Tracking Media
Today I am drowning in a flood of Spotify Wrapped posts. Top 5 artists and favorite genres and listening ages fill my feeds. I can't help but think about how we constantly track all the media we consume. I want to share three different trains of thought with you.
Stats Obsession
I love statistics. I love statistics about my life. I want to know exactly how many hours I spent last week listening to music. I want to see what genre I most listen to at 7:30 AM on weekdays. This information doesn't really impact anything or lead to any kind of changes, but seeing it almost makes you feel like you're doing something useful.
I think analytical people are naturally drawn to statistics, especially when thinking about goal-setting. I'll talk about an example from my own life. Every year (it seems) I set a goal to read more books. The clearest metric is simply the number of books completed in a year. It is the most natural thing in the world to log every book I read on Goodreads.
But this ends up being a trap as the metric starts to become the goal. In my own experience, I found myself rushing through tiny novellas in order to meet my book goal for the year. The real goal was not to read X books this year, but to change something about my life. Clearly this goal was not met, but I definitely felt good looking back over all the books I logged.
Expression
Another aspect of the idea of logging the media we consume is that many of these platforms have a social aspect to them. My profile represents some part of myself. The media I consume and enjoy is important to me, and it can start to feel like cultivating your profile is also important. When I give a new friend my Last.fm, Letterboxd, and Goodreads accounts, I want them to see all the cool stuff that I like.
The social aspect reframes media logging services as another form of expression. At best we simply log the items that we want to be part of our persona. At worst we allow the perception of the media we consume to dictate what media we should consume. As another example from my own life, I will sometimes listen to guilty pleasure songs on platforms that do not automatically sync to any tracking services. I like this song, but I don't want others to see that I like the song.
With that said, there is still space for private consumption. Not everything we engage with needs to be logged publicly. The issue is that we should not stop ourselves from consuming media simply because of how it would be perceived.
Pseudo-reflection
The final point is that looking at logged data about media consumption can make you feel like you are reflecting on what you have consumed. Instead of genuine reflection on trends in media consumption or the actual media itself, we are fed auto-generated statistics. It is very inorganic. We should be engaging more directly with what we consume.
My previous blog post is one way to begin to engage. Adding in some structure or timing constraints is a good way to break through perfectionism and simply start thinking. I remember the movie much better after completing the exercise. More importantly than the facts of the movie is that I can remember my reaction to different parts of the movie. I have found some similar ideas while writing reviews for new albums for the radio station I DJ at. I both listen with more intention, and then remember my reactions to songs and themes much better.
I have not had a chance to explore higher-order trends yet. Some form of logging is required, but maybe moving reflections closer to the log can provide context. This may be a good idea to test out.
Conclusions
I conclude with the Emerson quote: "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." There is truth in the sentiment. When we can easily log every piece of media we consume it is still important to remember that the act of consumption is not the end. I hope to try to consume media with more intention (when appropriate) in order to gain more value from the media, as well as insights about myself.