The Atlantic: Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore. Why you’ve probably never heard of the most popular Netflix show in the world.::undefined
Netflix’s single most popular anything from January and June 2023 was a recent thriller series called The Night Agent, which was streamed for 812 million hours globally.
Saved you a click.
And The Night Agent was a fantastic show. You should go watch it.
Was it? It was fine – that thing you throw on because you’ve watched most of everything else that fills that kind of derivative political action conspiracy thriller. Not particularly intelligent, not particularly funny, a loose enough plot that you can be paying attention once every 5 minutes and get by. Some folks get shot. There’s a conspiracy ooooOOOOoooh.
Maybe that’s what defines good these days, when content is just a glut of mediocrity.
I was shocked it was up top the list in terms of ‘quality,’ but I watched it because, it was there… So, I guess that explains it?
The Recruit (similar vein) was a superior show in terms of quality. Recommend that if you need a quick fix.
AAA quality is wanting these days. I just got done watching Rebel Moon. Apparently a $166m budget movie. Completely devoid of anything resembling a story or characters.
Ehh, it really wasn’t. But I also couldn’t get into Squid Game either. I’m sure they are fine, but nothing I haven’t seen plenty of times over.
An insightful thought from a TV critic I read years ago just as streaming was taking off :
There’s no such thing as the best TV show anymore, because there’s so much that’s generally good enough to be a candidate that no one person has watched it all and spent the time to assess it properly.
More broadly, this had happened to western culture with the internet. Previously, with only three tv channels and two major papers, we were all literally on the same page.
I’d go further and say there’s a vertical dimension too in terms of complexity. Society and its various aspects such as technology are now complex enough in total they I don’t think anyone can ever say they understand what’s going on.
I use the phrase “societal decoheshion” to describe that. We (whoever that may be) just aren’t all that unified enough in our culture or information sources anymore.
Even just since Reddit became dead to us, my wife (who I met through Reddit) and I went to different platforms, and find ourselves often catching each other up on what our respective corners of the internet are doing.
There IS a best TV show and it’s Six Feet Under and it’s perfect and the ending makes me cri every time and I will FIGHT ANYONE WHO DISAGREES
But srsly it’s a 10/10
My wife and I just finished the finale tonight, and it was a great ending. Very little ambiguity, real closure, and an emotionally appropriate song.
But, I think it is far from “the best TV show”. It may have been “the best” for a TV drama when it came out because it was groundbreaking, but the acting and writing at times could be pretty bad (so many dropped plots with no follow-up or consequences). It also went on for far too long, which was a consequence of having to create 12 episodes per season, each the same length.
It’s worth watching, but I’d give it a 7.8/10.
That’s entirely fair. I watched it for the first time a decade (decades?) after it some out and it really struck a chord with me.
Then I began to date someone who is a funeral director and they didn’t know of its existence. I introduced them to it after having it be the first show I actually cried at and we both cried. So I have an emotional bias.
I still 10/10 it (and I’m harsh on movies and shows) because of my subjective experience.
Quick edit: I would love to know what show you would rate better. Not in an antagonistic sense, I am fully open to other opinions and I know mine is not THE CORRECT one. It’s just the show that hit me the hardest and that was before I was married to (or knew) my funeral director/mortician. Five years before.
Other edit : the worst dropped plot in the best show was The Sopranos rape plot. They just kinda… didn’t do anything with it.
Also following because I like good recommendations. I don’t know if I have one that I would necessarily rate 10/10 as the best show ever, but the first show that honestly had me cry/feel real feelings was Scrubs. And while it’s up there, I still don’t think I’d give it 10/10 myself.
Edit: I can’t believe I forgot Baskets. That show is a masterpiece.
There are a few shows I’d rate higher: Breaking Bad (although it had it’s share of ‘throw away’ episodes), Reservation Dogs, Battlestar Galactica (so many throw away episodes), The Newsroom, and Deadwood. I think Deadwood would be my highest ranking, especially for writing and acting.
Obviously I’m sure plenty of examples can be given for why Six Feet Under is better than each of the shows I’ve listed, but that’s the beauty of subjective lists!
Breaking Bad was fucking stellar but there’s a couple shows I’d put higher—definitely The Sopranos, even though it took me maaaany years to get around to watching it! I followed breaking bad as it came out and loved it but I’ve yet to find a show that is as interesting as/hits me as hard as SixFunder.
I tried to watch deadwood and BSG and just couldn’t get into them. Maybe I give Deadwood another go!
There are tons of young millionaire youtubers who I’ve never heard of. It’s pretty cool actually that there are so many niches to fill.
And plenty of poor low-subscriber channels that are actually really good and could blow up at some point.
I’ve certainly watched some people from before they were big and from memory their content was more or less just as good in the “early” days. Which all up makes for a pile of stuff!
And plenty of poor low-subscriber channels that are actually really good and could blow up at some point.
Probably doing stupid things like posting with useful titles and thumbnails without agape mouths…
That seems to be the only kind of trash content that Google is interested in pushing these days.
That seems to be the only kind of trash content that Google is interested in pushing these days.
Youtube “pushes” whatever gets more views and longer watch time.
If trashy crap is being suggested, that means other people are watching it in increased numbers.
Youtube “pushes” whatever gets more views and longer watch time.
No YouTube pushes what people will click on. They don’t care about the quality of the content, whether the people who watch it actually enjoy it (dislike = “engagement”), or what kind of content people are actually subscribed to because the ads come first.
Youtube “pushes” whatever gets more views and longer watch time.
No YouTube pushes what people will click on.
That’s pretty much what I said.
No it’s not what you said. You specifically mentioned “longer watch time” where clickbait titles and thumbnails result in the opposite, but also plenty of ad views.
Google pushes what you click. Stop watching this kind of content and it’ll probably stop being recommended to you
Not true. I don’t watch it.
And even if I did, it doesn’t mean that I liked it. None of these tech companies’ algorithms seem to account for that little fact, even when I directly express otherwise.
they are not optimizing for your enjoyment, they’'re optimizing for your engagement. they don’t give a fuck if you hate what you’re watching as long as you watch it for longer.
they are not optimizing for your enjoyment, they’'re optimizing for your engagement.
Yes that’s my point.
they don’t give a fuck if you hate what you’re watching as long as you watch it for longer.
Don’t know about you but I don’t spend my free time torturing myself.
Well I practically never see these kinds of thumbnails, it’s absolutely influenced by your behaviour whatever it may be.
I don’t know how many are like me who almost doesn’t watch tv shows at all. I tried to watch a few but at best it’s quite mediocre to me compared to a good movie, and they are too long for my like. Nowadays I only watch movies, or read books, besides playing games. I don’t know how much I’m considered a weirdo today for not watching tv shows at all.
By myself I never really watch TV shows for the same reasons you mentioned but with my wife we watch an episode of something for dinner. Shows like chernobyl or the wire were really good and I’m glad I watched them but there are a lot of shows that just don’t end and they get old quick
Yeah I haven’t watched a show in so long. There’s some I know I’d like but don’t care enough to get engaged, it’s the same with a lot of movies. I find the way a lot of characters are portrayed I have no connection with and feel like I’m watching these weird uncanny valley versions of people.
This might explain why meta wants to join the fediverse.
A shift away from a knowable internet might feel like a return to something smaller and purer. An internet with no discernable monoculture may feel, especially to those who’ve been continuously plugged into trending topics and viral culture, like a relief. But this new era of the internet is also one that entrenches tech giants and any forthcoming emergent platforms as the sole gatekeepers when it comes to tracking the way that information travels. We already know them to be unreliable narrators and poor stewards, but on a fragmented internet, where recommendation algorithms beat out the older follower model, we rely on these corporations to give us a sense of scale.
Thanks for posting the archived version. I ran across this story recently and hit a paywall right after the article mentioned the problem with paywalls.
