viddy horrorshow/daytime viewing (vhs/dtv)

An old medium, built for mass consumption, built for the most mass of audiences. It has been supplanted by the singular, by the insular. Where anyone used to be part of everyone, now you are you in particular. And you see everyone in their particular too.

If the DIY stream is associated with the digital device, the flow of the televisual must be a slow-moving torrent of high production value, low-intensity content. You barely register the images that f lash by. The voices wash over you. They may or may not be speaking to you. Or rather, they’re speaking to who you’re most likely to be, statistically, or to who you might want to be, idealistically.

The slow-moving torrents of primetime, daytime and post-watershed programming have splintered into screens that are so much more intimate, that address us not as some vague, general consumer but as exactly as the consumer that we are, or that we soon will be. You’re in there, your image, and all your friends and acquaintances. Accidental uploads, overshares, and family members’ niche political views mean that the box has been superseded by the bubble.