For those of us born before, say, the year 2000, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like growing up with streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and so on and so forth. Binge-watching has only become a “thing” in the past five years or so, and before that viewers had to wait for the DVD of a series to come out to marathon watch. Even worse, before the age of DVDs, you had to just make damn sure you were home to watch your favorite show, or else be lucky enough to catch it during summer reruns.
Kids today will never know that once extremely real struggle. But at the same time, there was once — dare we even say — a certain thrill about catching a show as it aired? Back then, TV watching used to be a high stakes affair, as it was pointed out on Twitter recently.
“I feel sorry for Netflix era kids,” tweeted social media professional Felicity Vallence, earlier this week. “They will never know the high stakes adrenaline of running to the bathroom/fridge/bedroom in a single ad break, with the beckoning call of a sibling screaming ‘It’s ONNNNNN’ to send you hurdling over furniture to get back in time.”
I feel sorry for Netflix era kids. They will never know the high stakes adrenaline of running to the bathroom/fridge/bedroom in a single ad break, with the beckoning call of a sibling screaming “It’s ONNNNNN” to send you hurdling over furniture to get back in time.
— Felicity (@FlossAus) October 14, 2018
In any case, Vallence’s tweet seems to have struck a chord, because in addition to being retweeted over a quarter million times, many others are echoing her sentiments:
"YOU MISSIN IT!!"
"HURRY UP!"
"I'm not peeing till the commercial!"Bonus for when you would leave and someone would steal your seat or take the remote
— Red Black White Green (@HamburgerJack) October 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/maikij123/status/1052280053139034112
https://twitter.com/MrsHerrera717/status/1051705929547145216
Or if you missed ONE episode; you were so screwed.
— Brooke (@CrazyBoothSocks) October 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/jillmacintyre/status/1051827670328201218
i learned how to take showers in under 5 minutes when i was a kid, so i could shower during commercials and not miss my shows https://t.co/s5ZX1wKFHg
— SaiSai 🌸 working on comms (@SaiSaixChan) October 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/tripphelms/status/1051680199711084546
Even worse is when the show gets cancelled so you never will get the conclusion to the cliffhanger.
— Stefan Anundi (@Starman1976) October 15, 2018
Or the power goes out right in the middle of the season finale 😬
— Sara W. (@Minisara40) October 15, 2018
Some even described injuring themselves over their love of TV:
I literally broke my toe in 2002 when my husband yelled "IT'S ONNNNNN" about Buffy The Vampire Slayer and I went running from the bedroom of our apartment to the living room and accidentally kicked the couch. #buffythevampireslayer
— Stephanie Alison Walker (@Littof) October 15, 2018
Once when running up the stairs during a commercial break I fell up the stairs and put 2 holes in the wall (one from my head and one from the remote). Because also at stake was your sibling changing the channel. https://t.co/KaiTlSxihl
— Sarah Bustard (@sarahbustard) October 15, 2018
But not everyone agreed with her:
they will also never know how it felt to watch 15 mins of ad for a 30 mins episode. https://t.co/pH5SjvOr97
— rest (@haesthetic86) October 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/Icystorm9/status/1051671261309489152
https://twitter.com/therealbereth/status/1052501788035674112
https://twitter.com/OkSteev/status/1052601495210917888
These days, the biggest TV watching-related inconvenience kids experience is when Netflix pauses the binge to ask if you’re still watching. If they only knew…