MOD HAT: The Fawlty Towers discussion has been peeled off into its own thread. Let’s continue that discussion over there. Thanks.
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The problem for me is that if enough people are “hate watching” this to make it popular, that would be the first time that happened in the history of entertainment.
Sure, there are fans of bad movies, I happen to be one of them. I don’t watch them because I hate them, I watch them because I enjoy them for what they are. There could be a bit of a curiosity factor, if we are just talking about it getting the go ahead based on the numbers for the first episode or two, but that isn’t what seems to be meant by “hate watching”.
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Well, there was such an extraordinary groundswell of outrage about this series. Then the entertainment press picked up on this as “news”, amplifying it even more. Doubtless the show got a lot more views than it would have otherwise. Some percentage of those even watched the whole series, whether they ultimately were okay with it or “hated” it. (“Hate watchers”, I imagine, fully enjoy watching to stoke their sense of outrage and/or feelings of superiority.)
And of course the HBO app registered a lot more users, who probably stuck around to watch other stuff, perhaps even just some better Scooby-Doo! series(es).
As I said a while ago, I quit after episode 4, and haven’t given the series another thought. (There are just so many better things to watch and do.) I ultimately stopped watching because it made me too sad and angry to see the iconic characters made into actors playing parts in someone else’s semi-autobiographical shock-comedy drama (or whatever).
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You know, if this convinces HBO of the value of original animation, I don’t even care if it’s good or not.
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They would have been watching it for the curiosity factor, seeing if the show was as bad as it was made out to be. That is definitely a thing that happens in entertainment media these days.
That is where you lose me. “Some percentage” has to be enough to make a difference in the ratings for a statement like the following to be true:
That is the thing that I have never seen happen in entertainment media, and I doubt it is happening now. To me, it is an extraordinary claim that requires more support than rumor or imagination.
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Sometimes, lots of people like really bad shows.
Often, in fact. What season is The Bachelor on now?
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That is a question of taste. I know people who enjoy watching The Bachelor, it doesn’t mean they are watching it because they hate it. On the other hand, there may be a captive audience of significant others involved, who may actually be hate watching it. That at least gives me something to think about…
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Oh, I agree. The second season is just a rumor, AFAIK. Strikes me as odd that Zaslav would pick to let slide THIS show out of all the ones he’s canceling.
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I prefer that Velma doesn’t get a second season, but I sense that HBO thinks it’s better for HBO if it does. WB/HBO wants to focus on reality TV, which also thrives on “hate watching” and/or showing people behaving badly. Velma may be very on-brand for them, IMO.
The news that a 2nd season may be coming was from a much-reported 11-episode season 2 listed as “in the works” on the EIDR a few weeks ago. It may not yet be greenlit, but a season 2 seems more likely than not at this point.
The show is still high at #9 on IMDB’s currently popular TV series list (# of views?), down from a highest ranking of #2. (The next popular animated show, The Legend of Vox Machina, is currently at #20.)
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I guess “hate watching” may be one of those things the kids these days say that I will never understand, because it does not comport with my experience. I still don’t think it is really a thing that happens, except in those rare cases of captive audiences, like with parents being forced to watch inane shows with their kids because it is the only thing the kids will watch. In those cases, you have a primary viewer who is watching because they like the show, no matter how much the captive audience hates it. Those primary eyeballs are what is actually being counted for ratings purposes.
But maybe I am just an old guy who doesn’t get it, and “hate watching” is a thing the kids these days like to do…
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As we MSTies are evidence of, people sometimes enjoy being tortured. Consciously or unconsciously, some are drawn to it. I sense a growing number of folks who actually enjoy terrible and deliberately seek it out. Reality Shows is one such outlet where quality and good taste need not apply. Audiences want awful in certain cases and I fear that is growing in today’s culture. So to answer you. Is Hate Watching a thing? Probably. How big of a thing is anybody’s guess. Though I sense it more than a decade ago. The intensity today is such it could be a drug like any other. Left unchecked.
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Masochists aside, I don’t think most of us MSTies consider it torture. I watch MST3K because I enjoy it, not because I hate it. There are some movies they have riffed that I would not watch without the riffs, but there are plenty of cheesy movies that were near and dear to my heart before MST3K/Rifftrax/CT got ahold of them. So, I’m not watching media that I hate (that is what “hate watching” seems to mean in the context of this discussion), although I am definitely watching media that a lot of other people hate. And I think that is the problem with this whole idea of “hate watching”, just because you hate a show, it does not mean everyone else hates it, no matter how visceral your reaction to that show may be.
So, I am still of the opinion that “hate watching”, as used in the context of this thread, is more of a “I hate this show (whether I have watched it or not), therefor anyone who is watching must be watching it because they hate it”. That is something I have seen happen over and over with entertainment media, and I don’t think will ever stop, because that is just the way people are.
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I think that there is sort of a thing where it is not exactly hate watching but, similar to a lot of MST3K movies, there are people who watch them because they just can’t believe how terrible it is. They don’t hate it, it’s more that they’re sort of gobsmacked by it all. But they keep watching because what the heck is going on here?!
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Let’s just use Occam’s Razor here… a lot of people watch Velma because a lot of people like Velma. There is, as always, no accounting for taste.
I would only accept “hate watching” as an actual thing if there were some kind of community aspect to it… if people watched it and posted snarky comments about it online somewhere. (Hey, what an idea!)
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Oh very possible. I’m not talking about the majority.
Now that I get, as I have been there. It is the same reaction one might have to driving past the scene of an accident, you don’t want to look, but you do so anyway (and slow down, and make everyone else slow down as a result, stupid rubberneckers!) It is akin to the curiosity factor, but can be a bit more long lived.
It might be the kind of thing that could push ratings a bit higher, but I’m not sold on the idea. For those who endorse the idea of “hate watching” is the above more along the lines of what you are thinking?
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Taste is pliable and ever so often a reflection on what attracts or mystifies. My comparison is only that people discover contentment in a wide variety of places and this seems to be expanding. We MSTies generally enjoy our episodes but to outsiders it is madness. I’ve lived with this first hand and still do. So the lengths people and creativity go for resolution is further than ever before thus I can’t rule out enjoying something wretched or in awe of the awful as aspects that exist today in the proclivities of today’s audiences. Just simply one man’s opinion.
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Certainly, I think most MSTies have probably had this experience with people close to us not understanding our enjoyment of the show.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you here. On the other hand, that they are deriving enjoyment from the activity is what removes it from the realm of what I perceive to be “hate watching”. They may derive that enjoyment from watching hateful people do hateful things, but that kind of implies the exact opposite of “hate watching”.
My second point with regard to “hate watching” in this thread, is that even granting that some people do it, positing hate watching as the reason for the ratings bump seems rather unintuitive, as that would mean that most people are doing a thing that seems to be quite rare.
ETA: sorry for the partial post earlier, I accidentally hit the enter key mid post.
Or they watch in the hopes it will improve. I watched most of the first season of Jodie Whitaker’s Doctor Who hoping it would get better. It never did. Didn’t bother with the rest of her run. I’ll come back though for the 60th anniversary and see what that new guy has in store.
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My example would be Lost, although there was definitely a sunk cost issue there, but at a certain point, the only reason I watched Lost was to see how stupid it could possibly get. I didn’t hate it, I was almost rooting for it to get stupider.
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