Struggling to find a new show on Netflix? This new feature will help big time
With the lockdown & the pandemic-driven quarantining, many people found solace in streaming their favorite TV shows or exploring new ones. Among the various video-on-demand platforms, Netflix witnessed a particular boom. Not only did their offerings increase exponentially, but so did their viewer numbers. Stuck in their houses, people naturally took to their digital devices to stay entertained.
It helps that television shows or movies often help us escape, provide temporary refuge, and get us glued to or invested in the lives of fictional characters. Then, there are so many stand-up comedy specials to be devoured. Mini-series like BoJack Horseman, The End of the F***ing World, Bridgerton, among several others have a charm of their own.
And yet, when we sit down to Netflix after a long day, we end up spending most of our time scrolling through all the offerings. Just like surfing the channels on a TV set, we are browsing through what seems like an endless array of shows & movies.
The joke about deciding your Netflix flicks
We’ve all seen those tweets & memes about how we spend far more time browsing through this list & deciding what to watch than we do actually watching it. Some chalk it up to decision fatigue — the deterioration of one’s ability to make good decisions after a long session of decision making — or burnout, while others are just indecisive by nature.
Often, couples watching together are unable to reach a consensus, while at other times, people just want to be surprised. And you want the surprise to be in line with your tastes.
Irrespective of the cause, the problem remains the same: we settle in very eagerly with our bucket of popcorn & drinks, but the bucket gets empty faster than we even get to the selection of what to watch. Thankfully, this is about to change. Here’s how.
Your memes have been answered
If you spend a painful amount of time Netflix has introduced a new feature called “Play Something.” Think Alexa meets Netflix. Netflix just announced that they are launching the button that will now “drop you right into the new show or movie and it’s all based on what you’ve watched.
The announcement was very creative & on-brand, too. A remote control, voiced by Will Arnett, makes the case for the button as a couple surfs through the endless choices, pushing its buttons, “You never thought that maybe pushing my buttons all day was going to be harmful to me? You take orders from me now.”
How is it different from the suggestions that Netflix ordinarily shows? Well, this is a notch up on that: instead of giving you yet another list to scroll through, the “Play Something” button will land you right into the show or movie, no time wasted. The algorithm will be hard at work to pick a movie that’s either very likely to land on your watchlist or something that has already been on it for a long time.
Right now, the button is available on the TV app’s login screen, but will soon be available on the mobile version as well. You can access it at three places — well, Netflix really does want you to use the button. One, on the profile selection screen right under your name. Two, in the navigation menu on the left side of the screen. And third, on the app home page, you just have to scroll down a wee bit.
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This may not be a watch-party feature level game-changer, but as the ad says, “sometimes, the best choice is not to choose.”
