All good things must come to an end, and new data has revealed that a beloved measure of human achievement is in the midst of its swan song performance: Scientists have confirmed that the golden age of streaming will be humanity’s final golden age of any kind.
Hey, we had some real banger golden ages back there. At least they’re going out on a high note!
Incredible advances in the world of streaming have allowed us to enjoy fantastic wealths of high-quality content like never before, and according to an interdisciplinary panel of researchers studying human progress, streaming’s current golden age will in fact be the last such period of excellence and innovation our species ever sees in any field. Sure, we’d hoped we might get another golden age of rail travel, perhaps some cool futuristic golden ages of cybernetics and intergalactic exploration, but the scientists’ projections make it crystal clear that streaming is the end of the line where eras of peak human achievement are concerned. Of course, things like Broadway musicals and medicine and the internet will still continue to exist in one form or another—they’ll just never experience another distinct period in which they’re particularly good.
However bittersweet this news is, you’ve gotta hand it to the golden age of streaming for being such an amazing last hurrah to go out on. Just think: Today, a person can hop on the Criterion Channel app to watch a superb restoration of Elem Klimov’s 1985 Soviet anti-war masterpiece Come and See, and then seamlessly navigate over to Netflix to enjoy the action-packed spectacle of the phenomenal Stone Ocean arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. And they can do it from their couch, their bed, the bathroom, wherever! Want to rewatch Paddington? It’s a button press away. Want recommendations for shows similar to The Righteous Gemstones? The HBO Max algorithm’s got you covered. Modern viewers have at their fingertips a robust archive of classic film and television as well as a constant deluge of must-watch original programming, and while we would have loved for humanity to get a few more golden ages in, the golden age of streaming certainly would have been a tough act to follow.
At least we’ll always have the memories of heightened cultural and scientific output!
Though human civilization is definitely going to be all downhill after the golden age of streaming, the scientists made sure to point out that their findings only apply to humanity and don’t rule out the possibility of other non-human golden ages. Sure, we might be heading into an era of terminal decline characterized by creative mediocrity and technological stagnancy ourselves, but you can’t act like spotted lanternflies aren’t riding pretty high right now. Rising sea levels too could be considered a kind of golden age for the ocean, at least in terms of pure size. And even some long-forgotten diseases like polio are roaring back for a 21st century renaissance. So things fizzling out for humanity won’t be the end of golden ages entirely, it’s more like we’re just passing the torch.
Well, having periods of extraordinary human achievement sure was nice while it lasted. Make sure you enjoy the golden age of streaming as much as you can while you’ve got it, because once it ends in a couple years, that’s it for us!
