I was watching an interesting video the other day (I wish I could have started this post with "I was reading an interesting book the other day") about user interaction with streaming media.
A study group gave four households streaming technologies to use in place of cable. Consistently, the households had two complaints: 1) they found the user interfaces to be daunting (predictable and not as interesting to me), and 2) they found the responsibility of choice to make viewing unappealing (surprising and therefore more interesting to me).
As someone who depends on Netflix and Youtube for video entertainment, I found myself empathizing with this latter issue. Some of the households indicated that they would rather channel surf until they found programming that they would watch. There was a sense that choice required effort, and that television viewing was a pastime meant for relaxation -- and therefore the avoidance of effort.
I can see this argument to a certain extent, although I'm not sure it is my situation.
For me, much of the anxiety of picking a show is like the anxiety of picking a seat on a bus or in a class. This could simply be my own personal anxiety and something that I should alleviate with the crude, blunt force of medication, but my impression at these times is that choice projects a statement about myself. By choosing to watch a program, a fashion an image of my personality, likes, dislikes, and, in this current age of entertainment, possibly even my morality.
If one is just channel surfing and lands on a program that has questionable material, one can always apologize: "It's not my fault! This is all that is on!"
It's not like I decided what that station was going to air (or to cable) that night. My television is simply the passive recipient of a programming director's choices. I can't be held completely liable for what comes out of that screen...only my response to it. The television, in this sense, is almost like our id. When something vile crops up, it is like a temptation -- we aren't responsible for the temptation, just whether we dwell on it.
Streaming video over the Internet is different. We become the program managers.
If we pause for a moment on some questionable program on our televisions, we can at the very weakest excuse ourselves with the fact that the channel we are currently on sits between two other channels. That is, we are merely passing through and made a brief stop: "I had just been watching a news piece on politics and was on my way to the channel showing that documentary on coral reefs, but this movie about Amazon warrior women just happened to be stuck in between the two channels. Here, let me move along."
There would be know reason to think that Amazon warrior women would be waiting in between. Sometimes that channel has some very interesting articles.
If, however, Amazon warrior women show up over my Netflix stream, it can only be because I clicked on a video that included them. There is no one else that can be held accountable.
Now, I'm not watching Amazon warrior women movies.
At least not on a regular basis.
But you catch my drift.
If I decide to try out a new comedy series and it turns out to be stupid, vulgar, or crude, then I was the one who picked it. If I pick a movie that's boring, I was the one that picked it. The anxiety is that I look stupid, vulgar, crude, or boring by association. For me, at least, the burden of selecting a program is not simply indecisiveness. It's what that decision says about me that's the problem.
It's almost as if Netflix would be better off having some kind of autostreaming feature that simulates cable programming. Instead of just clicking through their library, it could have an interface of thirty "channels" with a series of shows being livestreamed in a cycle determined by a programming manager.
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