Death of anticipation - a Strange Thing?

Recently my family joined millions of others around the world in binge watching Stranger Things 2 on Netflix. A couple of things struck me as we ploughed through the hours of entertaining viewing.

First, when you watch that much of a series in one go, you start to see the patterns in the script-writing and storytelling emerge to the point it becomes quite predictable. My kids were pre-empting what would happen not just in the next few scenes, but whole episodes in advance.

It occurred to me that this happened less when I used to have to wait from one week to the next to see the next episode. Enough time lapsed for my brain to become sufficiently overloaded with other stuff that I built up some sense of anticipation about the next episode and what might happen.

When I suggested to the family that we space out the viewing pattern a bit so that we might anticipate it and perhaps even enjoy it more, I was met with mostly blank stares and mild abuse. What kind of idiot would want to delay the experience when you can get it in one hit, or as I choose to control it? And part of the enjoyment factor seems to be the predictability of it and therefore the death of anticipation.

I find this has crept into our broader consumer lives too. We really don’t like having to anticipate the chance that a delivery or service may not happen at the time and place we want it to. We want continuous verification - the ability to see what’s going on right now with our delivery;  predictability - having an accurate and narrowing arrival window; and control - the ability to change our mind of how, where and when we’ll take delivery right up until the last moment.

Is it a Strange Thing that the rise in streaming content at will is also impacting on our expectations of our service providers?