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Isn't this one of those examples about implicit ideology at play? Like, it's an unquestioned assumption that you need "entertainment" in the form of consuming a

Isn't this one of those examples about implicit ideology at play? Like, it's an unquestioned assumption that you need "entertainment" in the form of consuming attention-eating stuff all your free time. That you need to be "doing something", and that in some strange way getting through media is some kind of accomplishment, at least you didn't just do nothing. I think this doesn't go without saying... People have always entertained themselves in various ways, like having rituals, singing together, playing, fixing stuff (clothes, stuff around the house), creating things like tools and clothes etc. But these tended to be more active "hobbies". I'm taking issue with the template/implicit model whereby work sucks your energy out, and then you need to regenerate by sitting in front of some media device and consume some subscription content or some media item that has a title, author etc. As if unstructured time were scary. That you just go for a walk without having a podcast in your ears. That you just cook dinner without the TV on. That you eat without watching Youtube. It somehow feels non-productive and "cheating". I don't think these are the best way to unwind or regenerate for the next day, as opposed to actually letting your brain just be without "content" being fed into it. Also a lot of content, like news and podcasts just work us up instead of relaxing and "entertaining", unless you consider "outrage" entertainment.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
I think you are onto something. There is an argument to be made that entertainment is a comfortable rails, which you can use to appropriately guide the population in a desired direction ( propaganda does not always have to be overt ). Unstructured time not only does not result in money changing hands, but could also result in unpredictable thoughts that may be unpalatable to the system. It is no small wonder the default perception is captured by 'idle hands' proverb.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Right. After more thinking it's not that new, it's "panem et circenses" all over again, just way more scalable. Also, I think Americans are culturally just much more market-thinking and transaction-oriented. In many other places it's a much higher threshold for people to give out money for something. Now, surely this is a function of disposable income as well, but "paying for stuff left and right" is just a basic thing for many Americans, while e.g. Germans would much rather save up. So marketing also has to adjust to local circumstances: Germany has very cheap supermarkets (discounters) because brand loyalty is lower and price weighs in stronger. This also means that innovative people much rather go to the American market, because there's just more willingness in normal people to try and pay for new things there. It's both good and bad.
lasagnaphil 6y ago
It reminds me of the excerpt in Bullshit Jobs (by David Graeber, rest in peace...) "In a sense, those critics who claim we are not working a fifteen-hour week because we have chosen consumerism over leisure are not entirely off the mark. They just got the mechanisms wrong. We’re not working harder because we’re spending all our time manufacturing PlayStations and serving one another sushi. Industry is being increasingly robotized, and the real service sector remains flat at roughly 20 percent of overall employment. Instead, it is because we have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of—as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it—“a life,” and that, in turn, means that furtive consumer pleasures are the only ones we have time to afford. Sitting around in cafés all day arguing about politics or gossiping about our friends’ complex polyamorous love affairstakes time (all day, in fact); in contrast pumping iron or attending a yoga class at the local gym, ordering out for Deliveroo, watching an episode of Game of Thrones, or shopping for hand creams or consumer electronics can all be placed in the kind of self-contained predictable timeslots one is likely to have left over between spates of work, or else while recovering from it. All these are examples of what I like to call “compensatory consumerism.” They are the sorts of things you can do to make up for the fact that you don’t have a life, or not very much of one."
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  I think it starts already in childhood with extracurriculars filling up waking hours, always preparing for some test, "making progress" on some axis. Not letting kids roam around aimlessly. At least that's the impression I get about American schooling nowadays. Mindblowing stuff like not even having recess between classes etc. Is it surprising that people take the same template to adulthood? That you need to fill up your timetable with "activities" that have a name, a structure. Even when travelling, more and more people buy prepackaged, well-defined, "experiences" with titles on AirBnB with a predefined timespan, description etc. You can't just go somewhere and meet up with people, you must tick off an "experience" to feel accomplished. It needs to be "a thing" that can become a line item on your credit card for it to be real.
- 6y ago
permo-w 6y ago
I am a big fan of what you're raising here. These are issues that I struggle with, and usually lose. It's so easy to get addicted to having something constantly guide your thoughts, whether that is media, drugs or religion

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

I think you are onto something. There is an argument to be made that entertainment is a comfortable rails, which you can use to appropriately guide the population in a desired direction ( propaganda does not always have to be overt ). Unstructured time not only does not result in money changing hands, but could also result in unpredictable thoughts that may be unpalatable to the system. It is no small wonder the default perception is captured by 'idle hands' proverb.

bonoboTP 6y ago
Right. After more thinking it's not that new, it's "panem et circenses" all over again, just way more scalable. Also, I think Americans are culturally just much more market-thinking and transaction-oriented. In many other places it's a much higher threshold for people to give out money for something. Now, surely this is a function of disposable income as well, but "paying for stuff left and right" is just a basic thing for many Americans, while e.g. Germans would much rather save up. So marketing also has to adjust to local circumstances: Germany has very cheap supermarkets (discounters) because brand loyalty is lower and price weighs in stronger. This also means that innovative people much rather go to the American market, because there's just more willingness in normal people to try and pay for new things there. It's both good and bad.

lasagnaphil 6y ago

It reminds me of the excerpt in Bullshit Jobs (by David Graeber, rest in peace...) "In a sense, those critics who claim we are not working a fifteen-hour week because we have chosen consumerism over leisure are not entirely off the mark. They just got the mechanisms wrong. We’re not working harder because we’re spending all our time manufacturing PlayStations and serving one another sushi. Industry is being increasingly robotized, and the real service sector remains flat at roughly 20 percent of overall employment. Instead, it is because we have invented a bizarre sadomasochistic dialectic whereby we feel that pain in the workplace is the only possible justification for our furtive consumer pleasures, and, at the same time, the fact that our jobs thus come to eat up more and more of our waking existence means that we do not have the luxury of—as Kathi Weeks has so concisely put it—“a life,” and that, in turn, means that furtive consumer pleasures are the only ones we have time to afford. Sitting around in cafés all day arguing about politics or gossiping about our friends’ complex polyamorous love affairstakes time (all day, in fact); in contrast pumping iron or attending a yoga class at the local gym, ordering out for Deliveroo, watching an episode of Game of Thrones, or shopping for hand creams or consumer electronics can all be placed in the kind of self-contained predictable timeslots one is likely to have left over between spates of work, or else while recovering from it. All these are examples of what I like to call “compensatory consumerism.” They are the sorts of things you can do to make up for the fact that you don’t have a life, or not very much of one."

bonoboTP 6y ago
I think it starts already in childhood with extracurriculars filling up waking hours, always preparing for some test, "making progress" on some axis. Not letting kids roam around aimlessly. At least that's the impression I get about American schooling nowadays. Mindblowing stuff like not even having recess between classes etc. Is it surprising that people take the same template to adulthood? That you need to fill up your timetable with "activities" that have a name, a structure. Even when travelling, more and more people buy prepackaged, well-defined, "experiences" with titles on AirBnB with a predefined timespan, description etc. You can't just go somewhere and meet up with people, you must tick off an "experience" to feel accomplished. It needs to be "a thing" that can become a line item on your credit card for it to be real.
6y ago

permo-w 6y ago

I am a big fan of what you're raising here. These are issues that I struggle with, and usually lose. It's so easy to get addicted to having something constantly guide your thoughts, whether that is media, drugs or religion