WEALTH October 11, 2026 0 Comments

Unlocking the Hidden Goldmine: How Streaming Titans Are Fighting for Your Investment Dollar—and What It Means for Your Future Wealth

Isn’t it a strange paradox? We’re living in what many would call the best era ever — longer lives, safer jobs, better education — yet stress has somehow scaled Everest. After surviving the daily nightmare of the evening commute and doomscrolling through an Instagram algorithm built to spike your anxiety, you finally crash on the couch, only to find yourself rewatching The Office or Friends for the eighteenth time. Why? Because in a world overflowing with chaos — from housing shortages to soaring inflation — our brains crave the familiar like a life raft. This isn’t just laziness or lack of imagination; it’s a hardwired survival tactic called “emotional regulation through narrative certainty.” Sometimes, comfort means recycling old stories that soothe our frazzled nervous systems, while Hollywood, recognizing our collective frazzle, doubles down on sequels and superheroes to sell the psychological safety we so desperately seek. So, why gamble mental energy on new, complex plots when Batman’s predictable triumph over Gotham feels like a beacon of order? Join me as we unpack the curious rise of nostalgia as modern medicine for a stressed-out society — and what it means for our streaming habits and mental wellbeing. LEARN MORE

By any measure, we live in the best era. Life expectancy is longer than ever. We have safe workplaces, access to utilities, and our education and literacy is at unprecedented levels, writes Chris Cashen.

Yet the evening commute can detach us after navigating a daunting gauntlet of anxiety. My algorithm on Instagram drags me through grim updates on inflation, housing dread, turmoil and financial strain so much that my brain when arriving home is thrumming with cortisol.

I turn to Netflix, like a purpose paracetamol, and spend 20 minutes indecisively scrolling. I rarely, if ever, choose any of the new content costing the platform billions every year, and instead click on an episode of The Office or Friends I have already watched 17 times.

To understand why many retreat into nostalgic media, an examination of modern living helps explain it. In Ireland, stress is structural, driven by a severe housing shortage, a precarious health service and insistent inflation.

Last year, a RED C and WIN Network survey revealed that an astonishing 93 per cent of Irish adults report feeling stressed, placing Ireland among the world’s most strain-burdened nations.

Furthermore, Central Statistics Office data show that nearly 30 per cent of 25-year-olds report elevated stress, trapping an entire generation in childhood bedrooms.

For my exhausted mind, revisiting old media operates as a vital neurological triage. Hitting play on a predictable story signals safety to the threat-detection centre of the brain (the amygdala), slowing the heart rate and shifting the body from sympathetic panic into parasympathetic rest.

Psychologists term this “emotional regulation through narrative certainty”. This choice is not a failure of cultural imagination, but a neurobiological self-defence mechanism.

When the nervous system remains in a heightened state of alert, cognitive capacity shrinks. Attempting to force our focus on complex new television requires substantial mental labour. We don’t want to map unfamiliar characters, evaluate motives or absorb subplots. We need certainty.

Ireland is now officially the most streaming-obsessed nation in the European Union, with 63.9 per cent holding paid subscriptions – almost double the EU average.

Yet industry metrics show up to 80 per cent of streaming time is spent on licensed ‘library content’, looping multi-season comfort shows like Friends, Suits and Derry Girls.

What we do in our living rooms mirrors what is seen across the world. Hollywood’s relentless stream of reboots, sequels and superhero mythologies is not merely cynical corporate greed, but a direct response to a world in perpetual crisis.

Studios are selling psychological safety through established mechanisms. In real life, societal problems are chaotic and unresolved. Superhero films offer a universe where order is invariably restored.

Watching Batman save Gotham City reinforces a modern secular myth that chaos can be conquered. Whether Batman is played by Robert Pattinson or Christian Bale seems immaterial.

Just as an exhausted version of me cannot risk their final two hours of evening energy on a bleak indie film, studios refuse to risk tens of millions on unproven original scripts. Both parties seek a predictable emotional return on investment.

This double-sided risk aversion explains the release of six Batman films in 15 years from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy to Matt Reeves’s standalone The Batman.

streaming — Cast members of NBC’s comedy series Friends. (Pic: Warner Bros. Television)

We have become childlike. As our children demand the same bedtime story, adults in crisis crave familiar origin stories. The repetition acts as a reassuring moral anchor, signalling to the nervous system that the world is recognisable and safe.

When many of us feel so mentally battered by daily existence that we can no longer process new stories, media stops being art that challenges us and becomes an intravenous sedative.

We rewatch the past because the present feels unbearable and the future exhausting. Until these underlying structural pressures are addressed, The Office and Batman will remain our collective national relaxant.

Chris Cashen is Head of Strategy, WPP Media Ireland