Do People Really Hate-Watch So Much?

These days we hear ceaselessly of "hate-watching." This is not merely a matter of people watching things they don't like (because their partner wants to watch and makes them sit through it), but of people deliberately watching things they don't like for the pleasures to be had in despising them.

It seems plausible that a good many people are only saying they are "hate-watching"--perhaps because they are embarrassed to admit they actually enjoy the trash they are consuming (as with those who "watch ironically").

Yet it is not wholly inconceivable that more of this may be going on, partly because of the pathetic desire of some to feel superior to something, anything, at all, partly because the Internet offers no shortage of cesspools in which to wallow in one's own nastiness about the safely petty, partly because of the increasing tendency to distracted rather than engaged viewing encouraged by a host of factors (like people catching TV anywhere and everywhere on their smart phone rather than sitting down for a proper watch).

Still, one can picture something more serious going on. It may be that more people are so exhausted or stressed out that they can't get into anything really enjoyable, and find it easier to get pleasure out of mocking something bad rather than enjoying something good--perhaps all the more in as there is less casual, "easy," viewing in recent scripted production, and so many people take in so much of the execrable reality television that really does deserve all the insult that can be thrown at it. It may also be a matter of the extreme distance between what even people who are not incapable of enjoying a show or a movie actually experience when they see contemporary offerings as against what the increasingly loud claquing of the critics tells them they are supposed to be experiencing. (There was once a time when people laughed at the TV critics' unhinged outpourings of praise for The Sopranos, but alas this is standard now.) And it may be that what gets made now, reflecting our cultural politics, is inherently divisive--in contrast with the blander, more general audience-oriented fare of the past, pandering to some while showing utter contempt for the tastes of those outside the target audience, all as some are not just ready but eager to make a culture war out of anything and everything, and so rather than changing the channel on what they can't stand staying so that they can fight the good fight over at the review aggregators and everywhere else online.