Miscellaneous Thoughts on Pop Culture Consumption

 Incomplete thoughts on pop culture consumption and spoiler anxiety--and keep in mind this comes from a Gemini, so I'm going back and forth on this a lot.

 

One of the big papers--prob the NYT--had a piece yesterday about how everyone watching Game of Thrones talked about it on social media while watching or immediately afterwards, as if this was a new thing and not just fan culture gone mainstream.

 

Like, I remember doing that back in the 90s with Highlander and Buffy. "Social media" consisted of Yahoo chat rooms, licensed message boards, and fan message boards, but we were there. Then came the mid-2000s, and Television Without Pity, and thus the episode recap was born. (Does anyone remember recaps before TWOP?) (Also, RIP, TWOP.) I honestly don't remember if/how spoilers figured into it, back in those days before DVR and if you missed it and didn't record it, you missed it.

 

(Side-note for those who weren't there for the 1990s: If you liked a cult show and they didn't make a box set and it wasn't in syndication, you were SOL. I literally never saw all of season 1 of Buffy until ca. 2002 when I got the dvd set, as a VHS copy of the full season was not released, or not released where I could get it anyhow. I had to experience S1 of Buffy by READING FAN TRANSCRIPTIONS OF ENTIRE EPISODES.)

 

And now here we are today and we have mass media but it's also tiered because premium channels and subscriptions and stuff. I have my well-worn gripe here about why do people complain about subscribing to CBS All-Access for Star Trek Discovery when literally NO ONE gripes about getting HBO for 2 months every year for Game of Thrones. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE I DO NOT UNDERSTAAAAAAAND.

 

I mean aside from, yes all the services and competition and blah blah, and consumption as means and as cultural performativity maybe and--something something?

 

Which ALL COMES DOWN TO ME WONDERING: If 18 million people watched Game of Thrones this weekend--and they did--how is that different than watching a big football game? Is it because a football game loses its value after the epic conclusion and thus the...plot will not be diminished? .... This might be a bad metaphor, I will never know because I do not understand the sportsballs. But in terms of people accessing the same content widely to communicate about it?

 

And it's very different from watching Avengers: Endgame because of the finite number of seats in theaters and so on, to say nothing of managing babysitting and whatnot for people with kids who can watch GoT when they have gone to bed.

 

Except it's maybe not so different because again cultural consumption and a $15 movie ticket vs. $15/month tv subscription? Or maybe it is, I'm not sure.

 

(Told you I was gonna Gemini this.)

 

TL:DR What does it mean to consume--or not--popular culture en masse at once (or not)?