Just one remark
I AM NOT SAD.
Mine's the size 25 with the empty address book in the pocket.
Spent the weekend watching Game of Thrones? You're a FAT LONELY SADDO
You thought it was harmless, didn't you? Settling down on the sofa, firing up your trusty smart TV, stream-o-dongle or similar - or for the retro types, unwrapping your new boxset of DVDs - and getting ready to burn up a day or two watching an entire telly series end to end. Well brace up, my sessile friend, because there's …
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Monday 2nd February 2015 07:39 GMT Don Dumb
The Reg RSS feed knows me too well
Terrifyingly, I DID spend a large chunk of the weekend watching Game Of Thrones, with my girlfriend, not something I usually do. She will binge through a 22 episode series almost as quickly as they can be played, but I rarely actually see her watching them, she just likes a background (foreground?) while she is sewing/knitting/working/etc. We are both in good shape.
From what I can tell about my friends, it seems the people who most likely binge watch are those who don't like most broadcast telly and often have kids (so a boxset is the only thing to do after the kids have gone to bed). Not necessarily lonely or fat.
But then I'm not a qualified scienticianalist like the researchers in the article.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 07:51 GMT frank ly
Re: The Reg RSS feed knows me too well
"... almost as quickly as they can be played ..."
Have you tried watching video files and inctreasing the play speed slightly? I once did that accidentally and didn't notice it was playing at X1.1 speed. At X1.2 it can be barely noticable depending on the speed of the dialogue.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 13:59 GMT dogged
@Don Dumb
> after the kids have gone to bed
I have a toddler. He'll be 2 at the end of March. There is no "after". There are several hours spent trying to get the little shit to sleep followed by rapidly passing out because regardless of what I do, he will be up at 6. Unless I'm up at 6. The he'll sleep in 'til 8.
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Wednesday 4th February 2015 13:24 GMT dogged
@jake - Re: Hey, ElReg
I missed your post, I guess it was disapproving or something, I dunno.
I think most honest parents would agree that toddlers are capable of being little shits for days at a time. Doesn't mean we don't love them. I love mine. I don't think his mother's cat loves him though.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 12:26 GMT Swarthy
Re: @Don Dumb
There is no "after".
I had a similar experience (and then did it again... Slow learner here); you may have an 'after' after they get near the 3 years old mark. My son is one of those 6AM morning-types, the good part is he wants to go to bed around 7:30-8PM.
It does get better. --If for no other reason then that one day they will be teenagers and not want to get out of bed before noon, and then you get to wake them up. I am planning on keeping a bag of marbles in the freezer for just that occasion.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 13:25 GMT AceRimmer
Re: @Don Dumb
<mumsnet>
My 3yo Daughter goes to sleep by herself at 8pm and has been for a few months but it wasn't easy to get there.
First step was buying blackout shades for her room, especially useful when the evenings are lighter
A set bedtime routine is essential
After that it comes down to trust and training them to not be scared to be left alone. We went through these steps:
1. Letting her fall asleep whilst lying on my chest
2. Letting her fall asleep whilst lying next to me
3. Letting her fall asleep whilst I was sat on the bed
4. Letting her fall asleep whilst I sat in her doorway
5. Letting her fall asleep with her door open whilst I noisily pottered around getting stuff done close by
6. Door open + a night light - I get to go and do what ever and she falls asleep by herself
That all took about 3 months. Occasionally we had to take a step back but its something we understood would happen
She needs the night light now as she loves scary books about ghosts and dragons but also has an active imagination (as most toddlers do)
Any dissent on her part was treated as calmly as possible, an angry toddler isn't a sleepy toddler, repeated infractions result on her being left on her own for 5 minutes to cry it out and think about it.
For the record, she never slept in a cot, it was something we gave up trying to do and for the first 2 years she bed shared with us.
YMMV
</mumsnet>
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Monday 2nd February 2015 08:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Another Day
Another quack with a portfolio to fill.
Seriously, shall i binge watch breaking bad, or blacklist in my nice warm ho(vel)use or shall i go out, be cold, as lonely and as depressed..
I'd love to tell all these folks to fuck off and leave my life alone. Its my fucking life, not yours and i will spend it doing WTF i want without interference from some busy body nobody TYVM.
Now then, where's my Prozac.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 16:34 GMT Mephistro
Re: Surprise(@ AC) (tl:dr)
"No difference when you compare with WoW"
On the contrary, there are several important differences.
- In WoW you have to be continually thinking and finding ways to improve your gameplay/equipment, strategies, etc. . Meanwhile the telly usually just feeds content into your brain. That delivery method (TV) very often surpasses our brain's 'filters', 'antimemes', bullshit detectors and similar defensive processes.
-WoW is a social game, in which interaction with other players is fundamental. You get valuable training in planning, collaboration, collective problem solving, haggling and the working of markets, you name it. WoW also works often like a social network, with people discussing/chatting/frolicking through chat channels and voicechat. On the other hand, the TV includes no way to interact with other users, so there are married couples who watch their favourite shows in different TVs or families where every member has a TV in their sleeping room. TV favours isolation, while WoW creates an almost velievable simulation of a human society.
And yes, WoW is addictive as hell, but that addiction usually cures itself in a few years, when players get finally tired of the game. I know because that's what happened with me and my WoW addiction. Have heard the same history from other ex-players. For the first years, it was really funny too.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 14:34 GMT Richard 81
Re: The credentials of the authors of the paper ...
"The credentials of the authors of the paper ...
... don't automagically negate the observation."
That very much depends on the credentials of the author.
If they had a PhD in sandwich making, would you still take their conclusions seriously?
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 05:12 GMT dan1980
Re: The credentials of the authors of the paper ...
@jake
"However, hibernating in front of your TV for a weekend is just plain sad."
Maybe you binge watch BECAUSE you have a busy social and/or family life, with weekend sports for yourself or the kids and meeting friends for drinks and going to the gym at lunch so you can study after work, though not on 'date night', where you and the partner make an effort to go out, having dropped the kid(s) off at your parents.
Perhaps when the stars align and you've got a free weekend - when you've gotten ahead of your assignments and footy's finished for the year and you were out at a wedding the previous weekend so you've caught up with a lot of your friends and you've recently returned from a short stay interstate (couldn't really spare the time for a full OS trip) so not super-keen to spend too much money - perhaps then you decide that you're just going to kick back with your partner and run through a season or two of something you've been meaning to watch but haven't had the time.
Or maybe everyone else has been able to watch 'Breaking Bad' or any other popular show as it was happening but your busy life meant there were always more important things to do. So you buy the box set and get your watching in when you can but watching the episodes individually can be unfulfilling for any number of reasons. Perhaps you might only get to watch one every other week or sporadically, meaning you can't always remember what happens and it's difficult to keep the thread. Or maybe you just have a poor memory.
Or perhaps you have missed season one and season two is about to start on TV and so you need to catch up quickly so you can watch it in 'real time' and so join in the discussions with your friends or colleagues - which is quite the normal part of a social life.
Or sometimes it's just nice to put the world aside for a weekend and veg-out and this is very much a part of a normal, healthy life - we all need 'down time', where there aren't any pressing concerns we have to deal with and the most complicated decision is whether to get changed so we aren't seen in our tracksuit pants by the pizza delivery person.
A box-set marathon is a great way to do this because for a period of time you can be relatively passive and it doesn't ask too much of you. You don't have to remember much and you don't have to make any decisions and yes, you get to 'escape' for a short while and just put the real world on pause for a day or two.
That 'benefit' is one that can become addictive for people, to be sure, and if you spend all your weekends in this fashion then no, it's probably not healthy and probably does signal that you are possibly depressed or otherwise having difficulty dealing with life.
The same can be said for online gaming, where you can immerse yourself in an alternate world where the normal pressures of life are absent. It's a perfectly valid and normal past time but can signal problems if that is all you do.
In short, if you are habitually doing something that is used to forget the problems of the real world then it's entirely possible that this may signify that you have more problems to forget or have a harder time dealing with them than others. BUT, this doesn't mean that the behaviour cannot be part of a totally normal and healthy (physically and emotionally) lifestyle.
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Wednesday 4th February 2015 01:48 GMT dan1980
Re: @ dan1980 (was:The credentials of the authors of the paper ...)
@jake
The truly great thing is that I don't need to convince either of us. You're welcome to judge people as "sad" based on blanket criteria without knowing anything further about them, or simply because they enjoy different things than you do.
Personally, I choose not to do that : )
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Thursday 5th February 2015 12:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @ dan1980 (was:The credentials of the authors of the paper ...)
"The truly great thing is that I don't need to convince either of us. You're welcome to judge people as "sad" based on blanket criteria without knowing anything further about them, or simply because they enjoy different things than you do."
I judge Jake as sad based on his comments here
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Thursday 5th February 2015 23:12 GMT dan1980
Re: @ dan1980 (was:The credentials of the authors of the paper ...)
I judge Jake as an individual who has his own life and his own pursuits. Personally, I think raising animals and growing vegetables sounds pretty boring but Jake seems to like it and that's fine.
He presumably thinks that watching a whole season of some TV show or other on a Saturday is a waste of good turkey-feeding time or ham curing or whatever he would otherwise do.
Again, if that was me I would be a bit bored - I have very little interest in raising animals and, as a vegetarian, even less interest in slaughtering, slicing and serving them. But I don't press that judgement onto everyone else.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 12:01 GMT Bernard M. Orwell
Re: The credentials of the authors of the paper ...
"However, hibernating in front of your TV for a weekend is just plain sad."
So, what did you do with your weekend and why was it better? Work? Sport? Drinking? Unless you were actively saving lives, or creating a great work of art or literature, I doubt your chosen activity was any more "worthy".
Life is to be enjoyed, not a drudge until we die.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 09:23 GMT deadlockvictim
Sadness, I call it gladness
As with all things, it depends on the nature and frequency of the binging.
For example, when my wife and I get a new boxset [1], we tend to watch 2-3 episodes at night together after the children have been dispatched to bed. I suppose that we could hire a babysitter and go down to the pub. That would be less anti-social but also less liver-friendly. There may be a correlation. We buy about 4 or so boxsets per year.
The last time we seriously binged on DVDs was all 6 Lord of the Rings DVDs over 10 or so hours back in 2006. I borrowed a projector and screen from work and we ordered Thai and pizza for our meals. At the end, I had a headache and vowed never again, well not soon, anyway.
But I see no reason why binge-watching, like binge game-playing, can't be a social activity. Organise an all-day session with friends — say, this sunday we will go through series 1 of Game Of Thrones and make an occasion of it. Then we'll organise another Sunday for series 2. Hell, it's even an excuse to go out and buy a much bigger monitor.
[1] We don't have a TV, just a DVD player. We are definitely anti-social people.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 09:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
To binge or not to binge...
They need to be more specific in what they mean by 'binge watching'... there's a big difference between watching half a series after sitting down to watch an episode or two and actually planning to watch a whole series because it's the first quiet weekend you've had in more than a month!
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Monday 2nd February 2015 11:09 GMT Teiwaz
Drepressing?
Did they study people who just watch broadcast TV all weekend as well?
I think if I was stuck on that dead medium alone every evening, never mind a whole weekend, I'd be hanging from the ceiling by a rope after hour 3.
I think people like to re-watch series they like. I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've watched Twin Peaks, Babylon 5 or Stargate, but the hour time spent watching these will never exceed the number of hours I spent watching utter dross while growing up.
My favourite stiories, be they movie, TV series or even graphic novels & books regularly get revisited. Such favourites have become part of my own personal mythology, the ones read as a early teen especialy. Revisiting them is like refreshing my own cultural roots.
What is it with this 'sad' label anyhow, I've been hearing it since the late 80's where it was thrown about at schoolyards as a derogatory, now it's a scientific term or medical diagnosis apparently...
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Monday 2nd February 2015 11:39 GMT an it guy
Re: Drepressing?
"Did they study people who just watch broadcast TV all weekend as well?
I think if I was stuck on that dead medium alone every evening, never mind a whole weekend, I'd be hanging from the ceiling by a rope after hour 3."
Um. based on your own hypothesis, not many of those people would be around. Thus no one to study.
Right, degree please! Boffin because, well, umm.. perhaps not...
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Monday 2nd February 2015 12:00 GMT Wombling_Free
Could you perhaps tone down your laddish editorial? This isn't RALPH
Hi Reg editors & writers,
Do you think that describing people people with depression as 'lazy saddos' is either good journalism or even constructive in any way? Perhaps you think it is 'funny'.
If you personally have suffered or know someone who has suffered depression then you will know that it is not a fun disease, nor is something anyone chooses to have; it is a life-threatening and devastating condition, one that continues to endure a stigma of disbelief & doubt due to articles such as the one above.
That people who suffer from depression binge-watch TV is hardly surprising, and to be honest hardly relevant on a site that purports to be relevant to the IT industry. 20 years ago this research would have found that depression sufferers tend to loose themselves in books or VHS videos, 40 years ago books or comics, 80 years ago books - you get the picture - all of which are of little relevance to what The Register purports to focus on.
At least these days there are medications which can help; but unfortunately the most common side-effect of these compounds is significant weight-gain, due to the way neurotransmitters also affect our digestive metabolism.
Given a choice of being either 'over-weight' by current society's rather harsh standards, or being so depressed that every morning is a struggle, every day a chore and every hour of the day you fend off thoughts of suicide - which would you choose?
A bit of escapism is hardly a bad thing - binge-watching doesn't cause or trigger depression, and just by turning off the TV the depression isn't going to magically go away, and no, you can't THINK yourself out of it. Binge-watching is just another symptom; and another indicator that our current lifestyle and society (and I'm making no east/west distinction here) is stressful to the point that a large percent of the population is beginning to suffer from these illnesses.
Maybe a bit of support, or some real journalism about the extent, causes and effects of depression in the IT industry would be a good idea.
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 05:23 GMT dan1980
Re: Could you perhaps tone down your laddish editorial? This isn't RALPH
@Wombling_Free
While I fully appreciate the sentiments, I feel they have been misdirected because it sounds like you have misunderstood the tone of the article. I believe that Lewis' rather blunt synopsis of the paper was his way of ridiculing it.
I could be wrong, of course, but given he is generally discounting the paper, it seems that that was his purpose in using that language.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 12:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
I like to see it as....
I only have so much time on this planet. When I am lying on my death bed will I look back and regret spending a weekend watching the Comic Strip back to back when I could've hopped on a plane and gone to say, Croatia for a weekend of history and culture?
No.
Although I know that really, I should take that trip instead. Life is trying though and sometimes you just need to switch off instead of forcing yourself to do something social or 'fun'.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 12:25 GMT Vladimir Plouzhnikov
Can always trust trick-cyclists
To swap cause and effect and claim a correlation as proof.
If you ARE a fat lonely saddo, you are more likely to spend your weekend binge-watching. Does not mean at all that if you occasionally watch a few episodes of something in a row you will turn into one...
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Monday 2nd February 2015 18:02 GMT Dan Paul
Re: I've done some research too....@Bernard M. Orwell
I was going to say that there is no such thing as a PhD in advertising or marketing. Why you ask? Because no one is quite that stupid. They certainly are "Grade A Wankers" at the very least but likely they are fat lonely saddos that binge watch re-runs of the Kardassians.
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Monday 2nd February 2015 17:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
A) I'm not at all surprised that someone who has a hard time seeing a happy place for them in the worl (AKA--they're depressed) stays home and watches a lot of TV.
B) What does that say about people like me, who watched Game of Thrones on IMAX this weekend as part of the Game of Thrones IMAX Experience! We paid $17 each to watch two TV episodes that each of us had seen at least twice, and we got to see the new season 5 trailer---Ooooooo!!
(Paris--because if you squint she kind of looks like Danaerys Targaeryan)
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Monday 2nd February 2015 21:07 GMT Henry Wertz 1
"But I see no reason why binge-watching, like binge game-playing, can't be a social activity."
It can be. But usually, it's not, it's one person sitting there watching episode after episode after episode. I honestly doubt it's healthy to watch like 20 hours of anything all in one stretch. They're talking trends, not saying literally every instance of binge-watching is buy a umm "fat loney saddo".
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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 01:51 GMT Gartal
A new problem?
I seem to recall Samuel Pepys had problems with the theatre. Really all they are saying is that excess is excessive. One must Om or something and take the road less travelled, the middle one. Then you can be fat and sad and not subject to studies by people who live in a car in Texas.
The Burning Question of course is how do you get sufficient `scientists' into an Austin to perform a decent job.
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Friday 6th March 2015 18:43 GMT justmakingacomment
Logic?
"Spent the weekend watching Game of Thrones? You're a FAT LONELY SADDO"
Umm, not really. The study said only that "saddos" tend to binge watch. It doesn't follow from that that if you binge watch you're a saddo.
I know it's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but c'mon people! Techies are supposed to be good at logic!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
