6 Things That Suck About Binge Watching Netflix

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What’s more American than binge watching stuff! Binge watching is only binging when the show is longer than 30 minutes. If you watch four 20 minute episodes of 30 Rock, that’s sort of like watching a movie. When you BINGE watch something, though, you willingly/against your will spend COUNTLESS HOURS watching a thing and it sucks you into its hole. Binge watching is so bad it’s awesome. Here are 6 annoying problems that always occur when you binge watch.

1. Your Body Clock Gets Messed Up

I used to go to Blockbuster (I know right?) and get the full season of shows and watch them in their entirety. That’s how I fell in love with Sex and the City. We didn’t have HBO in my dorm but we would get the DVDs and down them all with popcorn and cosmos. What is different about binge-watching now, though, is that everything is available online, on our phones, on our iPads and what not. We have unlimited access to stuff, which makes it really easy to just be all, “Yeah, I think I’m going to just stay up and watch just ONE MORE EPISODE/oh shit it’s 7 a.m. and I have to go to work in like an hour hmmmm.” You’ve been up for god knows how many hours, your bed a pit of crumbs and juice boxes.

2. Once You’ve Finished Binging, Chances Are You Have To Wait FOREVER Until The Next Season — HOW WILL YOU SURVIVE

People often ask me how I finished my dissertation. What did I do? Well, the answer is simple: I watched single every episode of 24! In case you didn’t know, there are 192 episodes of 24 across eight seasons. Each episode is like an hour long, which is like 192 hours. I remember how it all started, too. It was late Sunday night, like 10 p.m. and I was surfing Netflix for something to watch. The system kept recommending me 24 and for months I passed over it before finally giving in that night. I watched one episode and then I was like, well shit what happens next? SEVEN. EPISODES. LATER. I finally fell asleep. But I couldn’t help myself. I got so wrapped up in WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT, so I accidentally/on purpose ended up watching the entire series in basically 1 month. The thing is, once you finish the season, you have to wait forever for them to bring it back. How will you possibly survive and go through the world?

3. When It’s Over, The Sense Of Lack Leaves You Feeling Depressed

We get so attached to our favorite television shows that when they go off the air, we get so depressed and are ready to just end it ALL if the producers don’t cut it out and bring the show back already. Waiting between seasons is the worst.

4. You Are More Prone To Horrible Nightmares

When you binge watch a show, your time spent with those characters is so concentrated that the show becomes REALITY for you, it becomes the real (a la Baudrilliard) and you don’t even know how to get through society because you are absolutely convinced that somebody is going to behead you today.

5. You Start To See Weaknesses In The Plot

When you let a week go by between shows like you’re supposed to, you don’t notice plot cheap plot devices as easily. But when you consume it all at once, you might start to roll your eyes at the plot development or otherwise you’ll start seeing the faults in the show. And is that what you want, for your favorite shows to be just RUINED?

6. You Willingly Put Projects Off For A Few Days

Binge watching a show is sort of like telling yourself, “Welp, I done already dug myself a hole this deep. Might as well keep on going!” But that’s the WORST because you sort of don’t exist in the world until you’re done. You’re unreachable by phone, Internet, and you put off all your creative projects. It’s kind of masochistic in a way, like you HAVE to finish and you know it’s bad for you but whatever, there’s only three more episodes left anyway.

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