The dreaded question that appears on the screen while you’re cruising through a season of The Office, each episode automatically giving way to the next. The assumption, evidently, that Netflix is making, is that with so little interaction, there may be a chance that you’ve fallen asleep. The belief that you’ve vacated the room for the outside world and accidentally the television on to stream Michael Scott hosting “The Dundies”. But you know you’re alone, you know that you haven’t gotten up from your couch in hours, you know that you have a pile of work to do, but you’d rather watch “one more episode”.
Some people seek refuge at local bars; others smoke their pain away. No matter what form it takes, bingeing tends to be an overindulgence in carbs, alcohol, drugs, or episodes of Scandal, it serves as a flight from the world’s lamentable truths. For me, the high-speed world of television serves as this escape from reality, Netflix was my equivalent to such dependencies.
As a child, I believed everyone lived in a fairy tale, this idea that happily ever after was magically waiting for everyone. So, my addiction started when the harshness of the world struck, when I understood that I couldn’t change the existence I was born into. My whole life all I wanted was to fit in, to be just like everyone else. However, being born in a different country, speaking a different language, having a different culture, with each deviation from the background, lifestyle, and appearance of those around me, came an increased difficulty to immerse into my environment. My upbringing wasn’t homogenous with that of the people around me. The death of my father, moving to America, being adopted, getting into an accident, tragedy after tragedy, I wanted to be invisible, so I preoccupied myself with television, with Meredith Grey’s love life, with the investigations in Criminal Minds, and with the capture of metahumans in The Flash. Netflix was my way of ignoring what was happening outside the screen.
My first time encountering the “are you still watching” cue was my anagnorisis. It was this unwanted epiphany, where I recalled that blowing through a season of Scandal in vex solved nothing. Ultimately, the world was still the same at the end of every season. The warmth of interacting with human beings couldn’t be found in my Netflix queue. This one question pushed me back into the real world that Netflix originally thought I had left it for.
That prompt is now a question to myself, a reminder that I don’t want to lose sight of what’s important. Through the wide variety of television shows I watched, I gathered a sensible perspective on the world. Wes Gibbins taught me that my parent’s success’ and failures don’t define who I am. Barry Allen taught me that my weaknesses can be my greatest strengths, that my past is engraved in the timeline and to be used as motivation for the future. Olivia Pope taught me that being different isn’t bad, your uniqueness is what makes you desirable. I learned that culture and background I so desperately tried to hide from are what truly defines me. Although it may be cliche, I recognized that rather than finding a place for myself I needed to make one.
Television served as an escape from the things around me; it was a place to avoid my life by immersing myself in the lives of Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass, Nate Archibald, and Dan Humphrey. This phase helped me understand the true nature of the world. In the end, no one’s life is perfect. Even in fairy tales, each individual must overcome a struggle and stay true to who they are. To this day, I still indulge in binge-watching; however, Netflix’s shaming is a totem that brings me back to reality.
