Uncertain entertainment

OK. I think I've got a dissertation topic: why we choose media.

I keep thinking that it has something to do with pleasure, but that we're not just hedonically motivated. Or that "pleasure," the end goal of hedonism, mutates and evolves in each of our lives so that to say that we are hedonically motivated tells us very little about why we choose certain experiences over others.

Let's take a concrete example. Today, I listened to a story from Stephen King's short story collection Just After Sunset. Why this story? Because I'd read/listen to other stories by that author and I'd enjoyed them immensely. Not only had I enjoyed them while I was listening to/reading them. I also would periodically recall emotions or ideas from the texts at various times, and that gave me pleasure and helped me cope w/ some rough patches. If we're to map out the decision making process that goes into choosing media, I think we need to take into account pleasure that comes well after actually experiencing the text. Hard to measure, but let's save the question of measurement for another time.

Anyway, based on past experience w/ other King stories, the low cost and availability of the story (free from my local library), my mood (more or less neutral, I just wanted to be transported while doing yard work, and if I got some insight into the human condition, so much the better), and the time available (I have lots, thanks to summer vacation). It was the wrong decision. At least for that one short story, I experienced pretty extreme displeasure. I experienced something that I'm sure many others have experienced: hating a media text but needing, masochistically, to finish the text, needing closure. Why was the text to unpleasurable? Because it conjured up unpleasant connections with my personal history. How could Stephen King know about that? He couldn't. But could I have known? That's an interesting question.

What do we know about a media experience before we spend time and money on it? When we re-watch movies, we know plenty, and sometimes, we experience great pleasure. Most times, we only have a rough idea of what to expect, based on author, genre, preview, or recommendation. We don't want to waste our time, but we want to be surprised. This requires a relinquishment or control, a trust in an author or authors that is paid for with our future attention. In this way, choosing to experience a media text is unlike so many other consumer decisions. I wouldn't want my car to surprise me. I wanted to know exactly what I was in for when I bought it. The same is true for every other consumer decision i can think of. The same isn't true for my experience with people. I wouldn't want to know utterly predictable people. Though they may bow to my every command, they would seem lifeless. So it is with media. We desire some unpredictability, some chance that what we experience may be undesirable.

I guess there's always the chance that one may be introduced to a new kind of pleasure, one that a consumer/user didn't even know they desired until they experienced it. The unknown experiences are fodder for our future desires and dislikes.

After choosing to listen to the King short story and hating it, I listened to a Radiolab podcast, and within the first 5 minutes, I experienced exactly what I wanted to experience. I was transported. I left my body. I also felt better about life and myself, if for a brief time (there, again, is the time issue. Is it better to experience a temporary boost in self-esteem than it is to get something embedded in your brain that will keep cropping up and putting things in perspective at later points in life? In a word, no. That's what makes great works of narrative so great. They stay in your head and pop up when you have various experiences. Hard to assess, but definitely a part of the worth of a mediated experience). I made a bad decision w/ the King, and a good decision w/ the Radiolab. What happened?

Part of it was a lack of information. If the King story came w/ a disclaimer that said, "Elliot Panek, this story will remind you of very specific instances in your life where you have failed, resulting in negative affect," well then I wouldn't have listened. That's a tall order for the media producer, but maybe, just maybe, some sort of information aggregator could keep track of certain things that were bound to trigger negative (or positive) affect for the user, screen the text for those things, and then give the user an idea of what he/she is in for. This would just be an extension, an elaboration of genre and its conventions. Totally doable given the pace of progress in IT.

Neither the media producer not the user wants too much of a chance of displeasure. They wouldn't want you to go elsewhere for media and you don't want to waste your time with displeasure. And yet some risk seems necessary. We seem to need to cede control, to some degree, at some times.

How curious it is that we spend time and money on something that might give us displeasure. Is this an acknowledgement of the quicksilver nature of human desire, or is this a failure of the media market to accurately inform the consumer whether or not the product is suited for a particular context? Obviously, its a large question, one hopefully fitting for a dissertation. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go watch the Celts play the Magic in game 1 of a playoff series. Sports is kind of the apotheosis of the uncertainly entertaining media experience. The Celts could win a quadruple overtime game, yielding a transcendent pleasure for me, or it could be a close loss for the Celts, yielding another evening of ennui. The choice is most certainly not mine.