A casual community for people with ADHD
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I don't mind watching movies, but it's really hard for me to DECIDE to watch a movie.
If someone asks if I want to watch a movie, the time commitment makes me say no (unless it's something I've REALLY wanted to see), but I'll happily agree to watch a TV show and still end up watching 3 hours or more worth of episodes.
I came here to say the same thing. It's especially bad with streaming services. Row and column after row and column of options is overwhelming.
My wife is in charge of the remote for exactly that reason. I trust her judgement and I don't waste 2 hours scrolling through nothing.
Oh, a new symptom. I was wondering why I was doing that. Also watching dozens of Crunchyroll series at the same time.
This is what it's like for me too, especially now, like @[email protected] said in their comment, that movies seem to be longer now.
I've got loads of movies at home or on streaming services that I want to watch, but because so many are over two hours long, and essentially have a ritual around them of getting your drinks and snacks together and doing nothing else, I don't bother putting them on. I'll sit there for hours and watch something short like Futurama though.
I've even got to the stage where if an episode of something is longer than about 45 minutes, I struggle to decide to watch that too.
Normal enough for adhd that it was even one of my assessment questions!
I have a hard time watching stuff without also doing other stuff. like posting here. watching kickass. and doing housework.
I have always had zero trouble warching engaging movies, especially if they move at a decent pace or the slowness builds up anticipation. I still have trouble keeping track of character names and sometimes forget the details, but staying engaged is often easy.
A boring movie though, I can watch for 30 minutes and not remember anything that happened because my mind wandered. Basically the movie or show version of realizing you weren't paying attention to the last 10 pages in a book.
I use VLC and watch at double speed for most things. Honestly I just skip movies and TV mostly but the stuff I do watch is at double speed for most things, sometimes 1.5x because people look weird moving fast when they are doing action scenes.
Now podcasts and audio books on the other hand are very amenable to increased speeds. The narrator increasing the speed just increases the rate of intake, the mental simulation is still at a reasonable speed, just less time waiting.
Does anyone know why the double speed thing works? It's very effective for me too, I usually keep video at 1.5x often will have to jump it up to 2x to be able to handle it
I can only speak for myself but if I have a fast enough input my spare resources are low, so I can't think about something else easily. This means I don't find something more interesting or forget what I am doing. I think neurotypical people enjoy pacing in a way I find impossible. They like the anticipation, the waiting can build the experience, whereas my internal systems just get hired and drop the boring thing rather than building anticipation.
My time limit is about two hours. Anything more than that and I start getting bored, distracted and twitchy
I've never had trouble staying engaged with something I actually like and want to do. I will fall asleep if I don't have my narcolepsy meds and I'm trying to do something I'm not truly interested in, yet can binge watch something I'm truly hooked on, into the wee hours, even without the meds.
My advice, start paying more attention to the things you are interested in and stop trying to be interested in things once you realize it. There's no such thing as superiority of any entertainment or hobby over another, yet so many people shit all over themselves because they get it in their head that their interests are somehow wrong. Not liking something that everyone else does is fine, liking something no one else does is fine. Strive to be you, if you can't focus on any movies you're probably not watching movies you're interested in. Maybe you aren't interested in any movies at all, plenty of people just don't get poems, paintings, music, literature, beer, wine, shoe culture, car culture...
Neurotypicals have the ability to be at peace with being bored, so much so that it's called a disorder when someone can't sit still and suck it up when the shit being served is just not interesting (to them). You literally have to smoke weed to attain that same level of apathy.
Lots. I also feel like movies have gotten significantly longer over time. An hour and a half used to be the norm, now everything consists of two 3hr movies.
I watched "Everything Everywhere All at Once". But I watched parts of it while doing other things over the space of 2 years.
I honestly watch about 1 or 2 movies per year.
Sometimes I break movies up into multiple days of watching.
i only watch movies, or any fiction on tv, if someone insist me to do it
I'm always doing something else while watching a movie. I often rewind 30 seconds because I missed something important. But I find most movies have so much that I don't care about... So I focus on whatever else until I realize that I've missed something.
Depends, usually I'm 100% fine if I'm in a cinema. At home completely fine unless I'm not feeling the movie. I don't think I pull the trigger to watch something unless I'm absolutely into the idea which helps I think.
Keeping focus for a whole movie can be tough yeah.
it works way better if i've taken my meds( huge suprise, i know :D) and even better in a cinema opposed to watching on tv or phone, i guess the big screen and proper sound system are just more engaging and there is less distraction.
If i watch a movie at home i often do it by watching it in like 30 minute episodes, because otherwise i end up rewinding multiple times anyway and that's frustrating, so i rather take a break from it if my brain won't cooperate.
I can’t do it. I have to be actively making decisions and having agency in my entertainment. I end up playing video games, or board games.
(The board games I end up playing are usually the sorts of solitaire board games with a huge campaign and a grand sweeping narrative. My favorite board game of all time is Etherfields, for example.)
I minored in Film Studies in college and never had a problem, these days its a lot more difficult, cant decide if my symptoms changed over the course of 15 years or if its the advent of smart phones and growth of the internet over that time.
Some films have slow pacing, and I struggle to pay attention. Most of the time I watch at 1.25x speed.
The last movie I watched to completion was Star Wars Episode 5 with no less than three attempts. It's really hard.
i do with movies.. and tv and books. i have bunches that i've only ever started and never gotten through.
but every now and then (maybe a couple times a year), i'll get super zoned-in and watch several in a row.. like every jurassic park or every indiana jones.
I just avoid movie genres that my ADHD brain will find boring. Which is pretty much just drama, romance and documentary type shit.
I am not liking the lack of comedies, or how action films have turned into essentially male dramas with no actual action.
Typically I get easily distracted or bored during movies. The only exception in recent years was Oppenheimer. It had such a fantastic pacing that the three hours rushed by and I didn't pick up my phone even once. It was incredible.
While we're here anyone wanna suggest attention grabbing movies? I'll start,
Faster (2010)
Infra-man is the last movie I was able to endure.
Yes. I've seen comically few movies in my life. Super common for me to not quite understand the plot of a movie especially if I don't get muh subtitles because I get too mentally distracted. With the help of meds, I can actually focus and understand movies as a sequence of events that are related to each other and tell a story lol. Otherwise the details can be lost on me. I prefer to read usually, since it can be done at my own pace and I can go back and reread if I feel I don't understand something
Watching with people, it's impossible to concentrate and a waste of time as nothing will sink in.
On my own it's usually easier, especially as it's going to be a movie I want to watch. I absolutely cannot watch stuff while high/intoxicated though, I'm far too easily distracted.
But there's always going to be a few that I just can't manage to sit through, no matter how much I'd like to. Watchmen I've tried a good few times to see over the years now and no, not happening, it's just too fucking long.
(Side note, I also have autism and there are some few films I have seen so many times, to the point where I know the scripts and recite along.)
Really depends on the movie for me. If it's something faster paced, has characters or themes are interesting or is visually very appealing I have no problem.
Being high helps too lol, though then I sometimes still get distracted if I suddenly wanna listen to some music
I tend to. The one exception is movies I have watched many times. I still enjoy those, but mostly because I don't have to pay close attention to know what is going on. I can watch my favorite parts and ignore the rest without getting confused.
I have a tower defense game on my phone I exclusively play when watching movies or shows socially. It gives me a puzzle to work on, but also time to watch the screen since there's waiting involved
Absolutely. Movies are often slow, and because they rely on visual storytelling more than tv, so I can't even be doing something else while watching them. A trick that worked for me was starting 15/20 minutes into the movie, that way stuff is actually happening rather than some slow setup, and I get the extra challenge of trying to figure out what's happening and what I've missed which keeps my brain busy. Then, if I enjoy the movie, I've got an extra 15 minutes to watch later as a bonus!
That's quite interesting because I experience something very similar but reversed. I enjoy watching movies sober, I am very particular with what I watch but if it's interesting I have no problem investing in the story. Whereas if I'm high, I generally only enjoy watching TV shows - my attention span becomes similarly episodic.