streaming has trained viewers to treat every premiere like a performance review—and every show they love like an unpaid internship. Read more →
last night, four days after The Paper dropped its entire second season, I started watching because I wanted to. I also started watching because some small, unpaid Peacock employee living inside my brain had begun shouting that the show needed my numbers immediately.
why do I feel forced to watch streaming shows i like within the first week they’re out for n fear that low first week numbers will cause the algorithm to cancel it?
this is a strange new relationship with television. I am no longer simply deciding whether I feel like watching a show. I am being asked, or at least gently haunted, to demonstrate that the show deserves to continue existing.
the premiere is now a performance review
The Paper released all ten season-two episodes on Peacock on September 9. That is convenient if you want to spend a weekend at the Toledo Truth Teller. It is less convenient if your preferred television schedule is “eventually, after I finish the other eleven things everyone released on Thursday.”
A weekly show can slowly become part of your life. A binge release arrives like a pallet on the loading dock. Please process the complete shipment while it is still considered culturally fresh.
Streamers do not all disclose the same decision-making formula, and one household pressing play four days late is not a tiny executioner standing beside a cancellation button. Still, the industry has trained us to understand viewing as a vote. In its July 2026 engagement report, Netflix described engagement around the moment someone chooses a title and stays to watch; it reported more than 97 billion hours watched in the first half of the year.
The numbers get enormous very quickly. Nielsen’s 2026 midyear streaming report ranks successful shows in billions of minutes and describes a new class of originals through their measured viewing. That is useful industry data. It also means viewers now encounter television surrounded by the language of quarterly results.
Nielsen’s top overall streaming titles for the first half of 2026. Image: Nielsen.
fandom has become an unpaid internship
If you like a small comedy, a queer show, a weird genre series, or anything else that does not arrive pre-certified as a global event, watching can feel less like leisure and more like constituent services. You watch early. You let the credits run. You tell friends. You make a post. You consider putting “stakeholder engagement” on LinkedIn.
The platform does not need to send a push notification saying this program’s continued employment depends on you. We have seen enough beloved shows vanish after one or two seasons to write the notification ourselves.
And because the actual renewal calculus is private, there is no moment when the assignment is complete. Was starting within four days fast enough? Do I need to finish this weekend? Does rewatching help? Was pausing to make dinner an act of industrial sabotage?
I would like to return to merely watching television
I do not want every show I like to become a civic obligation. I want to watch The Paper because Sabrina Impacciatore is doing something ungovernable on my television, not because I have appointed myself to Peacock’s programming committee.
But I did start season two. four days after release. while publicly complaining about feeling forced to start season two.
the algorithm will be pleased to note that its employee remains highly engaged.
Images from Peacock/NBCUniversal, Netflix, and Nielsen, used editorially.
youtube is no longer just a website with videos. according to my watch history, it’s a streaming service assembled from television, obsolete… Read more →
I’m currently rewatching Please Like Me with my friend Jacob, which is how I discovered that YouTube has apparently become a streaming service now.
Obviously YouTube has technically been a streaming service for a very long time. Video goes in. Video comes out. Streaming has occurred.
But that’s not what I mean.
I mean YouTube has somehow accumulated so many different kinds of television that opening the app on a TV now feels less like visiting a website and more like walking into a flea market where several incompatible versions of the entertainment industry have rented tables.
There’s normal YouTube. People talking directly into cameras. Video essays. Podcasts that have cameras for some reason. Game footage. Music videos. A very serious investigation into whether 2015 was Nintendo’s worst year ever.
There are also movies.
There are entire television shows.
There are live television channels.
There are sports.
There are clips uploaded by networks, old episodes uploaded by networks, and old episodes uploaded by somebody whose continued existence probably depends on nobody at a network noticing them.
And increasingly, there are actual streaming subscriptions living inside YouTube. YouTube says it now offers more than 50 Primetime Channels, including HBO Max, Paramount+, FOX One, and NFL Sunday Ticket. Peacock moved in this summer, too, so NBC shows, Bravo, Universal movies, and live sports can now occupy the same app as a six-hour compilation about discontinued game consoles. (YouTube Help, YouTube Blog)
Netflix would very much like you to think of Netflix as television.
Disney+ is Disney.
Peacock is NBC.
YouTube is apparently everything television has ever been, plus whatever I became curious about four minutes ago.
That is a fundamentally different proposition.
according to my watch history, “television” is now a psychological condition
I looked at my recent YouTube history because I wanted to see whether my impression of the service was accurate.
It was worse than I thought.
My recent viewing begins with a Daily Show clip about pardons, followed by three videos about Nintendo’s difficult relationship with 2015, the 3DS, and Wii U games ported to the Switch.
Then Task Mistress.
Then a Tomb Raider presentation from Gamescom.
Then a segment from This Morning called Meet The Man With Hands 10 Times Bigger Than Yours!
Then orcas.
Then a Graham Norton tribute to Dolly Parton, followed immediately by Kylie Sonique Love’s “Do It Like Dolly.”
Then a Jim Cornette omnibus, a full episode of The Big Fat Quiz, another episode of Task Mistress, and Bob the Drag Queen ranking reality television fights.
No television network has ever assembled that schedule because a television network would be investigated.
YouTube looked at all of those things and said: yes, this is one viewer. We can work with this.
Task Mistress: conventional television, except it lives beside Nintendo retrospectives, enormous hands, and orcas in my history. Video: Avalon.
The categories stop meaning anything after a while. Is a three-hour Scott the Woz compilation a television show, a podcast, a documentary, or the audiovisual equivalent of leaving a box fan running while I do something else? Is Bob the Drag Queen playing a Roblox animal hospital a game stream or a sitcom? Is The Big Fat Quiz television if I watch it through an official upload on the same service where I just learned that somebody put Linux on an Android phone?
At some point the answer becomes: who cares, it’s on the big rectangle and I am watching it.
Streaming services usually organize themselves around genre. Comedy. Drama. Reality. Documentary. Action.
My actual YouTube genres appear to be:
Nintendo made a decision several years ago, and we are still processing it
professional wrestling was occasionally terrible, please explain for 94 minutes
drag queens interacting with video games or one another
somebody is doing something inadvisable with food
obsolete consumer technology remembered at exhausting length
a science question I did not have until the thumbnail asked it
British television I can watch without opening another app
three hours of a familiar person talking so the apartment is not silent
Netflix does not have a row called Because You Watched Why Growing Pink Pineapples Is Illegal.
YouTube understands that it should.
The sort of extremely specific historical inquiry that YouTube correctly identifies as television for me. Image: Scott the Woz/YouTube; used for commentary.
youtube has one enormous advantage: it already lives on everything
Every streaming company spent the last decade trying to convince us to download another app.
YouTube did not have to do that.
YouTube was already there.
It’s on the television, phone, tablet, Xbox, Switch, and probably the refrigerator if Samsung believes it can make me watch a preroll ad while getting shredded cheese.
It is the one video app I can safely assume exists on whatever glowing rectangle happens to be nearby.
That becomes surprisingly powerful once YouTube stops being merely “YouTube videos.”
If a television series is officially available there, I don’t have to remember which media conglomerate owns it this quarter. I search for it.
If I want a game presentation, I search for it.
If I want to know why a Superman game is apparently so difficult to make, I search for it.
If I want to know whether an apple provides more energy than coffee, I search for it, despite having survived for 37 years without requiring a ruling.
And if I don’t know what I want, YouTube is prepared to generate a need. Before reviewing my watch history, I had forgotten that I apparently needed to see whether two interleaved phone books could be pulled apart, why cold drinks were deadly before 1914, every occasion on which evolution produced a crab, and what ancient humans did when it was too hot to sleep.
The app collapses the distinction between watching television and looking something up about television, then collapses the distinction between looking something up and being ambushed by a new subject entirely.
Netflix wants you to stay inside Netflix.
YouTube wants you to fall down a staircase.
Reality television criticism, comedy, and Bob the Drag Queen: an algorithmic recommendation requiring no further defense. Image: Bob the Drag Queen/YouTube; used for commentary.
it has the world’s strangest back catalog
Streaming services present their catalogs as intentional collections.
Here are our prestige dramas.
Here are our comedies.
Here are our blockbuster movies.
Here is a tasteful row called “Because You Watched The White Lotus.”
YouTube’s catalog feels archaeological.
There are current game presentations beside retrospectives about the Wii U and PlayStation Vita. There are polished cooking productions beside Modified Grilled Cheese — You Suck at Cooking. There’s a 100-hour Counter-Strike 2 marathon somewhere between Cobblemon analysis and an episode of Poker Face in which one dish has been sabotaged.
I watched a history of browser games, a video about weird 3D GIFs, and somebody playing Toontown Rewritten. On another service, that would require a carefully programmed nostalgia collection. On YouTube, it’s apparently just Tuesday.
An entire history of browser games is simultaneously documentary, nostalgia programming, and something YouTube correctly decided I would leave running. Video: People Make Games.
There are also entire ecosystems of old media being watched, clipped, reconsidered, ranked, and turned into new media. A chaotic episode of Wheel of Fortune becomes a full upload. Old celebrity interviews become warning signs. Every bad wrestling faction can be assembled into a taxonomy. A forgotten console receives the sort of historical treatment once reserved for dead monarchs.
A streaming service would never design a catalog this way.
That is precisely why I like it.
For years, online video has moved toward behaving more like television: better production, professional creators, cleaner interfaces, premium subscriptions, and increasingly expensive programming.
YouTube accomplished all of that without successfully removing the basement underneath it.
The polished television is sitting directly on top of twenty years of internet debris.
That rules.
the streaming services are becoming tenants
The funniest part is that conventional streaming companies seem increasingly willing to simply move into YouTube.
YouTube launched Primetime Channels so people could subscribe to individual services and watch their shows, movies, and live programming without leaving YouTube. FOX One joined in June 2026, and Peacock followed later that month. YouTube described the point plainly: put more entertainment in one place so viewers do not have to jump between apps. (YouTube Blog)
We spent years unbundling cable so every media company could build its own streaming service.
Now the streaming services are slowly climbing back into bundles.
Except one of the new cable companies is YouTube, and its channel guide was assembled by an algorithm with access to my psychological vulnerabilities.
Imagine explaining my recent programming schedule to somebody in 1998:
8:00 — Task Mistress
8:45 — The Worst WWF/WWE Factions
10:00 — Bob the Drag Queen runs a Roblox animal hospital while armed
10:32 — festive cheese
11:10 — can air become alcohol?
11:28 — an update on some rocks a woman left at stage one for six months
11:47 — ancient heat-management strategies
12:09 — typewriter keyboards
12:31 — illegal pink pineapples
That channel would immediately become my favorite channel.
maybe this is what streaming should have been
I don’t particularly want another perfectly curated streaming service.
We have those.
They’re fine.
What I increasingly appreciate is a place where professional entertainment and random human obsession occupy the same space.
My history is full of videos made by broadcasters, newspapers, game companies, established production studios, independent creators, comedians, drag queens, wrestling obsessives, hardware tinkerers, and people who have appointed themselves historians of failed consoles. YouTube doesn’t ask me to decide which class of media I am currently consuming. It just keeps playing.
That used to be much more common online. The internet did not have such clean boundaries between “media” and “some thing a guy made.” YouTube still doesn’t.
It may now contain television networks, subscription services, live sports, studio movies, premium entertainment, and shows I already wanted to rewatch, but none of those things have managed to displace the weird website underneath.
They just moved in next door to it.
So now YouTube is possibly the most complete streaming service, provided your definition of complete includes Please Like Me, professional Japanese kitchen gadgets, WWE nobodies who somehow became world champion, Michael Jackson’s most savage moments, an LGBTQ+ sandwich, and a Pokémon toy that is also a Nintendo DS.
Mine apparently does.
Anyway, I need to get back to Please Like Me.
Unless YouTube would like to explain why everything keeps evolving into crabs first.
The algorithm’s closing argument: apparently everything keeps evolving into crabs. Video: PBS Eons.
me? i waited three hours for the feeds to come back and then fell asleep without plugging in my phone which led… Read more →
me? i waited three hours for the feeds to come back and then fell asleep without plugging in my phone which led to me waking up late this morning
the houseguests were busy all night, however
when feeds came back, Devens was HOH, and over the course of the night a new super-alliance and backdoor plot came to light
the alliance? The Tool Shed:
The Tool Shed: Dee, Devens, Angela, Drew, Barrett, Haley, Chuk, Kamu
The Crossovers and The Red Corner decided to merge(ish) and i hate it? as has been clear from my rankings i like Drew and Barrett the most out of this cast followed by the Survivors and Angela–my least favorites are Hayley/Thog
but the vets’ smugness about everything has really been souring them for me; Devens has gotten less of that from me, but that’s probably just because he’s quieter about it all so i’ve seen it less
big alliances are the fastest to crack, usually, so i’m not too broken up that most of my faves are working with my three least-liked houseguests (sorry to you, Chuk, it’s mostly your two friends keepin’ you down)
the problem is that my actual faves (Drew/Barrett) are doing a bit of a rat floater game (moreso Drew, but still) near the middle of the house and this ruins that position–assuming the rest of the house isn’t completely useless
also, people are doing dirty stuff on food prep areas again
my rankings (entertainment value) to start the week are less affected by The Tool Shed and more affected by my growing disaffections with Anngela and Dee; i just want them to be a little less cocky about it all
since he’s HOH and can’t just coast on chill uncle vibes, i fear this will start affecting my enjoyment of Devens this week as well–the first meeting of The Tool Shed already kinda cemented that…
The Rank
1
⯁ 0
Drew
i still enjoy watching him, mistakes and all, but don’t like where he’s positioned in the Tool Shed
2
⯁ 0
Barrett
cuddle slut; along with Drew, put his middle-of-the-house-based game in jeopardy by being so obvious w/ the Tool Shed
3
⯁ 0
Devens
HOH | forming a mega alliance upstair while everyone was still awake and in the kitchen was dumb but less dumb for him than Drew/Barrett
4
▲ 3
Rome
i need at least a semi-competitive season and it’s making me root for him a little 🤷♂️
5
▲ 3
LaTrice
she’s growing on me, even if i still have to run the volume down when she’s around
6
▼ 1
Angela
dropping lower as the stress builds and the pay-offs never appear
7
▼ 3
Dee
the smuggery of it all 🙁
8
▼ 2
Jason
almost got big ups but drops because i realized i’d be fine if he left this week (which is a real option on the table)
9
▲ 2
Mallory
sinking ships raise all tides or whatever
10
▲ 2
Melody
11
▼ 1
Lyric
12
▼ 3
Taylor
13
⯁ 0
Yash
impressive win in the BB Block Buster
14
⯁ 0
Chuk
he’s still there
15
▲ 1
Thog
ugh.
16
▼ 1
Kamu
i just can’t with him
17
🪦
Ashley
RIP, 10 Days Old | good for her or sorry that happened, i guess
▲ – Raised Position
▼ – Lowered Position
(will update the post with any intra-day status change once it happens 💜)
there is a very specific type of tv show where you realize about three episodes in that there is not a single… Read more →
there is a very specific type of tv show where you realize about three episodes in that there is not a single person on screen you would willingly choose to be in a room with, much less share an Uber with, and yet you cannot look away because watching a collection of absolute monsters ruin each other’s lives is apparently the highest form of human entertainment
it is the “the whole gang sucks” trope and honestly fwiw it is carrying the entire television industry on its back
traditionally, storytelling tells us we need a “hero” or at least a “moral center” to hold our hands through the plot but some of the greatest shows ever made looked at that rule and decided to throw it directly into a dumpster. if you want to write a truly legendary dynamic, the recipe is simple: take four to six highly specialized narcissists, lock them in a room, and let them drag everyone down with them
here is how the absolute worst groups of people ended up making the absolute best television
the blueprint: seinfeld and the art of zero personal growth
before we had five-season arcs of prestige television where characters go on complex emotional journeys, we had four incredibly shallow people in a diner complaining about soup. seinfeld essentially pioneered the entire concept of the lovable deplorable
Newman hugs a reluctant Jerry on Seinfeld
“no hugging, no learning.” — the absolute guiding light of the entire series
jerry, george, elaine, and kramer did not want to become better people, they did not want to save the world, and they certainly did not want to help anyone. they spent nine years being incredibly petty, selfish, and deeply neurotic before eventually ending up in a literal jail cell because they couldn’t stop making fun of someone getting carjacked. it was beautiful fml
the escalation: it’s always sunny in philadelphia
if seinfeld walked, then it’s always sunny sprinted directly off a cliff. the gang at paddy’s pub doesn’t just suck; they are a localized black hole of moral decay that actively ruins every single innocent bystander who makes the mistake of standing within a three-mile radius. cricket was a priest before he met them?? now he is a street-dwelling legend with a half-burned face and a regular routine involving garbage cans, and the waitress just wanted a normal life but is now permanently spiraling because of charlie’s relentless, horrifying devotion
they are the absolute gold standard of the trope because they have zero shame, zero self-awareness, and a combined total of about three decent moments across sixteen seasons, and even those were probably complete accidents
the corporate viper pits: veep and succession
sometimes the gang sucks because they are a family of billionaire media heirs trying to secure their father’s approval, and sometimes they suck because they are the staff of the vice president of the united states. veep is basically a documentary about what happens when you gather the most soulless, career-obsessed, and sycophantic individuals in the country and put them in charge of national policy. watching selina meyer’s staff tear each other to pieces while executing the most embarrassing political blunders in history is so painfully real it hurts lmfaoo
and then there is succession. the roy family is a masterclass in psychological damage, where love is treated as a financial transaction and everyone is constantly trying to stab each other in the back with a very expensive, gold-plated knife. you spend four seasons hoping someone will finally have a normal, healthy conversation only to remember that these are money-obsessed vipers who would gladly ruin a democracy if it meant a 2% bump in their share price
the cartoon chaos: archer and family guy
animated shows have the distinct advantage of being able to make their characters commit actual crimes without having to worry about real-world physics or jail time
the isis agency: archer is basically a workplace comedy about a group of functional alcoholics, psychopaths, and absolute douchebags who also happen to have weapons of mass destruction. cyril is an absolute wuss, pam is a literal horn-monster, and archer himself is an arrogant man-child whose only saving grace is that he really loves ocelots for some reason
the griffins: family guy started as a typical dysfunctional sitcom but eventually evolved into a terrifying family unit where even meg is heavily implied to be a literal serial killer, peter is a menace to local infrastructure, and stewie was a baby bent on world domination
at the end of the day, we don’t watch these shows because we want to be friends with these people. we watch them because watching a group of functional adults absolutely refuse to learn a single lesson is a profound, comforting reminder that no matter how much we mess up our own lives, at least we haven’t accidentally set a local priest on fire or ruined a country’s agricultural policy because of a petty grudge
it is an ancient, undisputed law of television that the exact moment a long-running show introduces a positive pregnancy test, the writers… Read more →
it is an ancient, undisputed law of television that the exact moment a long-running show introduces a positive pregnancy test, the writers have officially run out of ideas and the series is circling the drain. it usually signals the absolute death of casual hanging out, the sudden disappearance of main characters into background daycare voids, and an influx of incredibly grating, precocious child actors who look like they have never interacted with a real human being in their lives
but does the “baby bump” always have to be a complete narrative death sentence??
a recent collective breakdown over on r/television proves that while the trope is usually a TOTAL disaster, a few rare shows actually managed to mutate the formula into comedy gold. if you’re forced to bring a diaper bag into the writers’ room, here is how you actually pull it off without ruining everything
1. don’t add an actual baby (the “uncle baby billy” strategy)
if you want a baby character that completely revitalizes a show, the smartest move is to ensure they are actually a slender, silver-haired man in his late 60s. the righteous gemstones gave us uncle baby billy, a man permanently misbehaving, running around the house with a pickle in his mouth, and trying to get someone to fund “baby billy’s bible bonkers” with nothing but an 8-ball and two million dollars. he brings all the chaotic, exhausting energy of a toddler without any of the boring diaper subplots and honestly it is peak television
2. use them as cosmic karma
when a character has spent years being an absolute menace to everyone around them, a baby is the ultimate narrative punishment. look at dr. cox on scrubs. introducing his son, jack, didn’t soften his character; it just trapped a legendary cynic in a room with a tiny, relentless mirror of his own worst traits. watching a three-year-old staple his own clothes to the wall and draw a head on it while his parents look away for thirty seconds is just beautiful karma for cox being a massive pain in the ass to everyone for a decade
3. lean into the literal monster mythos
if you absolutely must introduce an infant, make it a horrific supernatural rebirth. what we do in the shadows took a massive risk by killing off colin robinson only to have a creepy, adult-headed baby crawl out of his dead friend’s abdomen. it completely refreshed the character because it makes total sense that infants and toddlers are the most effective, highly evolved energy vampires on the planet without even trying to be
4. skip the boring parts entirely
nobody actually wants to watch a multi-season arc about sleep training, colic, and pureed peas. the smartest sitcoms treat infants like background furniture or jump straight to the funny toddler years
parks and recreation: ron swanson’s kid existed mostly to give us the iconic line that his son was already accustomed to the sound of power tools. meanwhile, leslie and ben’s triplets were basically invisible until they were used as props for kathryn hahn to completely lose her mind over how sticky everything in the house was
new girl: the writers wisely deployed a major time jump to skip the infant phase entirely, delivering ruth—a tiny, chaotic toddler who perfectly justified the shift in cece and schmidt’s dynamic by treating nick miller like an absolute peasant
ultimately, adding a kid is usually a desperate cry for help from an exhausted writers’ room. but if you treat the child as a terrifying agent of chaos, a piece of cosmic karma, or just a vehicle for kathryn hahn to scream about sticky furniture, you might just survive the curse
I’ve been doing some totally unscientific research on streaming service ad loads lately, and honestly, the results are both fascinating and infuriating.… Read more →
I’ve been doing some totally unscientific research on streaming service ad loads lately, and honestly, the results are both fascinating and infuriating.
As someone who’s had to go ad-supported on pretty much every service to save money, I’ve become intimately familiar with just how wildly different the advertising experience can be from platform to platform. What started as casual observation during my recent Buffy rewatch has turned into a full-blown comparison project.
