Introduction
Whenever I watch a movie or TV show, play a video game, or listen to music, I sometimes think to myself: How did I end up here? What series of events occurred that led up to me having this experience?
If we were living in the 20th century, the answer to this question would likely be easy to deduce. “I heard a song that I liked on the radio.” “I saw an ad for this game in a magazine.” However, in the vast Information Age that we live in now, the answer can be slightly more complicated, and it will almost certainly involve the internet in some way.
As the internet has evolved over the past few decades, it has allowed the exchange of information to become faster and easier. It has given us access to more knowledge than we could ever learn in our lifetimes, and more content than we could ever hope to consume.
This is why I often think about how I discover the content I enjoy. Ten years ago, I was just beginning to explore the vast media landscape and expand my interests beyond what I liked as a child. Gaining greater access to the internet in middle school and high school exposed me to so much content that my elementary school self could have never imagined, with YouTube being my primary method of discovery. I am currently approaching the end of my third year of college, and the genres of music, games, and shows that I enjoy have never been more varied.
I imagine that many of my peers grew up exploring the internet in a similar way. The most natural way for my generation to discover their interests is to find them online. To find examples of this, I had my college classmates complete a survey asking them what some of their favorite media is that they have found using the internet. I asked about books, movies, TV shows, video games, and music.
Discovering New Things
The responses I received were quite varied in terms of genre and notoriety. There were quite a few things which I had never heard of before. This shows how effective the internet can be when seeking out new experiences. It allows for us to easily discover things that we would have never found otherwise and for smaller creators to promote their content more effectively.
Global Culture
When asked about TV shows they have discovered, a lot of those who took the survey brought up how they discovered Japanese animation (more commonly referred to as anime) through social media platforms like TikTok and Twitch. This is another instance of us discovering new content we enjoy online, except this time on a global scale. The internet has allowed us to bypass the barriers of time and space and explore the incredible and fascinating works made by other cultures. Whether it is media based in the United Kingdom, South Korea, India, or anywhere else in the world, the nature of the internet means that it always has the potential to be seen and discussed. Everyone looks at the world differently depending on where they have lived and how they were raised, and for people on the opposite side of the world to be able to understand these viewpoints better is a wonderful opportunity that did not exist as much in past decades.
Retro Media
Something else that I noticed about the survey results is that most of the media that was referenced has been released within the past decade or so. This has made me realize another way in which the internet allows us to discover new things (or rather, old things). Due to the nature of digital preservation, the internet has made the media and culture of the past more accessible than it would have been otherwise. Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, along with the diversity of age groups that use social media, have allowed content of any age to remain relevant and appreciated in the modern era.
That is something undoubtedly great about living in the present day: Not only can we enjoy modern media being created right now, but we also have access to nearly anything from the past (assuming it has been digitally preserved). This applies to all forms of entertainment, from movies to books to music. As an example, what you are seeing right now are the release years of the last twenty songs that I have listened to on Spotify. That’s quite a large range of time, and it all exists on the same platform and in the same playlist. Even classic video games have gotten this treatment, with many retro games being available to play on the newest consoles. Both new and old media can exist alongside one another, and any generation can enjoy anything they want to.
Too Much Content?
This all sounds nice and convenient, but with more content to consume also comes more choices to make. Our time is limited, so how can we know what is and isn’t worth our time? For some people, opening up a streaming app and having dozens of movies and shows suggested to them all at once can be overwhelming, especially when they have no idea what is considered good and what isn’t. This is especially true for sites like YouTube, on which anyone can upload videos regardless of their quality. It’s much more open ended than a TV channel or a radio station, with which viewers just watch or listen to whatever is put in front of them. Some people just don’t want to think too hard about their entertainment. This makes me think that platforms like Netflix and YouTube should implement a queue system of some kind, where an algorithm automatically puts together a list of movies or TV episodes that viewers might enjoy. They can then just press play without having to put any thought into it.
In fact, there is a platform that is set up this way by default, that platform being TikTok. The TikTok app presents the user with a linear, seemingly endless stream of videos to watch, similar to a TV channel. However, unlike network TV, you can skip as many of these videos as you want, or look up specific videos or creators using the search option. Even if you dislike the platform, it’s hard to deny that TikTok takes the best features of both streaming services and network TV and combines them for maximum convenience. I imagine that this, along with the short and quick format of its videos, has been a major contributing factor to TikTok’s popularity, as well as its addictive nature.
Conclusion
Most of what I have discussed in this video are things that most people do not usually think about when they sit down to watch TV, listen to music, or play a video game. To me, the internet and the culture that exists in it seem just as vast and interesting as that of the real world, if not even more so. It is so expansive that I cannot help but wonder how it has led me to have the interests that I do. In what ways have I transcended time and space by having these experiences? How has doing so shaped me as a person? I appreciate you listening to me talk about this, and I encourage you to ask yourself the same questions.
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Images from Adobe Stock and Wikimedia Commons
