MFC — Part IX
I wasn't a Wave 1 Netflix user but was still earlier to the service than most. The year was 2006, and my roommates and I were getting 3 DVDs at a time shipped to our college apartment. A seemingly endless stream of films I'd never seen and ones I loved delivered directly to my door. What could be better? I legitimately lived across the street from a movie store (shoutout to 4-star video rental), and still, I was bowled over by the convenience of getting DVDs in the mail.
This was the future, and it came one red envelope at a time. Times were simpler then.
Then came streaming. I was familiar with OnDemand and TiVo, but the way that streaming offered heightened convenience over even mailbox delivery, I was agog. I fell deeper into the lure of Netflix when they began the slow transition from mailing DVDs to streaming.
In 2013, I sat alone in Doha's Ezdan Tower, watching all of House of Cards Season 1 on a weekend. Then I went to work, convinced my friends they needed to see it, and watched it again with them. That was the show that popped my binging cherry. And consequently, the moment I realized just how much a feature Netflix had become in my social life. I watched TV collectively in the past. I went to my friend Chelsea's room to watch Gray's Anatomy. I went over to Lindsay Craker's house to watch The OC. But streaming was a whole new beast. I didn't have to be anywhere at any set time. My friends could come over whenever, and we could watch whatever. You all remember. I don't need to describe it to you.
In 2017, then-Netflix CEO Reid Hastings said, "Sometimes employees at Netflix think, 'Oh my god, we're competing with FX, HBO, or Amazon," said Hastings, "but think about if you didn't watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There's such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect–and we compete with all of that."
I was never cut out to be an entrepreneur. I simply couldn't picture a world where I'd be cool saying: We're competing with everything. Sleep is bad. Hanging out with friends is bad. Doing homework is bad. Only Netflix is good.
This week's theme: Thematic Downers
The songs are not necessarily sad but might be about sad things.
Some songs that will not be featured:
It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), Welcome to the Black Parade, We Didn't Start the Fire, The Times They Are a-Changin, Imagine, Where's The Love?
Song
Virtual Insanity
Artist
Jamiroquai
Released
1996
Lyric
Whoa, it's a crazy world we're livin' in
One Word
Prophetic
More Than One Word
The other day, I spoke with a friend who told me she does not listen to podcasts. My brother also told me he does not listen to podcasts. My parents do not listen to podcasts. Other than that, everyone I know listens to podcasts. If you are in the group of people who do not listen to podcasts, I wonder if you have more fruitful friendships than the rest.
Have you heard my theory about the death of friendship at the hands of podcasts? If so, skip this section and jump to the part about how dope this music video is.
Podcasts have replaced friendship. We used to talk to our friends about our interests. Often, friendships were built on these interests. If tragedy + time = humor, then time + shared experiences = friendships. But now, people do not get together to talk about something they're watching or something they think about politics. Instead, we retreat to podcasts to listen to others have these conversations. We feel involved because people we "like" are chatting about a topic we're interested in, but instead of talking, we are listening. We are no longer talking about our interests; we are listening to other people talk about our interests.
You may hear something so interesting in that podcast that you share it with a friend, but telling someone what you heard on a podcast is a bit like telling someone your dreams. Is it interesting to talk about? A step further into our own bubbles, it's easier and easier to convince yourself that algorithmic-based recommendations are good. I am served stuff I like because a robot has pinpointed what I want, so it gives me more things I like. Why would I talk to you about this podcast when I don't think you'll like it? I like what I like, and you like what you like, and we can all like what we like independently of one another. We've moved into the everyone-gets-a-trophy version of content consumption, but now it's everyone getting what they want.
And frankly, this is bad.
Being served precisely what you always like, getting a tailored playlist based on 500 songs I like, and finding a TV show similar to the ones I've recently watched is the downfall of society. Discomfort and boredom are good for the brain! Consume things you don't like and form opinions about things you hate.
During the Super Bowl, Tubi ran a commercial showing people watching Tubi turning into couch potatoes. This was framed as a good thing, and that confused me. I saw Wall-E. I've seen The Matrix. People being plugged into devices that make us happy but are bad for us is not good. Certainly not something to be advertised! Why do people want that?
It's too on the nose to say that Jay Kay, Jamiroquai vocalist, was prescient with his lyrics here because I think it's fair to say that some group in every generation always thinks that whatever is happening in society is fast-tracking the demise of the world. But it's hard to listen to this song and not think: boy, you thought it was bad then? Let me introduce you to the Apple Vision Pro or employers who want to install cameras in everyone's home office. The last 20 years have made the Virtual Insanity way worse. And I don't see an end in sight.
If you've stuck around this far, let me briefly discuss this groundbreaking video. Director Jonathan Glazer (currently nominated for Best Director at this year's Oscars for his work on Zone of Interest) pitched an idea of a moving set that was about 10 more than the approved budget. So, with that rebuffed, they had to get clever. If you watch the video again, you're forgiven if you think: How did they get all that stuff to move? The couch moving, the chairs moving.
Well, what if I told you that none of those things moved but instead! It's the walls! They moved the walls, and then Jay Kay danced around in the space as the set moved around him. They bolted the camera to the fourth wall, moving with the entire set. Sort of trippy to consider when you do a rewatch. I learned this detail in this interview with Glazer. He kind of looks like Keith Urban.
Song
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Artist
The Beatles
Released
1968
Lyric
I look at the world and I notice it's turning/
While my guitar gently weeps/
With every mistake, we must surely be learning/
Still, my guitar gently weeps
One Word
Meditative
More Than One Word
It matters zero percent if you know this, but the dog from the room on fire "this is fine" meme is named Question Hound. The image depicts the artist trying out new anti-depressants and determining if they are working correctly. Obviously, it has come to mean so much more than that. Still, sometimes, it's nice to go back to what the original intent of something was, even if it definitely no longer means that anymore. My company has a reaction button called Question Hound in Burning Room that I can use to respond to anyone's message.
"How's that project coming along, Sam?"
"Did the client like the work, Sam?"
"Did you check your email today, Sam?"
Question Hound is a perfect response to so many of our modern problems. A shared shorthand that we all know what it means and know what it feels like. It's inherently relatable.
That's how I feel when I hear While My Guitar Gently Weeps. George Harrison sat there watching the Beatles bicker and feud en route to a breakup. If you watched the 6-hour documentary, you'd get how George and Ringo embody the "This is Fine" meme. This song then is This is Fine in musical form.
"I look at the world and notice it's turning. Still, my guitar gently weeps."
"I look at the floor, and I see it needs sweeping. Still, my guitar gently weeps." It's a song about recognizing that things could be better but not being entirely sure what you can do about it. In the floor's case, it's pretty clear what he could have done about it, but I get that, too. Sometimes, I know the solution to a problem but lack the inertia to get started on the solution.
Two lines included in earlier versions hammer this home even further.
"I look at the trouble and hate that is raging / While my guitar gently weeps / As I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging/ Still my guitar gently weeps.
I spend too much time online. This is fine.
I don't sleep enough. This is fine.
There's so much laundry to do. This is fine.
If Web comic artist KC Green wants to help me and do a version of Question Hound playing a guitar (or having a guitar gently weeping) while sitting in a room on fire, that would really help bring this image home to roost.
In the meantime, listen to this song and think if there's anything you're meant to do today but you'll put off in favor of doing something else. It's a song about procrastination and destruction, which, again, are deeply relatable themes in a world where there's so much going wrong, a lot that someone could do about it, but so many things that sound better than many of those things.
Song
Paranoid Android
Artist
Radiohead
Released
1997
Lyric/Moment
With your opinion
which is of no consequence at all
+ the guitar and drum work from 3:08 to 3:45 heading into the first slow down.
One Word
Dystopic
More Than One Word
I recently learned that people can watch TikToks and Netflix on 2X speed. This is insane behavior.
I listen to podcasts on 1.2x because I think that's closer to the cadence of actual humans talking and processing. But TV shows and content consumed at 2x the rate than intended?
I need to ask here: what's the point? Are you rushing through TikToks so you can consume more TikToks? Do you ever stop to share, discuss, and REFLECT on what you've consumed, or have you just sped up to consume more content but reflected on even less of it? I'm not talking, "I click share and send the funny ones to my friends/spouse." I'm saying, do you ever click share and then write a message or make them watch it so you can discuss it together? Is the act of sharing 'enough' reflection? When they respond four days later, do you know what they're even talking about anymore, or have you consumed 600 videos since then, and they were all in one ear and out the other that it's lost at sea?
Why is it okay to listen to a podcast or audiobook at an elevated speed but draw the line at TikToks or TV?
Tiktoks are short! Why are you rushing through the short stuff? It's like if you took mini golf and were like only putting is nice, but what if we played just ONE hole instead and then just multiplied that score by 18 and said that's what we got.
TikTok, like Netflix, has broken our brains. Maybe our brains were damaged beforehand, but TikTok has undoubtedly sped up the decline. If on a given night you watch 100 Tiktoks, at 2X speed, you can now watch 200? FOR WHAT.
I guess me shouting FOR WHAT could apply to any form of media or hobby. Why does anyone do anything? Maybe 200 TikToks is your definition of a good time. But is it the consumption of the TikTok you liked, or was it the action of watching them? I know this is an art/artist debate again, but here I am asking: Are you watching something to be done with it, or are you watching something because you enjoy it? In a world where you are watching 200 TikTok and not talking to your friends about them, is consuming content this way just drops in the ocean? Something you do to pass the time?
This ties back to the formation of the internet. Initially, it was thought that with access to SO MUCH information, we would have better debates, better politics, more informed citizens, better education, etc. The early days of the internet were a Utopia for what could be. But as I've already covered, despite the infinite access to information and tailormade news dumps directly to their brains, people seem dumber, right? I am guilty of this, too. We see ONE thing on the internet (read: a TikTok), and we now, like Donald Trump, say, "People are saying!" One person said it, you saw it, and now you're proclaiming it as truth?
I am not entirely sure why this song is called Paranoid Android (I know the words appear in the song, but it's hardly part of the overall lyrical theme). Still, for the sake of conversation, I will use its name and appearance on the greatest album of the 90s as a springboard to connect it to my theme. The band named the album OK Computer because, as Thom Yorke said, "It refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else's. It's to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on." Carrying that through, our reliance on computers and algorithms to make things better has, in many cases, made life worse. I understand that life is definitively better than it has been for most of history. I get that we're healthier, safer, and have easier access to things that improve our quality of living.
At the same time, I was with my dad this weekend, and he was mourning the death of the local sports page. A man just wants to know who won the high school basketball or hockey game last night, but he can't even find that in the local paper. Instead, needs to subscribe to 4 different news services to piece it all together. As life becomes more siloed, more served directly for our interests, catering to our needs, we've lost a reliance on society. The book Bowling Alone tackled this topic in 2000. Like I said regarding Virtual Insanity, it's only gotten worse. Soon, we'll all just be Paranoid Androids running around only listening to our Spotify Daylists, watching what's on the Netflix Top Ten, and doom-scrolling TikTok for hours at a time.
I may need to go outside and touch grass.
Song
Bloodbuzz, Ohio
Artist
The National
Released
2010
Lyric/Moment
I still owe money/
to the money/
to the money I owe
One Word
Melancholy
More Than One Word
Last week, I got my haircut at a very cool barber shop. My barber is a father of two, wears his hair in a man-bun, and is married to an Italian lady. The two barbers on either side of him have lots of tattoos. Conversation in the shop typically is about motorcycles, music, and food. Rarely are we discussing politics or even sports. They offer patrons Hamm's or Coors Banquets, and rap music constantly blasts.
One of the newer barbers is a young guy named Henry. He is an aspiring musician and always willing to fold towels or sweep up someone's station. A real go-getter around the shop. Anyway, he came in rocking a pair of Dad shoes last week. The creme de la creme of the dad shoe, in fact. When you google Dad Shoe, the Nike Air Monarch is the one that appears first, according to SEO. My dad wears these shoes. They are chunky, monochrome, and hard to miss. He was so happy that he could find these at St. Vincent De Paul for $10. It completed his ironic dad look.
Henry is not a dad.
In fact, Henry is probably about 23 and hopefully years away from being a father. And yet, he was so pumped about his dad's aesthetic.
Dad bod and dad core are still in vogue, though less so than in years past. But one thing I've come to understand about dad-isms is that these things are particularly enjoyed by people who are not dads. It could be me holding on to some pre-dad identity, eschewing dad shoes and dad jokes for sneakers that are still visually pleasing, and everyday conversation skills. Dad shit is not for me, despite me being a dad. My barber and I told each other that we thought Henry's shoes looked silly.
Dad-Shoes for Thee, and Not for Me.
All this to say is that The National has been making dad-rock since long before they were dads but now firmly live at the epicenter of the sad dad-rock establishment, going so far as to start making merch emblazoned with Sad Dad thrown on it.
From a 2023 profile of the band, "Though the National is often thought of as a magnet for fortysomething dudes in cool sneakers and Warby Parkers..."
Makes you wonder if my penchant for listening to The National, wearing what I just fucking described as visually pleasing shoes (read: cool), and Warby Parkers (I just upgraded my specs recently when my script changed; did you know your eyes sometimes get better in your 30s?) makes me a Sad Dad.
In 2007, I walked into Urban Outfitters and tried on a pair of skinny Jeans. I wasn't ready to step into American Apparel yet, but Urban Outfitters seemed inviting enough that I could convince myself I was prepared to be Urbanly Outfitted. I didn't buy the skinny jeans that day, but the process of trying them on meant it was only a matter of time. This led to 10+ years of skinny-ish jean-wearing that continues today. We're not talking jeggings, but we're also not talking JNCOs, you know?
I do not see myself as a sad dad. I am honest about the trials and tribulations accompanying parenthood when asked or in this medium. After all, I spent last week writing about strep and oral thrush.
But listening to the National, as I have been for nearly 20 years, perhaps means I am en route.
The band is well known for writing depressing songs. That's basically their calling card at this time. If nothing else, I am buoyed by the fact that my favorite National line does not have to do with the demise of friendship, depression, or breaking into tears in public, but instead just talks about the reality of debt and how fucking expensive life is.
I still owe money, to the money, to the money I owe.
It's bleak but relatable. No matter how much money I have or don't have, that line has spoken to me, and when Henry hears that one and can relate, he is ready for a new pair of Warby Parkers, and to trade his ironic dad shoe in for a visually pleasing one.
Song
A Thousand Miles
Artist
Vanessa Carlton
Released
2002
Lyric
'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles/
If I could just see you,
One Word
Tinkling
More Than One Word
This song falls under the "Sounds Happy but Is Sad" category like Hey Ya. It's not explicit that Vanessa Carlton is out here talking about wishing she could see someone who is dead, but when I hear these lyrics, I get the impression she is talking about someone she can never see again.
Consider the lyrics: 'Cause everything's so wrong, and I don't belong
Livin' in your precious memory.'
Then she says she would walk 1,000 miles if she could just see you (tonight). But she can't walk 1,000 miles. What she can do is play a moving piano as she travels across the country. How does this song fall into a playlist with a screed against Netflix, Sad Dads, the This is Fine meme, and whatever other sad things I've mentioned?
Vanessa Carlton talks about being willing to walk 1,000 miles to see someone she misses when, nowadays, most people are horrified at the concept of a pop-in, close the garage door so they don't have to talk to a neighbor, and screen 97% of their phone calls.
Do you remember the central premise of a show like Boy Meets World or Home Improvement? Talking to neighbors.
Do you remember critical plots in Full House or Family Matters? The friendly pop-in!
When was the last time any of you did that? This criticism cuts both ways. I am not apt to do these things, but gosh, we all should. Instead, we watch Netflix (or whatever streaming you prefer) and ignore those around us. We make plans and hope the other person cancels. We raincheck months into the future and hope no one ever tries to reschedule.
Maybe Vanessa Carlton has me fooled. Perhaps she was simply more willing to lie to the friend and was pretending to be so devastated by not being able to see them, going so far as to write a song professing a willingness to walk so fucking far.
Or maybe she really wanted to and couldn't.
I'd like you to consider how many miles you'd be willing to walk to see someone.
The number is considerably lower than 1,000.
Would you walk 200 feet to see a friend?
Would you even stand on your back deck when you see your neighbor pull into the driveway, waiting for an opportunity to say hello, or would you scurry inside to avoid having awkward chit-chat?
I blame Reed Hastings for this.
I think it’s important to note that after researching this, Carlton says the song is about having a crush on a famous actor who went to Julliard with her. I am sure there is internet sleuthing out there about who was there the same time as her, but I am not going to look it up. I prefer to think it’s about someone who is dead. I wonder if Vanessa would walk 1,000 miles to see this famous actor now. Probably not. No one wants to walk that far.
