Some viewers turn their fandom into obsessive, sports-like analysis of TV shows

The Atlantic

Chad Kultgen and Lizzy Pace, hosts of a Bachelor-related podcast, "hyperbinge" each episode at 2x speed to see if they could analyze the show statistically. Meanwhile, Jon Schneider of the Twitter account The SNL Network rewatches every sketch and tracks show-related data on a spreadsheet, including the number of appearances each cast member makes, to tweet out information such as how many times Pete Davidson has said “Live from New York!” "These intense TV watchers aren’t such a niche group; making leisure time productive has become a habit for many," says Shirley Li of these superfans. "Apps and sites such as Goodreads and Letterboxd encourage users to track and evaluate the books they read, the films they watch, and the music and podcasts they listen to, while those same forms of entertainment can be streamed at faster speeds. The rise of the attention economy, which encourages optimizing everything a person does toward efficiency, accelerated our tendency to engage with our hobbies in a worklike, data-driven way."