Binging or Savouring

by Mel

9 comments

1 Turia { 10.29.17 at 8:56 am }

With books I am a “read everywhere, even while walking outside, stay up until the wee hours just have to finish it” binger, IF the book is good enough (and I will admit to not staying up late to finish anything in my current phase of (sleep-deprived) life). I would never start another book to make finishing the great book take longer.

Screen stuff is different. I don’t have the time to binge on something, even if I wanted to. Between finally getting E in bed and collapsing into bed ourselves, Q and I usually have somewhere around 90 minutes or two hours in the evenings and we often have to work for some of that. Binging for us means watching two episodes in a row of a show!

I think if I were a Millennial and had been at uni when Netflix started, I would binge for sure. But that pattern of watching stuff all at once doesn’t fit my life right now.

We also pause movies, but that’s usually because finishing it would mean we have to stay up too late. I would also be driven mad if we were watching something great and Q wanted to turn it off to save it for the next night, so I sympathize with Josh.

2 Charlotte { 10.29.17 at 10:17 am }

Total Binger here!! I almost said it started with my Netflix subscription, the binge-watching, but actually it started with a couple shows I found out about after a couple seasons and got them on DVD to catch up. I’m really bad about not being able to stop watching once I start. Like, I will stay up waaaaay too late when I’m half falling asleep to keep watching. And now with Netflix, there are SO many good ones to see.
And I don’t mind getting finished a season or whatever because I need to know what happens. If I start to miss it, I will just re-watch old ones.
Books I’m usually one and done. Although I don’t read much nowadays, when I do it’s just one. There are only a couple books I can recall re-reading because I loved them so much. (This is obviously not including kid books because I read a lot, just nothing harder than Dr. Seuss these days 😜)

3 Lori Lavender Luz { 10.29.17 at 12:59 pm }

I’m a total savorer, for all the reasons you state.

Except I rarely read 2 books at a time.

OK. I need to put Dirk and Stranger Things into my hopper. In good time.

4 Kristina { 10.29.17 at 1:41 pm }

I’m definitely a binger! Although it’s annoying, overall I appreciate when shows sometimes come out weekly – like This is Us. But binging or watching at my own pace can be fun. I notice I only binge when it’s reeeaaally good. I just finished Tin Star – it was good, but I usually just watched an episode at a time. I think I’m generally poor at delayed gratification if it’s something I’m super enthusiastic about. If I get a bday present in the mail, I will open it immediately versus waiting until my birthday (I was chastised for this numerous times by my mother). 🙂

5 Sharon { 10.29.17 at 1:54 pm }

I’m a savourer. For one thing, I don’t have the time or the energy to watch multiple episodes of a show in one sitting.

My husband and I started watching Game of Thrones in mid-July after hearing several friends rave about it for years. We watched 3-4 episodes a week and finished last week. I still wish we would have drawn it out a bit more, since we will have to wait until 2018 or 2019 for the final season. . . whereas my husband wished we had gotten through the seven seasons sooner. 🙂

6 Beth { 10.29.17 at 2:07 pm }

I’m a savorer, as like you I want to watch when I want to watch, not just when it’s new. And I’m picky so if I blast through all the episodes of a show I’m excited to see, I haven’t got another lined up just waiting. A good friend is a binger and gets very annoyed when she wants to discuss plot points and I’m episodes behind. But my feeling is, what’s the rush?

Ps – I enjoyed defenders but couldn’t get in to iron fist. Interested to hear what you think when you watch them.

7 a { 10.29.17 at 2:29 pm }

Combination – we will usually watch a few episodes at a time – whatever the schedule permits. We haven’t seen Stranger Things yet because we don’t have Netflix and they haven’t put it out on DVD. But tapping into the zeitgeist really does drive the urge to watch something. I don’t know if I will care that I never see Stranger Things because everyone watches it in one go – they don’t savor or anticipate. There’s little discussion about it, then. It will be like a movie that I never got around to seeing.

I just tear through books when they’re good. I may be reading several “just OK” books at once, but if I start a good one, then everything else gets put aside.

8 Mali { 10.29.17 at 7:25 pm }

I’m both. My mood really dictates when I want to watch or read something. I love to binge watch something, though often feel a little sad that a series is over so soon and I have to wait another year for the next one. But I’m also quite happy to pause something and pick it up later too. I currently have three books on the go. Reading the one that fits my mood at the time.

9 loribeth { 10.29.17 at 10:17 pm }

I guess I’m pretty old fashioned. As Turia said, I’ve just never gotten into the habit or pattern of binge watching… I was in university when VCRs started being commonly used, so it’s not something I grew up with. We did used to rent movies a bit when we were first married, and I do find the PVR comes in handy now & then, but we were probably the last people we knew to trade in the VCR for a DVD player and it hardly gets touched. And aside from binge-watching “The Crown” & “The Keepers” when I first got my Netflix subscription earlier this summer, I haven’t made much use of that either — although there are a few things on there I wouldn’t mind seeing. I did find when I was watching those series, it’s very easy to start watching one episode after another, and suddenly three or four hours has gone by and there’s the whole night, and I could or should have been doing other things with that block of time. Of course, I often spend three hours on the computer, so there goes that theory… 😉