“Skip Intro” is turning us into impatient insatiable media zombies

r/

It’s not just the skip intro button either. It’s ad-free everything. Skipping recaps. Blowing through full seasons in a weekend. We don’t watch TV anymore. We consume it, live and breathe it, ingest it like drug fiends.

I’m 42. I remember having to sit through commercials and wait a full week just to find out if the next episode was any good, just to be left on a cliffhanger for a year.

Now my kids can watch an entire series before dinner and still say they’re bored. It’s kind of insane… Like, I’m not against convenience, I skip stuff too. It’s nice. I mean, the intro to Dexter? I get it… But ultimately I think we’ve trained ourselves to hate any moment that doesn’t deliver immediate payoff.

And that mindset doesn’t stop with streaming. It feels like streaming TV has changed the way we handle like, everything. I don’t know… It just feels like we’ve lost the ability to enjoy the wait and find purpose outside. 🤷

TLDR: We’ve made everything so instant. We skip intros, skip ads, binge it all. And we’ve kind of lost the patience to enjoy anything that doesn’t deliver right away…

Comments

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  2. therealstotes Avatar

    I don’t think it’s just TV either. It’s how we listen to music, scroll social media, even how we eat. Everything’s background noise now unless it’s delivering a dopamine hit every 10 seconds. No wonder people say they’re “bored” all the time. we trained ourselves to hate stillness

  3. TheSciFiGuy80 Avatar

    Why would I want to watch commercials? Literally the definition of the media asking me to just sit back and buy what they tell me to buy…

    Our time is precious. No one wants to waste time with stuff that’s not necessary when they consume their media.

    When I read comic books, I skipped right over the ads. Same thing here.

  4. WelshBen Avatar

    You’re damn right OP. We need to start campaigning for more ads.

  5. wwwnetorg Avatar

    “I’m 42… I remember” not a “back in my day” about having to watch adverts, now you want everyone else to watch them?

    How does it make sense that skipping media in favor of media you actually want to watch makes up insatiable media ‘zombies’ when a zombie would literally just let adverts roll across their eyes without any resistance.

    In this day and age, avoiding ads and conscientiously making an effort to say ‘no’ to them is like a survival trait. God knows who would happen to humanity if we just simply watched ads without any filter whatsoever and accepted anything and everything. Skipping and hating ads is what separates living human beings from the zombies, actually.

  6. anavriN-oN Avatar

    I like how you complain about people not having patience, and then include a TLDR.

    Pretty much sums it up. lol

  7. Parallax-Jack Avatar

    It’s annoying. You pay for a reason (to have no commercials). Why is that a hard concept to grasp lol

  8. Magic_Man_Boobs Avatar

    There’s always the option not to click it? I skip intros on shows that I don’t like the intros for, and watch the ones I do. I used to do it when streaming first became a thing by fast forwarding through them, so I appreciate that they added a convenient button.

  9. Tommy_Wisseau_burner Avatar

    Brother the intro is cool the 1st 3 times. After that I’ve heard it enough. The ads thing only makes sense if you’re like 15 and not 42 lol. Or you’d be old enough to remember when YouTube didn’t have ads. I know what it looks like when it isn’t absolute shit

  10. NomadicScribe Avatar

    Are you really out here trying to convince us we need to watch more commercials?

    I would shake my head thinking you’re some “le wrong generation” kid, but we’re the same age.

    I wonder, did you ever watch movies growing up? Do you realize this is a medium where you could sit for 2+ hours without a single commercial break? What about video games? Were you disappointed not to get pop-up ads back on NES?

    Or…. books? Ever read a book? Does the idea of 2000 pages of Tolkien with no commercial interruption give you grief? Well sorry if reading has made us all into “insatiable media zombies”. LOL!

  11. angrytwig Avatar

    ??? I have HBO Max and Paramount+ and i still have to wait between episodes and also watch commercials. i’m ok with it.

  12. space_wiener Avatar

    Did you have a vcr and recorded shows? I bet you fast forwarded commercials and intros.

  13. Substantial-Bell8916 Avatar

    No offense OP but this may be one of the stupidest opinions I’ve ever heard. Upvote, because of the subreddit we’re on, but I’m not happy about it 

  14. dlc741 Avatar

    42??? OMG, please bestow upon us your wisdom, ancient one.

    Nah. The only reason for commercials was to run to the bathroom or to grab a snack. Don’t need that now because you can pause. It was NOT for dramatic effect or to savor the show.

  15. manicmice Avatar

    Yeah, I really wish we had more ads /s

  16. hello_im_al Avatar

    Fuck it, I’m glad I’m at a point where I don’t have to wait an ungodly amount of time to see what I came to see

  17. koosley Avatar

    We also no longer have to wait a week between episode either. Why would I want to waste 3 minutes on a 20 minute episode on a recap/intro for something I watched 5 minutes ago.

  18. letternumberstop Avatar

    This is a perfect opinion for this sub. I see your point of view and it is an interesting lens to analyze media consumption.

  19. Sonic10122 Avatar

    Eh. I partially agree. I think skipping the intro is a cardinal sin (especially in anime) and anyone that does it is only a half step above the freaks that watch stuff above 1x speed.

    But I can’t go back to weekly watching. I don’t retain as much. There’s a few shows I’m caught up on like Apothecary Diaries and the first few minutes are me remembering details from last week while we’re setting stuff up. And at least with live action TV you’re getting 45-60 minutes of content. Anime is like 22 minutes a week and not enough.

    And yeah, maybe binging doesn’t retain a lot of info in the long run either. But guess what? Either way I’m rewatching the earlier seasons before I watch the new one anyway. I’ve been doing that since I got my season one DVD of Lost back in the day. I’m already trying to figure out when I should start re-binging My Hero Academia before the final season. (Don’t even get me started on getting tricked 3 separate times with Attack on Titan’s Final Season bullshit.)

  20. Happily_Doomed Avatar

    Just have the smallest amount of willpower and this isn’t an issue lmao

    I recently caught up on Invincible and I would only atch an episode or two a night and only watched every few days. I wanted to enjoy it and not feel tired watching it. I also regularly paused it to get up and use the restroom, stretch, or get snacks/dinner, or whatever else I needed to be comfortable and enjoy myself.

    The fact that we’re able to watch what we want whenever we want allows binging, sure, but it also makes it way more convenients to watch at an enjoyable pace on your own schedule.

    Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to

  21. Mathalamus2 Avatar

    wrong. the intro is the same for most TV shows. skipping it skips the tedious part of the show.

  22. _bisexualwarlock Avatar

    Agreed, I won’t watch any streaming platform that shows adverts, Netflix now has a cheaper option with ads but I instinctively pay their higher rate because I wouldn’t be ok with adverts. I get annoyed when the WiFi drops even for 2 or 3 seconds and buffering should be something we only see in a museum exhibition.

    I didn’t realise how bad it was until you pointed it out. The scary part is my impatience has levels I haven’t accessed.

    Yet.