When I initially decided to give up Netflix for a week, I was mildly excited, but mostly, I was reluctant.
I didn’t want to give up the characters who allow me to slip softly into a mindless stupor when I’ve come to the end of a day that has rendered me unable to do anything but, well, watch Netflix. I would have to forgo my frequent facepalms at Chandler and Joey’s endless childish antics. I wouldn’t emit pretend gagging noises that fit naturally alongside Marshmallow and Lilypad’s mushy pillow talk. I would lack my ever-present voice of reason and role model, April Ludgate, in all of her sarcastic, creepy glory. For one whole week.
Am I being dramatic? Probably. Am I being honest? Sadly, yes.
On the other hand though, I was excited about the seemingly inevitable productivity that would soon situate itself satisfyingly into my crammed life.
“I’ll have no choice but to study and clean my room; I’ll dust off my unopened textbooks and finally know what my teachers are referencing in class; I’ll have an amount of free time that no college student has ever dreamed of,” I thought.
Subtracting my daily hour (ish) of sitcoms and perhaps a weekly B-list indie flick or rom-com, I estimated that I would open up nearly 10 hours of my time for other, more worthwhile, more valuable activities. And I was excited about the prospect of this newly unearthed spare time.
Which is why, on just the third day of my self-induced deprivation, I was surprised and appalled to find myself standing in front of the Redbox, itching to watch something, anything after I finished my homework that evening. And not only was I surprised, I was genuinely annoyed that I had to pay $1.30 to rent a DVD for just 24 hours. That meant I had to finish the movie that night.
This seemed like a lot of rules for one stupid DVD that would probably skip anyway and that I could just as easily stream online for free.
Was I being a diva? Probably. Was I desperate? Sadly, yes.
The point is, I was upset at myself for feeling like I needed to watch something to ease my tired mind. I wondered if I had always been this way, ending each day with a brain that simply shuts itself down after it feels it has met its intelligent thought quota for the day. I wondered if this incapability to entertain coherent thought past 10 p.m. was a result of typical college mind exploitation, our screen-obsessed generation or if it could be labeled “A Sign of the Times.” I wondered mostly if it was because of Netflix itself and if having a literal lifetime of entertainment beneath my 50 words per minute fingertips has made me somehow less prolific and in some way more absent-minded.
This isn’t to say we don’t all deserve to relax at the end of a long day, but when does well-warranted leisure become totally disconnected laziness? Are you still watching?
So, am I going to go watch Netflix now? Probably. Are we all going to watch increasingly more Netflix instead of reading books or cleaning our rooms? Sadly, yes.
