{"id":5229,"date":"2026-01-20T08:36:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/matt-damon-says-what-we-already-know-about-netflix-and-our-liquefied-brains\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T08:36:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:36:58","slug":"matt-damon-says-what-we-already-know-about-netflix-and-our-liquefied-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/matt-damon-says-what-we-already-know-about-netflix-and-our-liquefied-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Damon Says What We Already Know About Netflix and Our Liquefied Brains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/app\/uploads\/2023\/03\/3de43108876ec4e61c409ec81e24964b-1024x576.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>We already know it\u2019s true, but we <em>really<\/em> hear it when it\u2019s coming from the mouths of our beautiful Boston Boys: Our phones have pureed our brains into such runny applesauce that we can\u2019t even watch a dang movie anymore. Damon and Affleck are geezers now and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n<p>During a co-interview last week with his soulmate Ben Affleck on The Joe Rogan Experience, Matt Damon described conversations about storytelling with Netflix executives in which the executives said, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue, because people are on their phones while they\u2019re watching.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t trick yourself into digesting this quote like it\u2019s about some other yahoo and let yourself off the hook. He is talking about you, the person reading this, probably while half-watching <em>The Rip<\/em>, the Netflix movie Damon was promoting when he said it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<div class=\"not-prose video-container\"><noscript><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Rip | Official Trailer | Netflix\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/yeR5bcbRPak?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>After all, the percentage of people who were on their phones while watching TV was as high as 94% according to a 2019 study, and 2019 means pre-Covid. There can be little doubt the pandemic finished the job and made the dual-screen experience the universal norm. <\/p>\n<p>Netflix certainly knows this, and it\u2019s front-of-mind for them when they manufacture their streaming entertainment products. Last year in an essay for N+1, Will Tavlin claimed that screenwriters who worked with Netflix told him basically the same thing\u2014specifically that Netflix has a pattern of saying things like, \u201chave this character announce what they\u2019re doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.\u201d So Tavlin documented what it actually sounds like when a Netflix movie fulfills this corporate requirement. You end up with hilariously expository lines like this, from <em>Irish Wish<\/em> starring Lindsay Lohan: \u201cI admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn\u2019t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I\u2019m marrying Paul Kennedy.\u201d Her love interest says later in that conversation: \u201cThat will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I\u2019m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>It feels like I could just jump into the movie right there, presumably at the start of the third act, and understand pretty much everything that\u2019s at stake.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s edifying, then, to contrast this truth bomb about today\u2019s smartphone decadence with Affleck\u2019s vision of how much more attentive yokels like you and me were in the good old days of The Movies\u2014viewed exclusively through his sepia-toned nostalgia goggles. In the Rogan interview Affleck claims that \u201cEvery American went to the movies every week, basically. But it was because it was that or watch the cows walk by.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Affleck, whose fast-talking and wild gesticulations dominate much of the interview, is a bit introspective about his tendency toward nostalgia: \u201cI always feel like complaining about it makes me feel like one of these guys that was like [slips into Jimmy Stewart voice] \u2018when I was a boy, we didn\u2019t used to have these phones. The fuck are all these phones? And everybody\u2019s looking\u2026\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To Damon, movies are \u201cmore like going to church.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou show up at an appointed time. It doesn\u2019t wait for you. It\u2019s versus the experience of watching at home, I think. You\u2019re watching in a room, the lights are on, other shit\u2019s going on, the kids are running around, the dogs are running around, whatever it is. It\u2019s just a very different level of attention that you\u2019re willing to or that you\u2019re able to give to it.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Speaking for myself, I hear Damon loud and clear. This weekend I\u2019m crating my dog, hiring a sitter, and going to church. This will be the liturgy. Amen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We already know it\u2019s true, but we really hear it when it\u2019s coming from the mouths of our beautiful Boston Boys: Our phones have pureed our brains into such runny applesauce that we can\u2019t even watch a dang movie anymore. Damon and Affleck are geezers now and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. During a co-interview [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3de43108876ec4e61c409ec81e24964b.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}