Amber Ramble: The benefits and pitfalls of binge-watching your life away

We’ve all been there, sunk deep into your well-worn couch crevice, your laptop dangerously overheating on your lap, its fans whirring sporadically as if technology itself could develop asthma. Your headphones have been deeply embedded in your ears for so long that you’ve started to experience excruciating pain, and yet you can’t summon the desire to finally close your screen and relinquish your headphones from their crucial duty. You are ill, infected with a disease so sickening that you begin to believe it isn’t a disease at all: binge-watching. It’s been three days, and already you’ve managed to skip 72 classes and you’re about to skip a 73rd. It’s times like these that you have to consider the dire consequences of the just-one-more-episode mentality.

Pro: Feel like you’ve accomplished something without actually accomplishing anything.

Sometimes you just need to feel the rush of accomplishment, without having to deal with the mess and stress of actually getting work done. When binge-watching a television series, you get to feel like you’ve made lasting friendships and possibly even feel like you helped the characters reach the resolution of the current season’s plot device. With the power of binge-watching, you get to be the hero of your own story– or, at the very least, live vicariously through the experiences of the main characters.

Con: Feel like you’ve accomplished something without actually accomplishing anything

The feelings of accomplishment you may experience can easily lull any innocent soul into forgetting about the work that has actually yet to be finished. While the high of finishing another season is worth it initially, the sudden shock and panic you’ll experience after arriving at your first class to the sight of all of your classmates handing in an eight-page paper that was assigned three weeks ago will be enough to improve your chances of dying young.

Pro: Get those creative juices flowing

Binge-watching seven seasons of a show makes it nearly impossible to not notice each season’s literary techniques, such as foreshadowing, symbolism and wasting crucial aspects of main characters by forcing them into pointless romantic relationships. Binge-watching a new (or old) show will have you inspired in no time to finally start the horrible process of writing a book or forcing your friends into participating in a new show of your own making.

Con: Get those creative (but unoriginal) juices flowing

Side effects of binge-watching are that you may awake with no memory of the previous week to find a hand-printed manuscript of what you may first mistakenly believe to be a manuscript delivered from God’s own ethereal hands. It is actually just a poorly re-representation of the entire plot and events of the series you just finished watching scrawled messily in green crayon.

Overall, binge-watching is dangerous and rarely produces positive results in the long run, but you’ll still start another show tomorrow night. When the mere thought of work welcomes anxiety, binge-watching will be there to offer a helping hand. You’re only human, so go ahead and enjoy the little things in life. You never know when the Internet ceases to exist and you’ll be forced to find another way to avoid doing any homework.