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Notes -
So there's the phenomenon of "hate watching," where people watch a movie or show they know they'll hate, looking for things to be offended by and get angry about. But is there a term for the similar phenomenon of people watching a movie or show they know they'll hate… because it's popular with others, and thus they're afraid of social consequences for not watching?
It's not quite "peer pressure," it's not exactly "fear of missing out." More a "fear of not fitting in." This sort of media consumption habit is usually associated with teenagers (particularly teen girls), but I've also encountered it occasionally with conservative Christian commentators. The sort who will complain about how everything Hollywood makes ranges from leftist propaganda to Satanic filth, and yet watch every popular new release; and when asked if they hate it so much, why don't they just stop watching, find the idea of not being * au courant* with pop culture horrifying, because then what will people who aren't fellow conservative Christians think? (What if your liberal coworkers are discussing the latest episode of Euphoria, and they ask you what you thought? You can't just tell them you didn't watch it' or worse, that you don't watch TV at all. How can you establish yourself as a fellow smart, cultured intellectual, and not get dismissed as an ignorant Bible-thumping hick (like all the ignorant Bible-thumping hicks back home that you worked so hard to escape) if you don't force yourself to watch multiple episodes of Transparent?)
This is exactly my experience, but with sports! I don't enjoy watching sports, I don't care who wins or loses, but I know that 90% of the discussion at Thanksgiving will revolve around the Notre Dame football games so I have to choose to either watch (the highlights) or be utterly out of the conversation loop.
This is not a new problem. I fully suspect that it's what drove the earlier generation to watch the nightly news, since otherwise you're out of the water-cooler chit-chat loop. (How far back do I have to go for a water-cooler chit-chat to still be a thing? 90's?)
Before 1890s, probably. It sounded like everyone was reading Dickens for water cooler chit chat reasons.
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