“Emily in Paris” and the Rise of Ambient TV

But there’s more that goes into meditative television. It’s not the same as what The New Yorker dubbed “Ambient TV”; in fact, I find myself highly engaged. It’s so strange and joyful. I’ve found myself trying to look at the world the way he does, just watching tiny things happen and not putting too much thought into it.

But the more automated an algorithmic feed is, the more passive it makes us as consumers, and the less need we feel to build a collection, to preserve what matters to us. We give up the responsibility of collecting. Over the past two decades, the collecting of culture—whether films on DVD, albums on vinyl, or books on a shelf—has shifted from being

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Our feeds are designed to “prod the would-be attender ever onward from one monetizable object to the next,” he writes. This has had a deadening effect on all kinds of culture, from Marvel blockbusters that optimize for attention minute to minute, to automated Spotify recommendations that push one similar song after another.