Watching a TV show no one else likes has never been so lonely

In 2015, when Netflix debuted strain, I didn’t think I was taking so much risk by investing my time. Here was a crime drama set amidst the lush visuals of The Florida Keys, starring Sissy Spacek, friday night lights Kyle Chandler, Broadway legends Sam Shepard and Norbert Leo Butz, and ’90s cult icons Linda Cardellini and Chloe Sevigny. How about this show no Sound like a winning formula? I thought that of course everyone would watch this show with me. It will be a must watch strain.

As it turns out, no, it wouldn’t be anything at all. After Season 3 (which has been reduced from 13 episodes to 10) dropped on Netflix today, it’s not coming back again. This is a rare Netflix show, though strain in strange company. The only other early canceled Netflix originals are hemlock grove, Marco PoloAnd Richie RichAnd And most recently, a very expensive Baz Luhrmann joint Get off.

Netflix is ​​notoriously stingy with viewing data, especially when it’s not released You act like a braggartbut renewal decisions seem to err on the side of, “Well, Somebody Watch it.” There’s no way every original content experience will find a huge audience, but nearly all of them get long-running, the kind reserved only for great hits on traditional TV. The streaming company has now made four seasons of Awful Grace and FrankieFor no reason I can get it other than the series’ Emmy nominations for Lily Tomlin. Fuller House It has been renovated, though critics widely He called the first season a joke. strainOn the other side, mostly Positive reviews And One has scored an Emmy Wins on Netflix last year (Ben Mendelsohn’s supporting actor nod). For it to be cancelled, we can guess, it really has to be there no one watch them. except me.

(Netflix did not return a request for comment.)

bloodlineReddit’s small community gives us another hint that this is the case: the subreddit has 3,300 subscribers, many of whom only post to say they don’t watch the show anymore. For reference, the subreddit for Better Call SaulAnother good offer Nobody is watching, has 111,000 subscribers. but it’s okay. I am not here to grieve the loss. Aside from enjoying the TV show, you know, my main reward is to keep watching strain has been accessed Make jokes About sticking to watching strain. Even though I love it, the show’s cancellation doesn’t disappoint me — it relaxes me. Honestly: good luck straina dexter A spiritual sequel that stars many of my favorite actors and thrills me regularly. I feel so lonely now watching a TV show that no one cares about.

in superfandomZoe Fried Planar and Aaron Glazer write, “The image of a secret admirer acting alone without any outside influence or interaction is very much a myth…the true solitary rarely What fans live for a long time. Mine might not even work strainfinal season. I know, because this has happened to me before.

Go back to 2005 for a minute – the end of the era he defined friends And ER, The last generation shows it It peaked with viewership made up of double percentages of the US population – It was the first “adult” drama that gripped her obsession instinct anatomy He was Showing that, as a middle school student, I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to watch. The only people I discussed it with were my dad and, later, in high school, one of my co-workers at the mall food court. My friends didn’t watch it, and at the time, I wasn’t really using the internet for anything beyond Kim possible Browser game and Facebook Messenger gossip. In the fall of 2011, I moved out of my parents’ house, quit working at the mall, and missed the Season 8 premiere.

It almost doesn’t matter instinct anatomy It went from a solid, topical prime-time soap opera to a dull, tangled mess somewhere around that time. It wasn’t the reason I stopped watching. I stopped because she was so lonely. Instead, I switched my allegiance to AMC mad men, A show that didn’t even air one new episode in 2011, but nonetheless was featured in my college paper’s art department almost daily, and I was constantly referred to by my contemporary literature professor.. I’ve watched so much of it, trying to catch up ahead of Season 5, that I’ve gotten more than one email from IT saying I’ve exceeded my allotted campus internet usage for the month. (I was so cool in college!) Without really thinking about it, I was drawn to a show that I thought would serve the same social function instinct anatomy It was, when my social world was primarily my nuclear family.

Once upon a time, a TV show was a one-way conversation, something that comes to your house at a certain hour, and if you’ve been there, you’ve watched it. And if there was someone else, that’s who I watched it with. Somehow, that felt like enough, even though I’m barely old enough to remember it.

Anyway, the TV appointment, after the events of Sunday night that HBO managed to make game of thrones, it doesn’t really exist anymore. You can always DVR or stream later. Bingeable Netflix series (apart from the mega series Weird thingsunavoidably online on and off all last summer) often It feels like it exists in a place completely separate from the rest of the world. The broadcast-era practice of dropping an entire season at once, with no schedule dictating when anyone watches each episode, means that even people who are fans of the same show aren’t necessarily synced up in a way that allows them to discuss it. (Hulu recently tried to combat this with weekly versions of Hulu The Handmaid’s Tale. I dropped in after episode 3, and would love to see that viewing data.)

instinct anatomy It premiered before TV culture was endlessly and irrevocably fragmented, by premium cable, then streaming services, then the giant Netflix catalog, then Netflix’s dreaded slate of original content…then the original content slate of Netflix competitors. It all happened along with most cable TV shows realizing that exclusivity and diversity can be profitable, and that creating several shows with smaller, tougher fanbases can be just as valuable (and much easier) than having one hit that appeals to everyone. More importantly, it was before the heyday of live-tweeting, Tumblr fandom, Reddit communities, weekly online recaps, and critical analysis that can be as fun and interesting in and of itself as the TV shows they interact with. All the extras that make a piece of entertainment feel like something more, something participatory. We expect those now.

Since 2012, Netflix has gone from a DVD rental service with four pieces of fledgling original content to a 100-plus production giant. All of these changes contradict each other. On the one hand, the promise that the Internet will always provide a community of fans for anything you might want to be a fan of, and on the other hand, content creators with output that has grown more than 3,000 percent Within five years, dividing the zeitgeist further with each new well-made show. And this is just one company.

It’s not always clear why you like okay Weird things Trigger the popular imagination and show as good as strain no. But whole TV shows now run like viral videos – endless options and endless conversations about which one is worth the time, means a little hype turns into a lot of hype if it happens at the right time – but if the timing is off, you go My mom. It’s a much more volatile environment than the already distant feeling era Too bad And mad men, when a show can slowly accumulate a reputation and an audience, one step at a time. You could easily bet wrong, like me, and find yourself here, counterintuitively wishing your favorite show would just disappear and give you some relief.

Watching something alone has never been more likely, and now that we’ve come to expect community, discussion, blogs and back channels for everything we care about – it’s never been more lonely. We are social creatures. We want to share things with people! And in the television environment of endless choices, we want to ensure that the choices we make represent good taste.

When a TV show doesn’t provide either, it’s very hard to stick with it.