Binge-Watching

I found today's lecture on binge-watching to be especially interesting because I am a binge-watcher and didn't even know "binge-watching" was a thing. While I was reading the articles for class I kept thinking, "There's a title for watching 6 episodes of Dexter back to back with no breaks? Oh. Oops." So it's sort of funny to me how binge-watching has made a kind of sneaky appearance; I'm sure this has something to do with the growing popularity of mediums like Netflix and OnDemand. I know that, personally, OnDemand is my best friend when I am home for breaks. I don't have cable at my house here in Muncie, so I use my down time to catch up on everything I've missed. Maybe it's just me, but I feel especially prone to binge-watching because I have a problem where I cannot watch episodes of a TV show out of order. It drives me absolutely crazy. When I can find all seasons of an entire show OnDemand, it's like Christmas to me. I mentioned in class today how, during Christmas break of my freshman year, I watched all 6 seasons of Dexter in about 2 weeks. My family had been telling me all about how much they loved it and that I absolutely needed to watch it because they knew I would love it too. So I indulged and got 100% addicted. At the time I thought that was my low point, but then over Christmas break this year, I found myself binge-watching movies. We didn't talk about binge-watching movies today, but I feel as though it's pretty similar to binge-watching TV shows. I was fascinated by this world outside my own and, thus, productivity was at a serious low. I'll admit, before break I had a list about 70 titles long of movies that I wanted to see. This list existed for no other reason than I was tired of having conversations with people that went like this: "Have you seen [insert movie title here]? No. Oh my god it's SO GOOD, you HAVE to see it!" So over break I made a pretty good dent in my list of movies I HAD to see. I watched about 30 in 2ish weeks. Some days I'd watch 3 or 4 movies back to back. What I found was this: at the end of break, I couldn't remember a whole lot about the movies I had watched. Basic plotlines, yes, but names of characters, nuances, etc...all out the window. So to come full circle, I was thinking a lot about my movie binge-watching experience in class today while we discussed how binge-watching Orange Is The New Black affects the message we take away from the show. In my experience, I don't see how it couldn't. If binge-watching affected what I remembered about the movies I had seen, how could it not potentially warp what I take away from what I view? Much in the same way cramming for a test negatively affects one's ability to remember class material long-term, binge-watching may have a serious impact on the way we interact with media messages. Good or bad? I guess I'm not sure. Honestly, though, it probably won't stop me from binge-watching the latest season of Shameless when I get home for the summer.