There is a gushing river of high quality video content available for streaming; more than fourteen year old me could have hoped for in my wildest dreams.
But it turns out that lots of the time, after a long day at work, or a weekend full of errands, you aren't actually in a sufficiently tuned in and alert state to appreciate high quality drama in a way that does it justice. Often, you are only capable of fully appreciating B-grade fare that doesn't demand your full attention. And, that fare, that is entertaining but not excellent, is no more abundant than it was in the 1980s. Indeed, it might even be a bit more scarce.
On the other hand, there is also a seemingly unlimited supply of really dreadful D-grade fare unmatched in the days when you had to watch TV when TV Guide told you it was available, or on VCR videos chosen with half an hour of family video renting committee deliberation at Blockbuster. The "long tail" is real, and a lot of it is bad.
3 comments:
Hi Andrew, How would one build an experiment to determine if the availability of infinite streaming video and infinite video games (1) is the proximate cause of the recent reduction in violent crime rate? (2) Cheers,
Guy
(1) Or in my case infinite manga/manhwa/manhua scanlations.
(2) Though my inclination is always to say that any such model winds up being over determined. (Due to the look elsewhere effect?)
Lots of causes are in the right time frame. This is is a bit late and doesn't easily fit the observed pattern of crime rates declining differentially in metro areas.
Control groups are also a problem. A study not so long ago tried to used a college student sample to compare students who played video games a lot as kids v. those who didn't and could find a statistically significant number of male college students who didn't in a large university. But once you look at non-college non-players there are lots of poverty and race confounds.
Better progress has been made at linking widely available porn to a decline in sex crimes in plausibly causal manner.
...Indeed, it might even be a bit more scarce.On the other hand, there is also a seemingly unlimited supply of really dreadful D-grade fare unmatched in the days when you had to watch TV...
Too true. I don't watch TV/movies at home but I do catch some that my patients watch in the hospital. Unbelievably crap.
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