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All these declarations that the modern Attention Span is dead are solidly refuted by the popularity of the Long Movie, by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge

All these declarations that the modern Attention Span is dead are solidly refuted by the popularity of the Long Movie, by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge watching phenomenon made possible by OTT on demand services which allow a 'movie' to extend 12 or 13 hours consumed in two or three sittings by a generation blamed for a collective attention deficit disorder. Ars Longa Vita Brevis.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago
Upvoted but with a caveat. I don't have a TV so I don't have much exposure to what's going on, but last summer I was house sitting and because of the hype of Stranger Things I thought I'd binge-watch it. In two days I watched the first two series completely, then stopped. I got bored because fundamentally nothing really happened to move anything forwards. I watch a lot of made-for-TV staff on DVD and see a similarity – in football terms it's just time wasting. Long pauses usually filled in with music to give the illusion something is happening, sex scenes, gratuitous violence, people taking offence with unrealistic ease, longshots, slow shots... Anything to hide the fact that there is a lot of empty air. (Oh yes, and the three minute intro that also recaps what happened last time). It all suggests there's a lot of tolerance for "something happening on screen" independent of whether it's worth watching or basically nothing at all.
- dgroshev 4y ago
  To push back a bit on this "it's just empty filler" notion: https://youtu.be/2vfDqDLmjas https://youtu.be/2vfDqDLmjas In short, "boring" bits when used skilfully are important, they help to set the expectations and amplify the subtleties. It's a bit like "dynamic range" for the plot: if there's no change in pace, everything becomes bland and boring. But also I do recommend watching that video essay, it's really good and goes much deeper than I can do in a short reply.
- badpun 4y ago
  > Long pauses usually filled in with music to give the illusion something is happening, sex scenes, gratuitous violence, people taking offence with unrealistic ease, longshots, slow shots... This. I pretty much stopped watching all new shows made after 2015 or so (with Succession being the exception), as it feels like, during the TV shows gold rush, a lot of not very talented writers and directors got to make their own shows due to huge demand from the studios. In reality, making something many hours long and yet packed with actual interesting content is a Herculean task, so it feels like these untalented people are trying to steal any piece of time they can get, by every mean of stalling possible (sex, violence, "poignant" long shots etc.). It's almost like watching workers paid by the hour, and not by result. Combine that with the fact that most movies and shows nowadays are targetting people who are at most 30 years old [1], and I'm really no longer interested. [1] That's my theory anyway. Young people are the perfect audience - they have more free time and are significantly easier to impress with what is often in reality a poorly done rehash of things that worked in the great movies, shows or books of the past. They're still young enough to experience a given concept for the first time in their life, so they'll be moved by it. They're also significantly more susceptible to fads (don't belive their own taste as strongly, because it's not yet well developed), so it's much easier to manipulate them with marketing, paid reviews etc.
- watwut 4y ago
  So basically, you found the plot of Stranger Things to be too slow moving and therefore parents theory about binging marathons and collective attention deficit disorder is somehow wrong? Combining original claim and your complain about this show, I do not even see what people should watch to not be adhd for you. Also, Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes? There is like one or two per series and they are fairly mild.
  - _a_a_a_ 4y ago
    > So basically, you found the plot of Stranger Things to be too slow moving After watching two series of it I could not discern any overall plot at all. > therefore parents theory about binging marathons and collective attention deficit disorder is somehow wrong? That's not what I was saying, and I was not disagreeing with him, and as I said, I upvoted his post. What I was saying was that to produce volume you may have to compromise heavily on other aspects. > I do not even see what people should watch to not be adhd for you I was not complaining about anybody else's viewing habits. People should watch what they want that entertains them. I was talking about my particular experience and wondered if it was shared by others. Seems that somebody agreed with me. > Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes? Like I said I watch other, contemporaneously made, things as well on DVD.
    - bmelton 4y ago
      For what it's worth, there are a few (and some themes that are explored) On its face, it's a sci-fi/horror film that contains a classic good vs evil fight against a monster. Within that, there's a pretty compelling narrative about the corruption of power, man's arrogant willfulness to play god, themes about fatherhood, family, the strength of love (romantic / platonic / familial,) the temptation of evil, nature vs nurture, and sacrifice. On the whole though, the plot is more a vehicle for its themes, especially those centered around love, family, and the good and bad of humanity than your average murder mystery plot, but there are a handful of plots to pick from, and tbh, most of them are more worthwhile than the most obvious one, but it's hard to meaningfully categorize these stories as "empty air" however much they may not be _for you_.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  My experience binge-watching is that it destroys the rhythm of the series, sets the wrong expectations for the viewer. Many shows are as much (or more) about the mood, not so much about "things advancing". But to speed-run from episode to episode to episode you're looking for plot and narrative, not taking in mood. I haven't binge-watched a series in the 20 years since the one time I ruined "Twin Peaks". One episode a day or one a week really is a good cadence.
- brookst 4y ago
  It’s the “mystery box” phenomenon. Somehow a lot of TV producers and viewers have moved to an episodic narrative structure where a mysterious box appears, people debate what to do, shake it, steal it from each other, argue about it, and ultimately, at the end of the episode, with great tension, open the box to reveal... Next week's mystery box. But there is a lot of genuinely good stuff out there too. You just have to recognize mystery boxes and bail.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Almost none of these modern "great" TV series would be tolerable in a theater setting—no talking, no phone—even broken up into two-hour chunks. Too much filler, too much repetition, simply not enough substance. They're OK at home because people can tune out and screw around on their phones or play Switch or go put away some dishes so they're not paying close attention to the whole thing—very few of them are improved by an actual, close watch for their entire runtime, but they're good if your attention is dipping in and out while you do other stuff.
actionfromafar 4y ago
All while movie-goers watch TikTok during the movie. Maybe the movies are 3 hours now because you only watch 1 hour 30 minutes of it anyway?
coldtea 4y ago
>are solidly refuted by the popularity of the Long Movie, by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge watching phenomenon It's only solidly refuted if those aren't skipped to death, or "followed" while the person does 4 other things at the same time. And of course if those represent the main way content is consumed nowadays, and not like a mere small percentage of our consumption. And if the person doesn't watch them while still having the attention span of a goldfish, and e.g. missing any longer narrative threads...
vouwfietsman 4y ago
I don't think that type of "modern Attention Span" is really criticized: If you do a 3 hour binge of tiktok, you could count that as a single span claiming your full attention, right? But nobody would say really that doing a 3 hour tiktok binge would make you a person with a great attention span. I think the same applies to entertainment broadly: movies, podcasts, tv shows. Instead I think that the real attention span is not consumer-based, but rather based on interaction with the subject matter. Simply put, I think the level of engagement with a material has to be on a certain level before you can claim it takes attention to consume it. Yes, a Stranger Things season lasts 8 hours front-to-back, but if you zone out for an hour in between they're still looking for the alien mystery and they're not suddenly going to die because you didn't think along with all the plotpoints. Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly. I think that nuance is missing if you just say the words "attention span". "Attention" may just be the wrong word, and so I think nothing is really solidly refuted here, and I do indeed think that the attention span is dead.
- watwut 4y ago
  The real issue here that original attention span is about moral or other judgement. It is about making claim of disapproval over media use rather then anything you could measure. > Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly. Zoning out university lecture was extremely normal when I was studying over 20 years ago. You did not died either. You kept making notes in a zombie like state and then reread the notes later on. Or you checked textbook or you asked friend for notes. It would be pretty rare for your memory to be the only source of learning later on. There was no need to understand and acquire the lecture content right at place during lecture. In all likelihood, there was never ever such need.
  - tigen 4y ago
    The issue of boring lectures has been around a long time. Lectures of that sort seem somewhat obsolete anyway, probably it is more efficient to work in smaller class sizes with more video content. I greatly appreciated video lecture playback with variable speed, rewind. With big lectures I remember details about the lecturer more than the class material. The professor's style, tone, gravitas. Their anecdotes. An important part of the package there really is about marshaling student attention. Getting out of the home, going to a dedicated place of learning with others, restraints on distraction. Similar issues affect WFH/remote. Or various other psycho-hacks like wearing special uniforms, daily rituals. Perhaps ADD correlates with cultural looseness around all such formality.
prepend 4y ago
One of the nice things about ripping the lord of the rings extended edition DVDs to digital files is that I now have a playlist of all files that just runs in a continuous showing. I think it’s 11-13 hours or something. And my friends and family have made it through nonstopped in a single day quite a few times (it’s a Christmas tradition although that usually gets interrupted). There is an intermission after the first and second films as the credits are very long, but it’s amazing how people will stay transfixed to good material. I think it’s just really hard and rare to make great things and easier to make short, acceptable things that are successful to a lesser, but marginally acceptable level. I call this the “machine learning effect” as it’s regression to the mean and good enough, but not great. The most frequent place I see this is in Amazon recommendation engine where they don’t want you to buy a great book so much as they just want you to buy something, and a perfect transaction is where you only like the book enough not to return it and come back to buy another because you’re unsatisfied.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Man, I should rip the LOTR into files like that, but then also edit them, because whenever we watch we always end up skipping over the Whiny Frodo segments.
  - prepend 4y ago
    If you do, please send me a PM as Id like that too but won’t spend the time to edit. What’s neat is that there’s probably an ffmpeg script that if you just give me the clip times I can assemble from my own files.
    - ubermonkey 4y ago
      True! (Am I correct that you, too, find the "yup, they're not in mordor, and they're increasingly miserable" scenes tedious?)
      - prepend 4y ago
        Yes, although I love the scenes of Sam cooking :)
cubefox 4y ago
It doesn't take a lot of attention to binge watch a whole Netflix season. It takes attention to read a book.
ChancyChance 4y ago
One of the claims about attention disorders IIRC is that it only affects thing people having to do things they don’t like. Which seems a bit sketchy to me so I probably am misunderstanding but the idea is even kids with adhd can play Minecraft for a day straight because they like it but can’t do math.
- addled 4y ago
  Anecdotal counter-example: yeah my ADHD son can play Minecraft for a couple hours straight, but if you watch he's constantly switching tasks. I love spending time with him on our home server, but trying to keep up with him is sometimes just as frustrating as helping him with math homework.
- ksaun 4y ago
  The term "attention deficit disorder," as I understand it, is a bit misleading. Attention disorders are about a deficiency in executive function, including a reduced ability to control one's attention (as opposed to just being a lack of attention). When disinterested, this leads to an inability to focus/concentrate. When it's something you like, this leads to "hyperfocus," whereby it's tough to pull away and behavior can be obsessive/addictive in nature. This latter symptom seems to receive less attention (edit: no pun intended :)). (And individuals and specifics differ.) This is an oversimplification and I'm being a little loose with the vocabulary, but I wanted to at least briefly comment on the perceived "sketchiness" you mention.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > One of the claims about attention disorders IIRC is that it only affects thing people having to do things they don’t like. AIUI, this is a very common but false belief; it is in part based on hyperfocus being a common feature of ADHD, but hyperfocus on something isn’t (though its often mistaken for) liking it. (It’s also probably based in part on “activities” that are themselves tolerant of lack of consistent focus and task switching.)
yamtaddle 4y ago
> by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge watching phenomenon made possible by OTT on demand services which allow a 'movie' to extend 12 or 13 hours consumed in two or three sittings Both of those things work because people do other stuff while listening/watching. There are very, very, very few 12+ hour streaming-series "movies" that are improved by paying close attention the entire time, even if you split the watch into two or three sessions—most are better if you check out from time to time, talk to someone, go to the other room to do the dishes, mess around on your phone, play some Switch, whatever.

_a_a_a_ 4y ago

Upvoted but with a caveat. I don't have a TV so I don't have much exposure to what's going on, but last summer I was house sitting and because of the hype of Stranger Things I thought I'd binge-watch it. In two days I watched the first two series completely, then stopped. I got bored because fundamentally nothing really happened to move anything forwards. I watch a lot of made-for-TV staff on DVD and see a similarity – in football terms it's just time wasting. Long pauses usually filled in with music to give the illusion something is happening, sex scenes, gratuitous violence, people taking offence with unrealistic ease, longshots, slow shots... Anything to hide the fact that there is a lot of empty air. (Oh yes, and the three minute intro that also recaps what happened last time). It all suggests there's a lot of tolerance for "something happening on screen" independent of whether it's worth watching or basically nothing at all.

dgroshev 4y ago
To push back a bit on this "it's just empty filler" notion: https://youtu.be/2vfDqDLmjas https://youtu.be/2vfDqDLmjas In short, "boring" bits when used skilfully are important, they help to set the expectations and amplify the subtleties. It's a bit like "dynamic range" for the plot: if there's no change in pace, everything becomes bland and boring. But also I do recommend watching that video essay, it's really good and goes much deeper than I can do in a short reply.
badpun 4y ago
> Long pauses usually filled in with music to give the illusion something is happening, sex scenes, gratuitous violence, people taking offence with unrealistic ease, longshots, slow shots... This. I pretty much stopped watching all new shows made after 2015 or so (with Succession being the exception), as it feels like, during the TV shows gold rush, a lot of not very talented writers and directors got to make their own shows due to huge demand from the studios. In reality, making something many hours long and yet packed with actual interesting content is a Herculean task, so it feels like these untalented people are trying to steal any piece of time they can get, by every mean of stalling possible (sex, violence, "poignant" long shots etc.). It's almost like watching workers paid by the hour, and not by result. Combine that with the fact that most movies and shows nowadays are targetting people who are at most 30 years old [1], and I'm really no longer interested. [1] That's my theory anyway. Young people are the perfect audience - they have more free time and are significantly easier to impress with what is often in reality a poorly done rehash of things that worked in the great movies, shows or books of the past. They're still young enough to experience a given concept for the first time in their life, so they'll be moved by it. They're also significantly more susceptible to fads (don't belive their own taste as strongly, because it's not yet well developed), so it's much easier to manipulate them with marketing, paid reviews etc.
watwut 4y ago
So basically, you found the plot of Stranger Things to be too slow moving and therefore parents theory about binging marathons and collective attention deficit disorder is somehow wrong? Combining original claim and your complain about this show, I do not even see what people should watch to not be adhd for you. Also, Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes? There is like one or two per series and they are fairly mild.
- _a_a_a_ 4y ago
  > So basically, you found the plot of Stranger Things to be too slow moving After watching two series of it I could not discern any overall plot at all. > therefore parents theory about binging marathons and collective attention deficit disorder is somehow wrong? That's not what I was saying, and I was not disagreeing with him, and as I said, I upvoted his post. What I was saying was that to produce volume you may have to compromise heavily on other aspects. > I do not even see what people should watch to not be adhd for you I was not complaining about anybody else's viewing habits. People should watch what they want that entertains them. I was talking about my particular experience and wondered if it was shared by others. Seems that somebody agreed with me. > Stranger Things does not even have that many sex scenes? Like I said I watch other, contemporaneously made, things as well on DVD.
  - bmelton 4y ago
    For what it's worth, there are a few (and some themes that are explored) On its face, it's a sci-fi/horror film that contains a classic good vs evil fight against a monster. Within that, there's a pretty compelling narrative about the corruption of power, man's arrogant willfulness to play god, themes about fatherhood, family, the strength of love (romantic / platonic / familial,) the temptation of evil, nature vs nurture, and sacrifice. On the whole though, the plot is more a vehicle for its themes, especially those centered around love, family, and the good and bad of humanity than your average murder mystery plot, but there are a handful of plots to pick from, and tbh, most of them are more worthwhile than the most obvious one, but it's hard to meaningfully categorize these stories as "empty air" however much they may not be _for you_.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
My experience binge-watching is that it destroys the rhythm of the series, sets the wrong expectations for the viewer. Many shows are as much (or more) about the mood, not so much about "things advancing". But to speed-run from episode to episode to episode you're looking for plot and narrative, not taking in mood. I haven't binge-watched a series in the 20 years since the one time I ruined "Twin Peaks". One episode a day or one a week really is a good cadence.
brookst 4y ago
It’s the “mystery box” phenomenon. Somehow a lot of TV producers and viewers have moved to an episodic narrative structure where a mysterious box appears, people debate what to do, shake it, steal it from each other, argue about it, and ultimately, at the end of the episode, with great tension, open the box to reveal... Next week's mystery box. But there is a lot of genuinely good stuff out there too. You just have to recognize mystery boxes and bail.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Almost none of these modern "great" TV series would be tolerable in a theater setting—no talking, no phone—even broken up into two-hour chunks. Too much filler, too much repetition, simply not enough substance. They're OK at home because people can tune out and screw around on their phones or play Switch or go put away some dishes so they're not paying close attention to the whole thing—very few of them are improved by an actual, close watch for their entire runtime, but they're good if your attention is dipping in and out while you do other stuff.

actionfromafar 4y ago

All while movie-goers watch TikTok during the movie. Maybe the movies are 3 hours now because you only watch 1 hour 30 minutes of it anyway?

coldtea 4y ago

>are solidly refuted by the popularity of the Long Movie, by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge watching phenomenon It's only solidly refuted if those aren't skipped to death, or "followed" while the person does 4 other things at the same time. And of course if those represent the main way content is consumed nowadays, and not like a mere small percentage of our consumption. And if the person doesn't watch them while still having the attention span of a goldfish, and e.g. missing any longer narrative threads...

vouwfietsman 4y ago

I don't think that type of "modern Attention Span" is really criticized: If you do a 3 hour binge of tiktok, you could count that as a single span claiming your full attention, right? But nobody would say really that doing a 3 hour tiktok binge would make you a person with a great attention span. I think the same applies to entertainment broadly: movies, podcasts, tv shows. Instead I think that the real attention span is not consumer-based, but rather based on interaction with the subject matter. Simply put, I think the level of engagement with a material has to be on a certain level before you can claim it takes attention to consume it. Yes, a Stranger Things season lasts 8 hours front-to-back, but if you zone out for an hour in between they're still looking for the alien mystery and they're not suddenly going to die because you didn't think along with all the plotpoints. Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly. I think that nuance is missing if you just say the words "attention span". "Attention" may just be the wrong word, and so I think nothing is really solidly refuted here, and I do indeed think that the attention span is dead.

watwut 4y ago
The real issue here that original attention span is about moral or other judgement. It is about making claim of disapproval over media use rather then anything you could measure. > Contrast that with a university lecture, where if you zone out for 15 minutes you might never catch back up because you need to interact with the material in your head to be able to consume it properly. Zoning out university lecture was extremely normal when I was studying over 20 years ago. You did not died either. You kept making notes in a zombie like state and then reread the notes later on. Or you checked textbook or you asked friend for notes. It would be pretty rare for your memory to be the only source of learning later on. There was no need to understand and acquire the lecture content right at place during lecture. In all likelihood, there was never ever such need.
- tigen 4y ago
  The issue of boring lectures has been around a long time. Lectures of that sort seem somewhat obsolete anyway, probably it is more efficient to work in smaller class sizes with more video content. I greatly appreciated video lecture playback with variable speed, rewind. With big lectures I remember details about the lecturer more than the class material. The professor's style, tone, gravitas. Their anecdotes. An important part of the package there really is about marshaling student attention. Getting out of the home, going to a dedicated place of learning with others, restraints on distraction. Similar issues affect WFH/remote. Or various other psycho-hacks like wearing special uniforms, daily rituals. Perhaps ADD correlates with cultural looseness around all such formality.

prepend 4y ago

One of the nice things about ripping the lord of the rings extended edition DVDs to digital files is that I now have a playlist of all files that just runs in a continuous showing. I think it’s 11-13 hours or something. And my friends and family have made it through nonstopped in a single day quite a few times (it’s a Christmas tradition although that usually gets interrupted). There is an intermission after the first and second films as the credits are very long, but it’s amazing how people will stay transfixed to good material. I think it’s just really hard and rare to make great things and easier to make short, acceptable things that are successful to a lesser, but marginally acceptable level. I call this the “machine learning effect” as it’s regression to the mean and good enough, but not great. The most frequent place I see this is in Amazon recommendation engine where they don’t want you to buy a great book so much as they just want you to buy something, and a perfect transaction is where you only like the book enough not to return it and come back to buy another because you’re unsatisfied.

ubermonkey 4y ago
Man, I should rip the LOTR into files like that, but then also edit them, because whenever we watch we always end up skipping over the Whiny Frodo segments.
- prepend 4y ago
  If you do, please send me a PM as Id like that too but won’t spend the time to edit. What’s neat is that there’s probably an ffmpeg script that if you just give me the clip times I can assemble from my own files.
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    True! (Am I correct that you, too, find the "yup, they're not in mordor, and they're increasingly miserable" scenes tedious?)
    - prepend 4y ago
      Yes, although I love the scenes of Sam cooking :)

cubefox 4y ago

It doesn't take a lot of attention to binge watch a whole Netflix season. It takes attention to read a book.

ChancyChance 4y ago

One of the claims about attention disorders IIRC is that it only affects thing people having to do things they don’t like. Which seems a bit sketchy to me so I probably am misunderstanding but the idea is even kids with adhd can play Minecraft for a day straight because they like it but can’t do math.

addled 4y ago
Anecdotal counter-example: yeah my ADHD son can play Minecraft for a couple hours straight, but if you watch he's constantly switching tasks. I love spending time with him on our home server, but trying to keep up with him is sometimes just as frustrating as helping him with math homework.
ksaun 4y ago
The term "attention deficit disorder," as I understand it, is a bit misleading. Attention disorders are about a deficiency in executive function, including a reduced ability to control one's attention (as opposed to just being a lack of attention). When disinterested, this leads to an inability to focus/concentrate. When it's something you like, this leads to "hyperfocus," whereby it's tough to pull away and behavior can be obsessive/addictive in nature. This latter symptom seems to receive less attention (edit: no pun intended :)). (And individuals and specifics differ.) This is an oversimplification and I'm being a little loose with the vocabulary, but I wanted to at least briefly comment on the perceived "sketchiness" you mention.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> One of the claims about attention disorders IIRC is that it only affects thing people having to do things they don’t like. AIUI, this is a very common but false belief; it is in part based on hyperfocus being a common feature of ADHD, but hyperfocus on something isn’t (though its often mistaken for) liking it. (It’s also probably based in part on “activities” that are themselves tolerant of lack of consistent focus and task switching.)

yamtaddle 4y ago

> by multi hour podcasts, and by the binge watching phenomenon made possible by OTT on demand services which allow a 'movie' to extend 12 or 13 hours consumed in two or three sittings Both of those things work because people do other stuff while listening/watching. There are very, very, very few 12+ hour streaming-series "movies" that are improved by paying close attention the entire time, even if you split the watch into two or three sessions—most are better if you check out from time to time, talk to someone, go to the other room to do the dishes, mess around on your phone, play some Switch, whatever.