example of this. Every run is unique to a player and essentially unique across all players (seeded runs aside), but you can always talk with others about the specific events that happened in any single run because everyone understands them in the context of the game as a whole. The 'crazy thing that happened in my last run' still works because other people know how rare the event or combination of events might be, so it's still a valid shared experience but also unique.

Another more lightweight example might be the amount of NPC dialogue in Supergiant Game' Hades. I believe there's something like 80,000 unique lines of dialogue in the game, so players can go a long time without hearing the same thing again, and unless you play for a long time you might never hear certain lines that other people will have heard.

As for your example about conversations going nowhere when there's no shared experience, perhaps there's even an argument that the connection aspect of the experiences is actually the primary function even if we think it's a secondary function.

Tangential point related to generative models, but perhaps there's even a third function at play, which is that the the _process_ of creating the work may have been its own value for the creator, but this is more about the value of spending time and energy making a thing for yourself or others to experience (to connect over).

[wongarsu]

Another thing missing from generated content is the connection to the author. Media isn't just about experiences, it's also an exchange of ideas. Ideas the author communicates to the reader/viewer/player, and that you then discuss with other people who shared the same experience.

When people say "literally 1984" they don't mean an amorphous story about an inescapable dystopia, they mean very specific ideas Orwell packaged in a story. A large part of what makes Breaking Bad compelling is the endless stream of ethical choices and their consequences in the eyes of the authors. These things are thought-provoking when consuming the story, and can be further digested by discussing them with others who experienced the same story.

[EasyMark]

I don't want AI generated slop, I want stuff that humans have made, it gets me out of my bubble. If I only watch/read slop generated for me based on my historic interests I'm afraid I'll enter a downward spiral of navel gazing insanity

[matheusmoreira]

What you describe is and has always been everyday life for me. Finding people with shared interests is pretty rare. Even then, there's usually minimal overlap.

Internet improved this but it won't last. Communities are temporary, they all die at some point. I just got used to enjoying things alone.

[johnisgood]

You should be enjoying your own company the most, then may come others. Communities do not have to die at some point, unless you mean it in the same sense as "well, we all die at some point". You can preserve chat history of communities, but Discord these days would be pretty shit for that, I would say.

[BlueTemplar]

You can always watch it with them. Especially if it's great enough to re-watch, or plan to finish watching together (or is old enough to re-watch anyway).

[johnisgood]

I watch movies online with some friends and my girlfriend (separately), and I am 30 years old. I never liked going out to the cinema, and now I have immobility issues, so that is even less more likely, plus all my friends are abroad, so... :(

[anon-3988]

At this point YOU have to watch the content of the people that you want to mingle with. However, the "standard" of shows that you watch is higher (for you, as its more curated for your). Therefore, you do have to struggle with more subpar shows. Not sure what to do with that.

[BeFlatXIII]

I've started curating the people I mingle with.

[BeFlatXIII]

> Now, whenever we try to talk about it, it’s 30 seconds of, “Have you seen …?” “No, have you seen …?” “No.” Until we give up and talk about something else.

Outside of dedicated assignments for book clubs and schooling, this has always been the case for literature discussions.

[wongarsu]

Unless a specific piece reaches critical mass. Most people have an opinion on Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire or 50 Shades of Gray. Granted, if they aren't an avid reader it might be an opinion based on the movie adaptations instead of the books, and for some their opinion only reaches as far as the reason they haven't engaged with that specific title yet. But those are still opinions you can engage with

[EasyMark]

I've had some luck with lists on imdb of things I'm interested in. It's not a slam dunk but some are good. Much better than flipping through 10000 possibilities on netflix.

[perrygeo]

When TV came to American homes in the 1950s, it was a revolution in our national shared consciousness (for better or worse). Obviously there are problems with this - it gives the advertisers and businesses enormous unchecked power to shape society. But we've likely never seen so many people so deeply in sync with the dominant cultural messages.

When streaming became the norm, that dynamic was destroyed. We lurched back to private media consumption (for better or worse). There is no shared cultural narrative to tune into at 8:00 each night. There's millions of disparate voices, screaming into the void 24/7. More freedom and diversity for sure, but nothing coherent you can point to as a culture.

[iknowstuff]

there are definitely still cultural experiences like that around release time. The last of us is huge right now.

[tomjen3]

In your particular group yes. I haven't really heard much about it (some, but not much).

This isn't an attack on you - just a further point towards a split world. Something can be huge with one group and barely heard about elsewhere.

[cpburns2009]

Isn't that an old video game? Was it recently remastered like Oblivion?

[is_true]

I'm still watching shows from the early 2000

[jedberg]

> The last of us

Never seen it. Not even sure what it's about.

[throwaway2037]

    > The last of us

Yet another zombie dystopia story? What is the gender ratio of people who watch these type of shows? I assume it must be 90%+ men.