Suggest me Something to Watch

What this tool does

You sit down to watch something, open the app, and start scrolling. Twenty minutes later you have read fifty descriptions, added three things to a list, and watched none of them. The choosing ate the evening. This tool ends that loop. It picks a film at random from a large list, so you have one thing to start instead of a thousand things to weigh.

Press the button for a film. Press it again for another. Ask for a few at once if you would rather choose from a short set than be handed one. It is just as handy when a group cannot agree, since a random pick is harder to argue with than someone's pet suggestion.

How to use it

1. Number / Quantity. How many films to pull at once, from 1 to 100.
2. Generate. Pulls a fresh film, or a fresh set if you asked for several.
3. Starts with, Contains, Ends with. Optional filters that narrow the list before it picks. Leave them blank to draw from everything.
4. Copy. Copies the current picks to the clipboard as a plain list.

A film is on screen the moment the page loads, so there is always something to react to.

How it works

The list is fixed and each press pulls a film from it at random, with no repeats inside a single set when you ask for several. Each title comes with its release year, so you know roughly the era you are getting.

The filters let you aim. Contains keeps any film with your text in it, so typing harry potter brings up the three Harry Potter films on the list, while typing a word from a title you half-remember narrows it the same way. Starts with reads the first letter of the title, ends with the last.

What is on the list

It is a big spread of films, over five hundred of them, reaching across decades and genres. Older classics like The French Connection and All the President's Men sit beside recent ones like Joker and The Harder They Fall, with plenty of family and animated picks such as My Neighbor Totoro and Zootopia in the mix.

Because it is mixed rather than sorted, one press can hand you a tense thriller and the next a light comedy. Take it as a wheel to spin when nothing in particular is calling to you, and lean on the Contains box when you do have a name or a series in mind.

Why you scroll for an hour and watch nothing

The endless-scroll trap is two well-studied effects working at once. The first is choice overload. When a catalogue runs into the thousands, we cannot compare the options in any real way, so we keep looking instead of landing. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper showed it in a 2000 study where shoppers offered two dozen jams to taste bought far fewer than those offered six, and a streaming library is that on a giant scale.

The second is timing. You usually do this at the end of the day, after making decisions since morning, and deciding wears you down. In a 2008 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister, and their colleagues found that one choice after another drains the same energy you would use to finally commit. So you reach the couch with an empty tank and a full catalogue, which is exactly the wrong combination. A random pick hands the decision off, and watching something beats scrolling past everything.

Narrowing it down

If the first pick is not it, a couple of quick calls help. Start with mood, since wanting to laugh, to be gripped, or to be moved points you in very different directions, and another press or a keyword in the Contains box gets you there. Then match the runtime to your energy, because a long, heavy film is a poor choice for a tired weeknight and a fine one for a free afternoon. And if you are watching with other people, let the tool make the call rather than putting it to a vote, since the quickest way to start a film is to stop debating which film to start.

Questions people ask

Is it free, and does it save anything?

It is free with no sign-up, and nothing is stored. The picks run in your browser, so use Copy to keep a list before you leave.

Can I get a few options at once?

Yes. Set the quantity to the number you want, up to 100, and press Generate for that many different films in one pull.

Is it movies or TV shows?

It is films, each shown with its release year. So it is built for picking a movie for the night rather than a series to binge.

Can I find a particular film or series?

Type a word from the title into the Contains box, or a series name like a franchise, and the list trims to the matching films.

References

1. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, "When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, the study behind choice overload. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11138768/
2. Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister, and colleagues, "Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, on how a day of deciding wears you down. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18444745/