Nostalgia for Nothing: Making Sense of My Nightly Routine Watching "Seinfeld"

Exploring the allure of watching the same show every night before bed. Plus, the latest on the TikTok ban, Meta ads, and Paramount's shake-up.

Apr 30, 2024

This is Here Comes the Content, weekly in-depth analysis on social media and content marketing for creators and consumers alike.

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It’s been a busy week here as requests for interviews, freelance and consulting opportunities have all picked up. That’s a good thing, of course, but it has thrown me off my workflow a bit. 🙃

Last week’s “shorter newsletter” still wasn’t short enough, apparently. Gmail, in particular, likes to append long emails, so the result is that the end gets cut off. If you’ve never seen the Stock Up/ Stock Down or Recommendations sections at the bottom, be sure to check them out this time! I’ve made a concerted effort to cut content, this time totally removing the link dump. This is based on analytics on my end that show very few readers are clicking on these links. And if people aren’t clicking on them, I’m not sure they’re all that useful. Instead, I’ll continue providing some top stories from the week in the tl;dr section with added context and implications.

With that being said, let’s get into it!

- Brandon

Here Comes the Content

Serving up in-depth analysis on social media and content marketing for creators and consumers alike.

By Brandon Fleshman

📰 Top Stories tl;dr

Biden signs bill that would ban TikTok if ByteDance fails to sell the app
- We’re on step closer to a ban in the U.S., but TikTok vowed to challenge the "unconstitutional law" in court.
- What it means: A potential ban could disrupt marketing strategies, requiring a shift to alternative platforms or approaches to reach audiences.
Paramount CEO is out, replaced by trio of top executives
- Paramount Global has replaced Bob Bakish amid negotiations for a possible change in control with independent producer David Ellison, who may merge his company, Skydance Media, with Paramount.
- What it means: This change in leadership and potential merger could impact the types of content produced by Paramount, potentially influencing the availability and variety of movies and shows offered on its platforms.
Meta’s ‘set it and forget it’ AI ad tools are misfiring and blowing through cash
- Meta's automated ad platform, Advantage Plus, has been overspending ad budgets and failing to deliver results for businesses, leading to frustration among advertisers and a decline in confidence in Meta's transparency and support.
- What it means: Marketers relying on Meta's automated ad tools need to be cautious, as the platform's performance issues may lead to wasted ad spend and ineffective campaigns. This highlights the importance of monitoring and adjusting campaigns manually, despite the allure of automated solutions.

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Watching your favorite show before bed is still the premier TV-viewing experience—I don’t care what any doctor or meditation app tells me to the contrary. To the uninitiated, one study found that 52.7% of adults actually watch TV before bed to help them fall asleep, and this has only increased post pandemic. So, how are over half of adults drawn to this melatonin suppressant like moths to a blue light? It’s something I’ve often wondered about.

The common refrain is that we watch our favorite shows again and again before falling asleep because it is familiar content, meaning there are no surprises—we know what to expect and there’s comfort in that. I found myself fundamentally opposed to this theory. I’m no simpleton. I crave originality and novelty. So, I thought there had to be a more fitting reason why the late-night watch is so enjoyable.

My wife, Grace, and I tend to default to Seinfeld as part of our bedtime routine. We’ve subbed in The Office and Parks and Rec, but Seinfeld is peak nighttime TV for us. What’s unique about Jerry Seinfeld’s iconic sitcom, notoriously about “nothing,” is that I had never watched it growing up. I was one of those kids who was firmly in the Friends camp as far as NBC’s Must See TV programming. Most kids I knew supported one show—never both. Battle lines were drawn and I was going to ride or die with Ross and Rachel.

I’m actually glad I didn’t give Seinfeld a chance until I was grown. Friends was an adult show for kids, but Seinfeld is distinctly an adult show for adults. It was ahead of its time. The comedy is more nuanced. Given that it’s created by Larry David, it’s more cringe, and it takes a more crass, nihilistic, or even self-centered approach that likely wouldn’t have been funny to me as a kid but is right in my sweet spot now. Friends always ended on a heartwarming note. With Seinfeld, nothing mattered more than the comedy. The story had to be funny and relatable, but it didn’t have to impart any life lessons.

Besides the fact that Seinfeld might be the perfect sitcom and infinitely re-watchable, I wondered what made it ideal bedtime viewing. One theory is that we suffer from choice overload, or having too many options in our streaming world, so reruns are the easy and safe bet. True, but it doesn’t it feels deeper than that for me. It feels like a choice I make emotionally, not practically.

Maybe it’s escapism! Yeah, maybe, but isn’t all TV? Even reality TV can be an escape and a chance to switch your brain off. Maybe it’s the Mr. Rogers Effect! Sure, but it’s more than just a self-soothing routine. Maybe it’s nostalgia! Well, I can’t be nostalgic for a show I didn’t watch when it originally aired from 1989-98.

This search for answers was reinvigorated when I came across this great Twitter1 thread. Check out the full thread here since Astro Boy won’t let Substack embed tweets.

That’s when it hit me. It was indeed nostalgia that drew me to watching episodes of Seinfeld nightly, but not nostalgia for a show and where I was in my life when I first watched it, rather for a time depicted in the show. The 90’s—when I grew up. A simpler time with old, analog tech.

It made me wonder how many non-tech things stood out in Seinfeld as a sign of the 90’s. Here is my non-exhaustive list of things that feel foreign now in 2024, or things I was nostalgic for in various episodes:

S1E1 - Waiting to pick someone up at their airport gate, past security checkpoints
S1E5 - Reading a newspaper at a diner
S2E3 - Leaving a note for someone via hotel concierge
S2E4 - Mentions of Dockers and a Dockers commercial
S2E8 - Falling asleep during a show, waking up and having something else on the TV
S3E5 - Going to the library
S3E6 - Not being able to find your car in a busy parking garage
S3E10 - Paying with cash, being stranded without a ride home, getting lost without GPS
S3E11 - Using a car phone
S3E17 - The movie JFK
S3E23 - The show Murphy Brown
S4E1 - The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
S4E11 - JFK Jr. being a sex symbol
S5E2 - The OG cast of The Today Show
S5E10 - TV Guide and less-slim Al Roker
S5E22 - The show Live with Regis and Kelly
S6E8 - Caring about the Thanksgiving Day parade
S6E9 - The Steinbrenner Yankees
S6E16 - The show Melrose Place
S8E13 - Renting “staff picks” from a video store
S8E20 - The impending doom of The Millennium
S9E6 - The Merv Griffin Show
S9E17 - Bookstores
S9E18 - Arcade games like Frogger
S9E20 - Nuisances with laser pointers in movie theaters
MANY - Hanging out with friends, going to the movie theater, bad fashion

By most measures, humans have made their lives more efficient with advances in technology over the last 30 years. What I suspect happened is that, rather than basking in all this free time tech has enabled us to have now, we’ve found ways to fill that time with more work, more achievement, and more screens. All told, that means less time with other people and more time at least feeling busy.

Seinfeld is a show that’s focused on the friendships of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer. They have many acquaintances and an endless lineup of dates. They’re always doing something together. A show that’s actually about nothing would just be Jerry mindlessly scrolling on his phone while he laid on his couch.

When I watch Seinfeld, I yearn for a time before smartphones, Wi-Fi, and social media; a time when I wasn’t adulting, when all that mattered was your friends.

“It’s a way for you to keep a particular time of your life alive. Like a physical comfort in [the] form of warmth.”
- Dr. Nisha Khanna

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that a landline is superior to a cellphone, or that Blockbuster trumps Netflix, but there is something about that manual, tactile world that feels, oddly, more human. The post-Seinfeld world has seen one disruption after another, from crypto to AI. Our world is accelerating at such a mind-bending pace that it’s turned our brains to mush, making even 2008, one year after the release of the iPhone, feels barely recognizable today.

Like so many others, the pandemic was a trying time for me, and it just so happened to sync up with the birth of my son. As a result, the constant change, the unknown, the isolation—they took a toll. It put a strain on my relationships with friends and family. Obviously, watching Seinfeld has served as a reminder of how life used to be. People used to do things together. “We live[d] in a society!” as George would say.

I think Seinfeld cast itself as a show about “nothing,” in part, to differentiate itself from Friends. In actuality, Seinfeld is also about friends. It’s about family. It’s about getting out and doing things in the world. It’s about being unapologetically you with like-minded people who accept you as you are.

Much of the tech and social media that inundates our daily lives today obscures the importance of these things, but shows like Seinfeld give us a memory worth holding onto. It’s a world I prefer to reminisce on as I drift off to sleep rather than worrying what tomorrow might bring. That’s an explanation that fits for me.