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So there's the phenomenon of "hate watching," where people watch a movie or show they know they'll hate, looking for things to be offended by and get angry about. But is there a term for the similar phenomenon of people watching a movie or show they know they'll hate… because it's popular with others, and thus they're afraid of social consequences for not watching?
It's not quite "peer pressure," it's not exactly "fear of missing out." More a "fear of not fitting in." This sort of media consumption habit is usually associated with teenagers (particularly teen girls), but I've also encountered it occasionally with conservative Christian commentators. The sort who will complain about how everything Hollywood makes ranges from leftist propaganda to Satanic filth, and yet watch every popular new release; and when asked if they hate it so much, why don't they just stop watching, find the idea of not being * au courant* with pop culture horrifying, because then what will people who aren't fellow conservative Christians think? (What if your liberal coworkers are discussing the latest episode of Euphoria, and they ask you what you thought? You can't just tell them you didn't watch it' or worse, that you don't watch TV at all. How can you establish yourself as a fellow smart, cultured intellectual, and not get dismissed as an ignorant Bible-thumping hick (like all the ignorant Bible-thumping hicks back home that you worked so hard to escape) if you don't force yourself to watch multiple episodes of Transparent?)
I see it happening too. I started noticing it 10 years ago, actually, and it just got worse since.
I do not know any words for it, but I can describe the phenomenon a bit more:
People used to ignore things they didn't like, and engage with what they liked.
Then they started sharing some of the worst stuff they found, to "spread awareness" of it.
Then they started sharing things which made them sad or angry, because they wanted to share their feelings.
Then people started sharings things that they didn't like, in order to signal hate for it: "Look how stupid this is!"
Then people started engaging with content that they hate, but "ironically". This ties into things like "Shitposting", "Cringe compilations", Lolcows, and other things that seem to correlate with traits that I dislike (nihilism, vulgarity, apathy, mockery, shock humor). If you see somebody "ironically" listening to the National Anthem of the USSR, or "ironically" modding Shrek into videogames, you will recognize these tendencies in them.
I think this change correlates to what we all "brainrot". More psychologically healthy people seem better at ignoring or avoiding that which is unpleasant and to threat it as if it does not exist, rather than to engage with it (and thus fuel it!) or even feel an urge to do so. Healthy people also seem to have a lower tolerance for disgusting things, and to find things disgusting more easily.
And algorithms of the past tended to fulfill positive needs (humor, curiousity, cuteness, awe, creation, community), but now many negative things are included as well, for instance material which makes ones enemies look bad, material which affirms ones beliefs, all kinds of "relatable" content, and even content in which something successful is borrowed in order to promote something which has failed (for instance, modifying a video of a famous person to talk as if he shared your frustrations, or drawing a high-status girl saying something vulgar and low-status. People who cannot create something of value tend to take other peoples creations and to modify them). Two more related ideas are "don't feel the troll" (an old warning against engaging) and "drama" (the result of engaging in troublesome matters, rather than ignoring, or blocking/muting that or those which annoy you)
Whatever the origins of reality TV and celebrity gossip and other "trashy" instances of social dynamics are, I'm fairly sure they're mechanically related to this phenomenon.
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This is exactly my experience, but with sports! I don't enjoy watching sports, I don't care who wins or loses, but I know that 90% of the discussion at Thanksgiving will revolve around the Notre Dame football games so I have to choose to either watch (the highlights) or be utterly out of the conversation loop.
This is not a new problem. I fully suspect that it's what drove the earlier generation to watch the nightly news, since otherwise you're out of the water-cooler chit-chat loop. (How far back do I have to go for a water-cooler chit-chat to still be a thing? 90's?)
Holy crap I just realized I'm in a sportsless filter bubble. I have literally never had a holiday discussion regarding the outcome of sports games. None of my immediate family care much about sports. My dad sometimes watches football, but mostly casually, and none of the rest of us do so what would there be a discussion about. And my extended family also don't watch sports except maybe occasionally. And I suppose this is strongly correlated, because the fact that my grandpa didn't care about sports influenced his children to not care about sports so it makes sense that all of them collectively don't care, which in turn is a component of why I don't care.
But also I spent several thanksgivings at a friend's extended family when I was away at college, and they didn't talk about sports. But my friend was a big nerd, nonrandomly because he was friends with me.
But also I recently got married and none of my in-laws care about sports. Again, this is non-random because I married a big nerd and while her family are not exclusively nerds, they're not sports people.
To be clear, there are a lot of things they talk about on the more normie side that I don't really care about: tractors and hunting and broadway and dogs. But sports is not on the menu, and I never really considered that this wasn't just luck, but also indirect correlations: non-sports people are more likely to be relatives of non-sports people.
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A good friend of mine started following college (SEC) football in his mid teens so that he could immediately bond with pretty much anyone (he was a bit of a politician a s eventually went into business). He had no real interest in it before.
When he died at age 48, his wife (who had known only the last five or so years of his life) had a Bama football-themed wake for him, where people were wearing crimson and white and houndstooth and signing Roll Tide etc. in the memory book.
It was an odd feeling for me, having known him almost all his life. Maybe he would have liked it? I kept this all to myself.
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Before 1890s, probably. It sounded like everyone was reading Dickens for water cooler chit chat reasons.
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I think this is simply a matter of watching being the price of admission for (productively) commenting. if you say "these new shows/movies are slop full of woke garbage", and your response to "well, have you seen them?" is "no", your argument loses a lot of weight, even if it's completely correct. As such, there is a complicated line to walk between "I don't want to waste my time with this" and "I don't want to cede this cultural battleground". The latter might sound unhinged, but if everyone refuses to engage, and the normie majority acquiesces as it is wont to do, then you end up in the state we've been for the last decade.
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"Keeping up with the zeitgeist"?
“Keeping up with the Joneses,” maybe.
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