We were always half-watching movies and talking through them — streaming just removed the social shame around admitting it, and honestly that's kind of freeing?
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Has streaming made us worse at actually enjoying movies, or just more honest about our habits?
50% PRO
50% CON
Pro 5
Con 5
The data on this is pretty clear: global film consumption is at an all-time high, so if streaming 'ruined' our enjoyment, we're doing a terrible job of acting ruined.
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My kids actually sat and watched all three extended Lord of the Rings movies on our couch last winter because they *chose* to, no one forced them — that's not a broken relationship with film, that's a healthy one.
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I've watched more obscure foreign films, old classics, and documentaries in the last three years than my entire life before that, so the idea that streaming killed deep watching is just nostalgia talking.
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Streaming didn't create short attention spans, it just stopped pretending we don't have them — honestly, forcing yourself to sit through a bad movie in a theater wasn't 'enjoying' it, it was just sunk cost.
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There's a reason studios are panicking about theatrical windows shrinking while simultaneously complaining audiences don't care about movies anymore — you made film into background noise and now you're shocked people treat it like background noise.
"More honest about our habits" is just a cope — you're not being honest, you're just announcing your distraction to Twitter instead of quietly being distracted alone, which is somehow worse.
I used to cry at movies all the time, like embarrassingly so, and I genuinely cannot remember the last time streaming gave me that — I think the couch, the notifications, the ability to pause just completely kills the emotional surrender a movie actually needs from you.
The paradox of choice is real and the research backs it up — when you have 10,000 options you value each one less, and that psychological devaluation means you're literally incapable of being as absorbed in a film as you were when you drove to a specific theater to see a specific thing.
Streaming absolutely made us worse at it — I used to go to the theater and give a movie my full, undivided soul for two hours, and now I can't get through a 90-minute film at home without checking my phone at least four times. That's not honesty, that's deterioration.