The advent of binge-watching has bred the cultural phenomenon of hate-watching, but what is hate-watching? According to Merriam-Webster, it means “to watch and take pleasure in laughing at or criticizing (a disliked television show, movie, etc.).”
Now, this isn’t a new thing and has been around since the early 2010s. Yet, the act of hate-watching can actually benefit what is being hate-watched, because despite reasons for watching, they are still boosting the viewer count. This frequently leads to content renewal, or even sequel creations.
A great example of this is Netflix’s “Emily in Paris.” With a current 63 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it mainly received pretty mediocre ratings and reviews, which made its subsequent two Golden Globe nominations quite controversial. The show blew up on Twitter but, overwhelmingly, the tweets were not positive. Still, since the show was trending, more and more people watched to see what all the fuss was about and found they couldn’t turn it off.
Twitter user @allisonantram put it best in a tweet that read, “last night I set out to hate-watch 1 (one) episode of emily in paris and instead watched the ENTIRE THING IN ONE SITTING; the self-loathing today cannot be overstated.”
All of the attention that was gathered around the show actually led to the announcement a month after it aired that it was going to be getting a second season.
By far, “Emily In Paris” is not the only example. There is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to hate-watching and lists shows as examples, including “13 Reasons Why,” “Love Island” and more.
A show that can arguably also fall in this category is “Riverdale.” The first season got rave reviews, but years later, it has become increasingly more obvious that the writers are just spitballing every episode. The show has become a meme on the internet for its cringy writing and unrealistic storylines.
Many of its stars have even publicly made fun of their characters and storylines in various interviews, but it remains popular because people want to see just how bad it keeps getting. This hasn’t slowed it down and just last month it was renewed for a sixth season, causing outrage among social media users citing “better” shows that had been cancelled while “Riverdale” remains on air.
There is a very clear distinction to consumers between hate-watching a show and having it be a guilty pleasure. Guilty pleasures usually consist of TV that is considered “trashy” or “low-brow,” mainly reality TV, meaning that it’s in the show’s nature to be a guilty pleasure. Shows like those in “The Real Housewives” franchise know that the storylines and the drama can be absolutely ridiculous, but that is what it promotes. They don’t pretend to be groundbreaking, so a viewer can take it at face value and still enjoy it. Whereas usually shows or movies that are hate-watched are promoted to be great but frequently fall far from expectations.
Hate-watching is immediately in contrast to the goals of the viewers. They hate the form of media but every time they watch it, they are actually supporting it. It begs the question, isn’t it better to just not even watch it at all and stick to reading the bad tweets and reviews about it?