Preliminary Findings on New Release Urgency
A show or film releases on a streaming platform. A person who had been anticipating it now feels urgency to watch it before encountering information about it. The watching is rescheduled.
Minutes: New Release Urgency Review Informal, Thursday, August 2021
Purpose
To document the current state of new release urgency and assess whether the urgency is proportionate to any actual consequence.
Background
A show released on a Wednesday. The person in question had been anticipating this show for approximately six weeks, since a trailer circulated widely enough to produce genuine interest. The show released while the person was in the middle of a work week with two deadlines and a family obligation on Friday evening.
The show will not wait. The conversation about the show has already started.
Present
The person. Their Thursday calendar. The show, which is eight episodes, each approximately forty-five minutes. The colleagues who have already begun watching.
Item 1: The Urgency Assessment
New release urgency is the condition of treating a leisure item as time-sensitive because someone else might see it and discuss it before you do. The urgency has two sources. The first is spoiler risk, which is real: enough people discuss new releases in open channels that specific plot information is encountered without consent within seventy-two to ninety-six hours of a release. The second is social timing, which is less concrete but functionally equivalent: discussing a show before it has been watched places the person in a passive position in a conversation where they would prefer to participate.
The urgency is created by the release. The release was not calibrated to the person's schedule. Nobody consulted the schedule.
Item 2: The Scheduling Attempt
The person has identified Thursday evening as the first available window. Thursday evening contains the following: dinner, clearing the inbox from a delayed afternoon meeting, a call at 8 p.m. that may run long, and a general fatigue level inconsistent with absorbing the first two episodes of a show that requires attention.
The window is available in the sense that no hard commitment occupies it entirely. It is not available in the sense that the person is in the correct state to use it for the intended purpose.
Item 3: The Alarm
The alarm is measured. The show will still be there in three days. The conversation about the show may have already started. These two facts are both true. They are not equal in weight, but they are both facts, and the person is currently treating them as equal by feeling urgency that corresponds to the second fact while confronting a schedule that requires accepting the first.
Item 4: The Governing Absurdity
At least two streaming platforms now release episodes weekly rather than all at once specifically to extend the communal conversation period and reduce the urgency required to participate. The person does not subscribe to either of those platforms. The platform they use released all eight episodes at once.
The weekly release model would have solved this. The person has not subscribed to the weekly release model.
No Action Taken
The show will be watched this weekend. The meeting is adjourned.