Ah, the bathroom: The one public place where you’re allowed to call “Sanctuary!” and just lock a door, relax, and breathe a (shallow) sigh of relief. And hey, why not take off your jacket, while you’re at it? Kick off your shoes. (Note: Don’t actually do this unless you really trust the bathroom in question.) Maybe watch some TV.
That last suggestion comes courtesy of Netflix, which issued a press release today about people’s public streaming habits, using a recent survey to compile all sorts of juicy tidbits about our increasing willingness to use the company’s fake worlds to block out the horrific real one in which we’re normally forced to live. Among the data points on offer: The news that 37 percent of people admitted to bingeing a show while they were ostensibly at work, and another 12 percent confessed to watching something like Stranger Things or Orange Is The New Black while seated in the welcoming arms of the public restroom.
Netflix commissioned the study as a way to promote its video downloading feature, which allows phones to store TV shows and films for later, data-free, hypothetically toilet-adjacent viewing. But the company also seems weirdly proud of its Black Mirror-ification of human social mores, as it reports that a mere 22 percent of respondents expressed embarrassment when someone “caught” them watching something in public. (To be fair, though, there’s no data on how much overlap there is between those moments of public humiliation, and the ones where someone was watching The Great British Bake Off while sitting on the can.)