'POPumentary' and the Netflix Effect

Netflix is probably best known for its 'original' shows and movies, its additions of fairly new and exciting movies to its repetoire and unfortunately, its documentaries if they can be called that.

The term used here is 'Popumentary' which refers to the Netflix documentary style of being to research and intellect what modern pop is to music and culture. The idea that a 'Popumentary' of two or three hours could cover effectively an entire history or cultural impact of a particular topic, in most cases no matter what that topic may be is not only presumptuous but can also be dangerous. Netflix notices the impact it has on modern culture and chooses to ignore that it is feeding the echo chamber of low intelligence cult-like verbatim chanting which is so prevalent in our society today.

The main issues that are going to be considered and explored here are as follows:

• How does a Netflix Popumentary grab your attention?
• What role does a Netflix Popumentary play in society?
• What is this doing to learning and intelligence?
• How does this have an overall negative impact on society?

Let's begin with our first subheading which will explore the methods, mostly repetitive in nature, that Netflix Popumentaries use to grab the attention of their audiences.

How does a Netflix Popumentary grab your attention?

Netflix uses a group of similar techniques to an advert from the 1980s to grab and keep hold of the audience's attention through their flashy and often disingenuous messages.

For example: Netflix documentaries normally contain many flashing images in key moments of suspense, much like you would see in a Hollywood movie. But then again, they often have these strange opening sequences that are meant to put you in the mood without giving away the little content they contain.

To expand on this, this shows that Netflix documentaries often have lengthy opening sequences in the style of a TV series. This can be seen in their 'tapes' series which are popumentaries based on infamous serial killers of the 1970s and 80s. This means that there is even less content to cover with an opening scene that everyone and their dog has heard a million times followed by a Hollywood TV show style opening sequence of music and photos which cuts down the run time even more. All of this is only there to put you in the 'mood' to watch the popumentary.

Honestly, if you need to get into the 'mood' to watch something of intelligence, you should probably just watch a movie instead. You probably are not in the mind to learn things and just want to watch something snappy and atmospheric. I'll show you why I know this later on in the article.

Netflix popumentaries also work very much on anecdotes. This means that people, long after the fact or even people who are not actually linked to the main topic at hand directly, are giving their opinions and experiences of being involved in something. This produces stories of little value and all they do is work into the Netflix agenda of what story should be told and how. These people, mind you, are carefully selected because how else would their stories all piece together to make a complete and coherent story unless they were all saying the same thing?

It is for the sake of being memorable of course, this is content for content's sake without any intellectual value. It presents no alternative point of view, it just tells a story over and over again through different people all saying the same thing. Why? It feeds into this culture of not thinking about things and just believing what is told to us.

You can call it good editing, but no editing manages to piece together a narrative through about 10 different people that perfectly unless they were either told to say the same thing or were all saying the same thing initially and thus, came to the same conclusions.

It grabs your attention because it expects nothing of you.

What role does a Netflix Popumentary play in society?

As always, when something new on Netflix comes out, it seems to be a popular event for modern society who then celebrates the release of something that is either critical of ourselves, or something that is an interesting topic to many whether in some intellectual form or just morbid curiosity. It is an event for practically everyone who has a Netflix account, and that is a lot of people.

The role of a Netflix Popumentary therefore, is a wild one. For weeks and maybe months until the next one comes out, the main talking points on discussion boards and social media may be overrun with comments on these particular topics with people who feel like they have done a lifetime of research acting like they are experts when, in realty, they have watched the exact same popumentary as everyone else.

The role therefore is not only to provide these talking points but to keep people who can not be bothered to read academia or books or even watch something of some intellectual calibre trapped in this echo chamber of thought. You only believe what the popumentary has told you to believe and therefore, repeat the same talking points and opinions verbatim across the internet to the other people who did the exact same thing as you.

Therefore, the role that Netflix plays in the society may be considered innocent but in reality it is tricking the average person into thinking they are an expert on a topic in a mere hour or so by feeding an agenda-based chant to them so that they may repeat it in the hopes of sounding intelligent in front of colleagues and friends who have also seen the same series and thus repeat it on. Thus, a game of total recall ensues over who can repeat the most of the popumentary and after this, make themselves look the most intelligent without having done any real work and without having any real intelligence.

If you were genuinely interested in learning about the topic at hand, you would be watching something more expansive, reading books with more research and viewing titles with more credibility. This therefore proves that it is not about learning, but rather simply consuming and regurgitating content as one would do on a social media application (Schneider et al, 2002). The role it plays in society is just as important as therefore, the most addictive and least intelligent forms of social media.

What is this doing to learning and intelligence?

As we have discussed already, there is a lot of consumption aligned with regurgitation here which formulates itself like a social media application. But there are more things such as the reductive nature of the popumentary which causes people to feel like they have learnt something without putting in any work. Therefore, the learning becomes easier and as we know from numerous studies, learning something properly has never been easy and the likelihood of forgetting said information is far greater when the information has not been learned under some strenuous condition as opposed to sitting tucked away in your bed at 2am (Gardiner et al, 1973).

Learning something thus becomes too easy and therefore, not really learned. The social media machine has propelled this forwards with low intelligence, low effort consumption content littered about its domains. This means that not only is learning base facts becoming more desirable than learning any form of critical thinking but Netflix Popumentaries have cashed in on this and are therefore mass-marketing low intelligence, low effort content.

This information is not thought about critically and thus becomes recycled once again when the next popumentary comes out (Slamuck & Fevreiski, 1983). Not only does this suit the Netflix Popumentary machine for content purposes, but it also unfortunately dumbs down the population and, for those who do not consume content in many other ways apart from Netflix and social media, makes it somewhat impossible for them to do so after a given amount of time. Normally nicknamed 'social media brain rot', Netflix Popumentaries have monetised this in the most remarkable way - by supporting the "high consumption, low effort" market.

How does this have an overall negative impact on society?

This leads nicely into how this has a negative impact on society overall. Just like the critical thinkers of our world complain that the cult-like mentality has trapped people into repeating things verbatim that they see on social media in real life without knowing the exact meanings or arguments behind them, people who watch Netflix Popumentaries for anything other than being able to pluck them apart are normally out in the world or on social media repeating verbatim what they have watched the previous night.

This followed by the ease of consuming content rather than actually learning about the topic makes for an upsetting view on society and its skills for the future. What we see is low level critical thinking, high consumption without question and chanting in a cult style befitting the 17th century puritans.

This echo chamber that different sides of society seem to be trapped in, especially the younger generation, is only being cashed in by the big markets such as the Netflix Popumentary. What other way to create a loyal customer than to make them feel as if they are very smart for doing nothing whatsoever? The only problem arises when these popumentary viewers decide to take their discussions and ideas to the real world and become belittled and silenced by real intellect.

Therefore, this negative impact on society is not just when dumb people believe they are intelligent (Dunning & Kruger, 2000) but also when learning becomes 'consuming' and is therefore done without any difficulty thus, dumbing down the person doing the consuming so that they may not actually learn anymore due to the nature of the content they are so used to consuming. To take this further, it is also negative due to its isolated nature, often only showing one side to a larger story which has been mulled over by professionals for a while yet this popumentary produces some sort of 'clear answer'. One more way it is negative is its encouragment of cult-like systems of verbatim chanting of what has been viewed as opposed to engaging the viewer in thought. The list only goes on.

Conclusion

We may have not covered every negativity of the Netflix Popumentary on society. But though they can be entertaining for a night watch whilst doing something more important like folding clothes, they are not to be taken as serious information or learning. Much like the negative impact that TikTok has had on the brains of Generation Z, the Netflix Popumentary has almost been designed for them. For those who cannot learn, their brains have been programmed not to and then large corporations profit off feeding masses of content to them 24/7. We can sit here and discuss shots of dopamine, but I guess you are already familiar with that. In conclusion, the Netflix Popumentary is desgined as content, not information. There is a massive difference.

Works Cited:

• Dunning, D., & Kruger, J. (2000). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121-1134.
• Gardiner, F. M., Craik, F. I. M., & Bleasdale, F. A. (1973). Retrieval difficulty and subsequent recall. Memory & Cognition, 1, 213–216.
• Schneider, V. I., Healy, A. F., & Bourne Jr., L. E. (2002). What Is Learned under Difficult Conditions Is Hard to Forget: Contextual Interference Effects in Foreign Vocabulary Acquisition, Retention, and Transfer. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(2), 419-440.
• Slamuck, N. J., & Fevreiski, J. (1983). The generation effect when generation fails. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22(2), 153-163.