The end credits are still rolling when I open up my JustWatch app to mark Luca Guadagnino’s seductive psychodrama A Bigger Splash as “Seen”, complete with satisfying green tick. I click on my Letterboxd account to do the same, logging the date I watched it, before scrolling back and finding my sense of achievement disintegrate into guilt that I have only managed to watch a measly two films in the whole of April.
I am one of millions for whom religiously tracking their cultural intake has become as instinctive as recording their steps, workouts, calorie count or periods. Letterboxd – dubbed “the social network for film-lovers”, who can log, review and discuss films with other members – recently hit 6 million members. The Amazon-owned GoodReads, which has been doing the same for books for the past 15 years, has a community of 140 million, with 5.1 million thus far pledged to take part in its 2022 Reading Challenge in which users set a target number of books to read over 12 months. Meanwhile, IMDb has more than 1 billion user reviews logged. Like wellness before it, cultural consumption has become yet another opportunity for us to measure, analyse and optimise our lives using cold, hard data.
