Binge watching was a fan-coined term from the 1990s, mainstreamed only by 2013 Netflix
Evidence
The first uses of “binge watching,” “binge viewing,” and other variants date to the late 1990s on online user forums, perhaps for the X-Files. In 1996, a fan looking for VHS tapes of the show wrote: “There are three of us who all got hooked at the same time, so I’d predict that there’d be some MASSIVE binge watching right away! :-).” The phrase, however, only began to show up in mainstream sources in 2003; Emily Nussbaum, of The New York Times, wrote an article on the growing popularity of TV show DVDs. “DVD’s are perfect for fast-paced arc shows like ‘24,’ increasing the intensity of the action and introducing the sickly pleasures of binge-viewing.” But the word became widely used in 2013 after Netflix began releasing the full seasons at once, prompting the Oxford Dictionary to add it to the language and also short-list it as “Word of the Year” (the ultimate winner was “selfie”). — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1114
Categorization
- CANDY: ‘Binge watching’ originated with X-Files fans in the late 90s and lost Word of the Year to ‘selfie’ — fun trivia.
- XREF: Connects to platform-era attention harvesting where release scheduling itself became a strategy for maximizing engagement. — connects to: By the early 2010s most streamers defined themselves as binge watchers — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1100; Binge watching is deep engagement, the opposite of channel surfing — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1099; Post-crisis easy money produced ad tech and forgettable Netflix shows — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media: How Wall Street…, 86
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: when and where exactly did binge-watching behavior emerge vs. the word, and was Netflix’s all-at-once release responding to or creating it?
Broader Connections
- Binge watching is deep engagement, the opposite of channel surfing
#qualifies(0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1099 - Post-crisis easy money produced ad tech and forgettable Netflix shows
#complicates(0.72) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 86