coffee + pages #11: Media, Culture, and the Importance of Stories
We're in for a short chat this week. Let's talk about how important media + culture really is.
January’s installment of coffee + pages eluded me until the very end of the month and then wound up taking longer than I thought, so now it’s doubling as January and February. I’m going to mostly chalk it up to that post-holiday lull and the general… chaos of the first half of January. But as I wracked my brain for what to write about, I returned to an old idea that I’ve had floating around for a bit.
Pages:
This particular idea is about just how important media is. When I say media I’m primarily referring to the things that we as humans find enjoyment in; whether that be a TV show, looking at art, or any other thing that another person has created that you might take joy from.
The importance of media, especially after the past year (i.e. the pandemic), can really never be understated. Media, from art to music and everything in between, has proven to be a huge part of many people’s days while we’ve all been in quarantine.
According to Netflix, twice as much time in the US was spent watching documentaries and reality TV in 2020 when compared to 2019. And the number of active streamers on Twitch as of December 2020 was at it’s highest: 9.24 million. I find looking at specific numbers of what was watched and who was essentially streaming content to viewers especially interesting here.
In these two instances, it’s easy to see that media was both being consumed much more and being produced at a higher rate as well. Netflix viewership was up across many fronts and more people were making use of Twitch to stream their content as gamers, creators, and more.
I find this so interesting. While we’ve been in quarantine, a lot of people (though not everyone) have had more time than ever before to just be. Whether that’s because of less commute time, stay-at-home orders, or other reasons, people have had lots of time at home.
This means that people have had more time to both consume and create media.
Nielsen has some easy to digest stats on tracking COVID’s impact on media consumption, but they specifically noted that “ Nielsen studies show that home-bound consumers have led to a 60% increase in the amount of video content watched globally.”
A 60% increase in the amount of video content watched on a global scale is alot! Putting this alongside the Netflix and Twitch numbers from above, I think it’s certainly fair to see that media became especially important to people last year.
So why is media so important? I think that Ursula K. Le Guin spoke on this very well.
Le Guin really nails just why media, art, literature, anything that we take true pelasure in, is so important. Stories, which make up just about any kind of media you can think of, are integral to the human experience.
And when most of our current experience is being at home most of the time, stories certainly offer a way for us to get out of our heads for just a while. In the same interview that Le Guin had with marine conservationist Johnathan White, she also goes on to say:
And wow?? While the interview occurred far before the pandemic, Le Guin’s words really ring true for our current situation. Media and art and entertainment offer up a myriad of ways for us to get out of the daily routine of work, being at home, and generally just being stressed by any number of thigns going on in the world.
I especially like the very last thing Le Guin said. “The world opens up again”.
What a truly lovely thing. Stories open up the world for us in an endless amount of ways, whether we’re looking for some sense of catharsis or we just want to share a particular story with someone we care about during stressful times. (COVID has been big time stressful 😬).
It wasn’t surprising to me at all to see the numbers I presented earlier when I was doing research for this piece. Media consumption has been up across a variety of different spaces and it’s really telling of how important media can be to people.
In the long term, I’m sure it will be interesting to see what these huge shifts in media consumption mean for those working in the industries that create said media; especially on a numbers level.
But from the point of view of both a writer and someone who takes in a lot of media on a regular basis, it’s been nice to see that media and culture can be something that brings a drop of the wider world into someone’s daily life during this pandemic.
Coffee:
A Twitter thread by Melissa Febos on trying to work through pain
Sarah Z on the Twilight renaissance
An interesting Tumblr post by user destinationtoast put together of different statistics tied to how Archive of our Own changed in 2020.
Can we just appreciate John Boyega’s style evolution for a sec?
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