Television

The point he made here is very accurate I think:

“It’s viewers who are scared of trying new talent, not commissioners. It’s viewers who nine times out of ten will choose a mediocre true crime or celebrity doc over a brilliantly made doc about almost anything else. It’s viewers who — overwhelmed with choice — are terrified to take risks on unfamiliar-looking new propositions.”

I am someone who does make an effort to try new things and even I constantly feel the pull to choose something mediocre in a "safe" genre I like (mystery, for example), rather than take a risk on a documentary or drama that is of much higher quality. Instead of challenging myself to learn more about the world or face some new/complex themes that I can reflect on, I'll choose some derivative slop and get halfway through before bailing.

Many of us have too much going on in our lives and feel so overwhelmed that screen time (TV/film/social media/gaming) has become this drug that we repeatedly go to so we don't have to think about and deal with our problems. It's like feeling guilty about your poor diet, but instead of actually taking a stand and planning your meals out, buying the ingredients and cooking for yourself, you just indefinitely delay it and continue the cycle of eating bad and feeling bad about eating bad. Screen-based entertainment has become a fast food for too many people; they are addicted to it, and the cognitive dissonance in the face of that fact is so strong that they'd rather blame someone else or ignore the problem than take some agency over their own lives.