Alyson Hannigan, Other Celebs Warn Against Binge-Watching: See The PSA [Video]

Binge-watching, the practice of watching several episodes or an entire season of a program in one sitting, is the subject of a new public service announcement prepared by Entertainment Weekly. Celebrities, including Alyson Hannigan, Chris Pratt, and one male celebrity who claims to be Camryn Manheim but clearly isn’t, appear in the three-minute video. The stars don’t discourage binge-watching, but rather encourage viewers to engage in it “responsibly.”

The video is tongue-in-cheek, of course, and intended to be comedic. One straight-faced celeb describes binge-watching this way:

“On the danger scale, it’s somewhere between gang violence and a curable STD. Probably closer to a curable STD.”

Hannigan, known more recently for her role on How I Met Your Mother, spent seven seasons on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 1997 to 2003. That series was binge-watched by many viewers in later years, when that still meant going to a video store to rent or buy DVDs. Now, binge-watching is a common habit, especially with the advent of streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix.

Indeed, PC Magazine featured a slide show last Tuesday that coached people on how best to utilize Netflix for binge-watching. That piece, unlike the Entertainment Weekly PSA, was intended to offer viewers legitimate viewing guidance. One tip: go into your account settings to turn off the post-play feature if you want to opt-out of Netflix’s default setting which plays one episode right after the other.

When that feature was first introduced two years ago, Netflix seemed to acknowledge it was taking the step in response to the binge-watching habits of subscribers. PC Magazine quoted the company in August 2012 as saying viewers sitting down to watch many episodes in one sitting was “almost a phenomenon.”

Binge-watching is of course encouraged by the Netflix practice of releasing entire seasons of a series all at once, instead of dribbling new episodes onto the service one at a time. Last February, the release of all season 2 episodes of House of Cards was praised by star Kevin Spacey:

“We didn’t start bingeing but I think we are of course the first series that’s ever given away entire seasons at one time, and I think it goes to say how much an audience is really digging being in control and being able to treat a series the way they treat a novel; pick it up when they want to pick it up and put it down when they want to put it down.”

One of the rules for binging responsibly is “no spoilers,” as demonstrated by the EW PSA. Have a look at the full video here:

Entertainment Weekly says recruiting stars from Parks and Recreation and Orange is the New Black to appear in the PSA was because “it’s time for celebrities to step in,” as the epidemic is now affecting people with real careers, and not just college students experimenting with binge-watching.

[Image: ULTRA F./Getty Images]