Choose Your Adventure: How TikTok detectives are killing TV
Are TikTok detectives the problem, or are we?
MØRNING. It's official: fandom has become more important than entertainment itself. When tuning into the latest TV shows, the social and algorithmic rewards of participating in deep-cut TikTok theories, think-pieces and dramatic episode explained videos, have replaced the joys of casual viewership. For this week’s newsletter, MØRNING Creative Strategist Zac Baker decodes how fan theory is shifting our realities…
WTHELLY. R has been going on in TV land? After what has been one of the best starts to a television year in memory, one thing stood in the way of it all. You guessed it…The Internet. A year that's seen Severance's labyrinthine corridors and The White Lotus' sun-drenched debauchery morph from Monday night entertainment into communal puzzles to be picked apart, then reassembled frame by frame.
The viewing experience is now a battlefield of competing interpretations, forcing viewers to be less concerned with absorption than authorship, desperate to crack the code before the credits roll. Though in our hunger to uncover meaning, we’ve stripped away the very magic that drew us to these narratives in the first place.
Over the years, the online post-episode debrief has morphed from content for Letterboxd users to an unavoidable public spectacle. While we all enjoy unpacking with friends during those seemingly eternal week-long waits between episodes (or less), or the satisfaction of a self-imposed digital detox to avoid spoilers, it's become virtually impossible to escape the influence of TikTok detectives and X-oxogossip accounts. Now, the viewing experience is both a race to avoid spoilers, and to preserve the sanctity of one's uncontaminated thoughts and theories.
However, this phenomenon isn't new but rather evolved, finding its start in humble WordPress blog origins and Reddit threads. These digital spaces helped foster authentic community, and provided a space for fans to co-create worlds around characters and construct future narrative foundations, building the lore that fuels a show's icon status. Now, our newest fan theory hub, TikTok, is flooded with repetitive observations and rage-baiting theories elevated to prophetic insight through clever editing and dramatic voiceovers.
It’s true some theories demonstrate genuine brilliance, the kind of narrative architecture that would make showrunners envious – like this video decoding Mr Milchick’s severed status in Severance. However, others exist in realms so divorced from their subject, that a collective dissonance has started to happen. Comment sections fill with variations of the same question: "Are we watching the same show?"
There’s an aching performativity in this need to broadcast our theories into the void. To be the first to declare what lies beyond Severance’s enigmatic boundaries, or forcing secret agendas onto The White Lotus’ wardrobe decisions. A once simpler pleasure now feels incomplete without excavating deeper meaning for our own algorithmic or social validation – when these narratives might reasonably offer nothing more than their surface.
This phenomenon spread beyond narrative boundaries, when viewers created empty fiction from the real lives of White Lotus co-stars Walton Goggins and Amie Lou Wood, speculating about off-screen animosity that proved completely fabricated. This hunger for drama has become so insatiable that it devours reality itself, transforming actors into unwilling characters in fan-generated storylines.
In a recent interview dismantling said rumours, Wood observes, "Eventually I just started to sit back and watch these people making something out of absolutely nothing." Despite its mixed reviews, Black Mirror's Bandersnatch experiment now feels less like an experiment and more like prophecy. Viewers are no longer content to receive stories but demand to shape them, to bend and reimagine narratives to their own desires.
One potential reason for this phenomenon is the inevitable conclusion of niche interests becoming mass. In a sea of big budget blockbusters, IP Maxxing, spin-offs and (un)limited seasons, levels of storytelling previously reserved for art house cinema are infiltrating mainstream platforms, bringing an expectation of subtext and symbolism.
To meet this new cinematic offering, and prove ourselves the most astute consumers, we've replaced casual viewing with Substacks, and casual forums with detailed ‘episode explained’ videos. The cult of interpretation has replaced the cult of story, and somewhere in that transition, the joys of entertainment for entertainment’s sake got lost.
Today, the purity of watching something away from the internet's noise is an enviable experience. Imagine starting Succession this summer, divorced from timeline theories. Or discovering Better Call Saul on a whim. Fellow MØRNING Creative Strategist, Ede Dugdale-Close, recently mentioned starting The White Lotus from season 1, and I experienced a new kind of jealousy, revelling in her ability to have that rare untainted, theory-free experience.
Ultimately, the monthly streaming subscription now has a darker, existential cost: the surrendering of one's uncontaminated perspective. Arguably, the ease of algorithmic discovery has fine-tuned our knowledge of a broad range of genres and shows. However, it also threatened the art of intentional curation and tastebuilding – as our desire to discover shows outside of the current discourse, or slowly developing our personal likes and dislikes through trial and error, declines. Replaced by the efficiency of data-driven suggestions, that keep us eternally scrolling within our predetermined comfort zones. So how can we resist the algorithm's final boss content detectives, and begin to regain our original thoughts?
DVD box sets are regaining popularity among younger generations, hungry for new ways to enjoy being offline
Girls (2012) and Skins (2007) have resurfaced, becoming a new cross-generational point of connection, as modern shows draw on iconic pop culture references to capture young people, nostalgic for the past
The recent loss of icon and auteur David Lynch saw Mubi acquire the rights to their first TV show on the platform, allowing audiences to revisit his timeless pre-algorithmic era hits, something we’re sure to see more of as platforms diversify their offerings
Akin to this article's title, the joy of entertainment is to Choose your adventure. Perhaps you live for the TikTok TV detectives and their theories. Or maybe now is finally the time to start that show you promised a friend you'd watch years ago. You are the main character, Bandersnatch your life.
That’s all for this week!
Words by Zac Baker. Cover image via @defianthellyna on X. Edit by Sui Donovan. Brought to you by @morning.fyi.
a) gosh this is good b) I am so glad Mad Men existed before 'the discourse' you speak of really took hold. What other TV shows would have been ruined by it I wonder...