Performing What We Consume

For the past month, I’ve been watching Netflix — something I rarely do. I don’t subscribe to entertainment platforms; I don’t binge shows; I don’t keep up. But this month, I scrolled, sampled, and let myself be carried through the endless conveyor belt of content.

And somewhere between dating shows, scripted drama, and predictable plots, I realized something unsettling:
so much of what we call “entertainment” isn’t reflecting life — it’s scripting it.

The stories may look different, but the messaging is the same.
A dating show in Los Angeles echoes one in Brazil, which mirrors one filmed in South Africa. And the formula hardly shifts: alcohol, tension, betrayal, temptation, chaos.
Reality TV is not reality — it’s a machine of engineered dysfunction dressed as modern love.

What surprised me wasn’t the drama.
It was the consistency.

Why do all these shows rely on the same emotional ingredients?
Why is alcohol a permanent character?
Why is infidelity an expectation rather than an exception?
Why do “bachelor parties” across movies and series behave like a global ritual of self-sabotage?

You begin to wonder whether we are watching stories
—or receiving instructions.

The Scripts We Absorb

Most of us believe we’re immune to influence.
We think we’re merely observers — witnesses to entertainment, untouched by it.

But human beings imitate far more than we admit.
We absorb what we watch.
We internalize what we repeatedly see.
Eventually, we begin to perform the stories we consume.

Not consciously.
Not like actors.
More like people responding to a script they didn’t realize they memorized.

You see it in language.
You see it in the expectations couples carry into relationships.
You see it in how people imagine love, conflict, masculinity, femininity, celebration, success.
So many of our behaviors look less like organic human choices
and more like rituals borrowed from screens.

A bachelor party, for example, is no longer a personal celebration — it has become a performance of what the movies say a “last night of freedom” should look like.
Drunkenness.
Recklessness.
Moral amnesia.

Stories repeated often enough become templates.

Content as Culture

We often speak of culture shaping entertainment, but the opposite is increasingly true.
The global content industry operates on formula: if one storyline holds attention, it gets replicated across countries, languages, and platforms.

The result?
A world where millions of people who’ve never met
are performing the same lifestyles,
the same jokes,
the same mistakes,
the same “normal.”

Not because it reflects who they are,
but because it’s what they’ve been shown.

Content becomes culture.
Culture becomes behavior.
Behavior reinforces the formula.

A perfect cycle.

The Danger of Repetition

Repetition does something subtle: it turns the unusual into the expected.
It normalizes what should still make us pause.
It makes chaos look like excitement and irresponsibility look like freedom.
It convinces us that everyone is living like this — so why not us?

We do not simply watch stories.
We learn from them.
We imitate them.
We rehearse them privately until they become natural.

Entertainment is not passive.
It is persuasive.

A Small Personal Reflection

Because I rarely watch, my vision wasn’t softened by familiarity.
I saw the repetition for what it was — not creativity, not realism, not culture,
but programming.

A gentle, subtle kind.
The kind that doesn’t coerce, but suggests.
The kind that doesn’t instruct, but normalizes.

And I could not help but wonder:
How much of our daily life is truly ours —
and how much of it is borrowed?

Maybe This Is the Real Question

We often ask:
“Does entertainment reflect society?”

But maybe the more honest question is:
“How much of society is now performing entertainment?”

Because if stories shape our desires, our fears, our habits, and even our celebrations,
then the line between consumption and performance becomes thin.

Invisible, even.

And maybe it’s time to pay attention to what we’re rehearsing without knowing.

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