It seems that in today’s society, we blow through entertainment with a speed which barely allows for things like webseries, memes, and even television shows to hardly even be considered more than fads. The modern media user is so consumed with what is trending, that when popular shows end they are forgotten as fast as last Sunday’s lunch. I know this sounds sort of contradictory. Aren’t we living in the Golden Age of Television? Between HBO, Showtime, Starz and Netflix, we have seen some of the greatest stories ever written for screenplay come out in more or less the last decade. But it is the sheer amount of shows coming out, which continually raise the bar, that cause this ever seeking desire from the average consumer for a better show. Right now, everyone has their eyes on Game of Thrones and House of Cards. But previously it was Breaking Bad, and before that it was The Sopranos and The Wire. Not to mention True Detective has made a serious impact on the media scene recently as well. It is like there are so many options that no one is quite sure what to pay the most attention to, and there is the omnipresent looming promise of greater shows on the horizon.

For instance, let’s take Breaking Bad. Everyone was literally obsessed with this show. It broke ratings, and even while being a program produced through AMC, a basic cable show, it beat out True Detective and Game of Thrones in several categories at the Golden Globes. Both those shows had established actors in it, while Breaking Bad had the dad from Malcolm in the Middle and Aaron Paul, who was basically doing commercials and small time gigs up until that point. But after the show ended in September of 2013 (yes, there were all sorts of theories about the ending the massaged heart-broken fans, which kept Breaking Bad in our minds for a month or two after), basically the talk about the show ended as well. Everyone turned to the new season of Game Of Thrones, set to come out that spring. New Media has created such a hunger within the modern consumer that there seems to be a lack of permanence to the products it creates.

Another example would be the images used for memes. These days, my news feed on Facebook is littered with memes, due to a friend of mine feeling obligated to only post memes all day long (this has actually gathered him a rather large following, all his posts get twenty likes at least). However the memes that are posted are always different each time, some even coming in the form of videos. I was introduced to the meme as a few select images that got rotated around with new text on them to satirize a trending topic. There was the Willy Wonka sarcastic meme, the Good Guy Brad meme and the Bad Guy Carl meme (I don’t remember the exact names that went with the images, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about) and a few others. But now everyday I see a new meme. Particularly within black culture memes. Most of the memes feature an image of a black person with text, where before hand they were usually focusing around images of white people. This probably has to do with the immense popularity of black culture’s presence in New Media, especially in Vines, Memes, and Webseries. There is so much activity going on at once, that hardly anything gets the spotlight for very long. A meme’s popularity will last a month, while a television series might last as long as its seasons go for. Webseries last as long as they can maintain interesting content given their lack of funding.

The point is that the abundance of material coming through the lens of New Media is creating a vast consumerism that truly cannot be satisfied. We, the consumers, are beginning to think that the next show will have to jump the shark to beat out the last show. This creates an insatiable intake of media that will only grow more rampant as producers attempt to satisfy our thirsty brains.