A study by the University of Pennsylvania found that participants who mindlessly scrolled short-form video reported significantly lower "post-consumption well-being" than those who deliberately chose a single movie or album. Why? Because algorithms optimize for the "dopamine loop"—shallow, shocking, or familiar content that keeps you clicking, but never feeling fulfilled.
Increasingly, audiences want to know how their content was made. Was it written by AI without human oversight? Was it designed to addict rather than entertain? Better media transparently balances engagement with responsibility. Why Algorithms Are Ruining Your Taste (And How to Fight Back) We must address the elephant in the streaming room: the recommendation engine. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix are designed to maximize watch time , not satisfaction . allporncomic better
Slow media values depth over speed. Think of the four-hour historical drama Killers of the Flower Moon , or the meditative pace of The Rehearsal on HBO. Think of podcasts that interview one expert for three hours rather than summarizing news in three minutes. A study by the University of Pennsylvania found
Better content respects your intelligence. It avoids plot holes for convenience, trusts the audience to connect dots, and ends when the story is over (rather than dragging into a second season because of viewership quotas). Increasingly, audiences want to know how their content
In 2023, a staggering 1,300 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Spotify surpassed 100,000 new tracks uploaded daily. Streaming services like Netflix, Prime, and Apple TV+ collectively released over 2,500 original shows and movies last year alone. We live in the golden age of access —but a dark age of saturation .
Not every show needs to be a documentary, but every piece of media should provide a return on the time you invest. This could be laughter, catharsis, education, or awe. The opposite is "empty calories"—content you consume but cannot remember ten minutes later.
Channels like Kurzgesagt (animation), ContraPoints (cultural analysis), and LEMMiNO (documentary mysteries) produce work that is better researched, better edited, and more artistically daring than 90% of cable television.