Stop Encouraging Binge Watching

Prepare yourselves: Netflix will release House of Cards Season 2 on Valentine's Day. For fans of the first season, this means a sense of excitement mingled with foreboding — because of course, Netflix will release all 13 hour-long episodes at once. Subscribers will have to make a decision soon: do they blow the whole weekend of Feb. 15 to 16 on the show, or do they risk the slings and arrows of outrageous spoilers?

It's surprising how fast we have entered into a world where binge viewing of an entire season is not only the norm, it is encouraged. It's encouraged by Netflix and Hulu Plus, both of which offer versions of their apps (on the web, on the iPad and on Roku, at least) that auto-play the next episode as soon as you get to the credits for the last one. (Netflix calls the feature Post Play.) Read more...