Julian Schmidli objected to me using the term “bingeing” when it comes to pop culture and I agree with him. After all, I watched all seven seasons of The West Wing in what must have been two months and when I started watching Battlestar Galactica, I didn’t fare much better than these characters in Portlandia. Who am I to declare this frantic state a disorder?
Of course, the argument that the consumption is voluntary – that we want it that way – is one that every addict has probably made at some point. Nonetheless, I did try to find a word that more accurately describes the joyful surrender to “a world, a narrative, a feeling”. On my little Merriam Webster- journey, I learned quite a lot. There’s “to glut”, which means “to fill especially with food to satiety”, but which fails to eliminate the moral component, what with all the religious connotations. “To swill” has the benefit of sounding funny, but I think the etymology has something to do with feeding pigs, so maybe that’s not ideal, either. I tried to think of a swanky neologism, too, because that’s what could get us FAME and MONEY and GIRLS… or an entry on urbandictionary.com. Unfortunately, they all sounded silly. So I’d like to propose a classic: “To indulge” is one of my favorite words in the English language anyways, probably because it does exactly what Julian is talking about – it gives some sort of agency back to all the people with a bacchanalian streak. Plus, you can “indulge in something”, but you can also “indulge someone” or “ask to be indulged”. I haven’t found a German equivalent yet, if any of the language nerds out there want to take a shot at that? Either way, thank you Julian, for reminding me to be unapologetic about my indulgence in pop culture (or anything else for that matter)!