Nothing is more humiliating than being ridiculed by an inanimate object. One moment, you’re crying (again) over Love On The Spectrum, ruining your third t-shirt in four seasons, and the next you’re being berated by your television screen as everyone’s favorite streaming service asks, “Are you still watching?”
The pop up is a callous reminder of the mountain of undone tasks upon that morning’s horizon. But how can I do anything productive unless I know whether Connor and Georgie found neurodivergent bliss?
What I jokingly call a passive-aggressive message is simply something Netflix sends automatically after three episodes, or 90 minutes, of uninterrupted television. If you’re watching on something other than a television, the dreaded question will appear after three episodes if a viewer hasn’t used “any video player controls.” Of course, sometimes it just feels like the message intuitively appears at the peak of my Sunday night depression binge-watch sessions.
Netflix, for its part, isn’t shaming its subscribers out of some perverse sense of schadenfreude. Instead, the California-based streamer puts forth two reasons behind those prompts. The first is that Netflix doesn’t want you to lose your place in its programming, as few entertainment experiences are more frustrating than waking up during the series finale and getting spoiled.
The second might come as a surprise to some viewers. According to Netflix’s support page, the company doesn’t want its subscribers to “use internet data when you’re not actually watching a TV show or movie.” Translation: Netflix likely doesn’t want its viewers to waste precious bandwidth while they’re counting sheep.
The problem has plagued the company since its early days, and even saw it get in hot water for throttling stream quality. It’s a by-product of Netflix’s massive subscriber base, and ensuring people don’t run The Great British Bakeoff on a perpetual loop is just one of several fixes.
Luckily, ending the “Are you still watching?” cycle is easy. According to the company’s help page, you can put a stop to the message by disabling your account’s autoplay feature. To do so, simply go to your account page, select your profile, and go to the “Playback settings” tab under “Preferences.” From there, toggle off the “Autoplay next episode” setting.
If you’re using Netflix’s phone or tablet app, visit the “My Netflix” tab in the bottom righthand corner. From there, select “manage profiles” and follow the same procedure to your profile settings. Disable the “autoplay next episode” setting, click “done,” and voilà, you’ll never be accosted with your reckless viewing habits again. Now you’ll only have yourself to blame if you snore through the latest season of Squid Game.