I personally find the documentaries on Netflix rather enlightening. When my very conservative parents told me they were planning to provide housing for ex-prostitutes, I was hesitant. But then I listened to the concept that adult women can be trafficked without literal capture, and there are entire schemes set up to manipulate them into it and then keep them there with a combination of economics, manipulation, and violence. I didn't really get it until I stumbled upon the documentary "Tricked" on Netflix, sharing multiple womens' stories and outlining the intentional plot to unwillingly trap them in the life.
I didn't fully develop the idea and the courage to publically post asking friends and acquaintances for odd jobs until I saw the documentary on Netflix on living by a dollar/day. In this documentary, it showed how villagers came up with community solutions, such as a group of people agreeing to all contribute a fixed amount of their income, and one group member drawn at random would receive it all in a lump sum, and so it continued each week until everyone in the group had received their money back. I realized that if communities help each other when they're all in poverty, wouldn't it be acceptable for me to ask about mutually beneficial arrangements when the others are experiencing a time of plenty? Sure, it felt undignifying to ask, but it feels more undignifying to not be earning my way in society. So I crafted a writing and put it up there. I got 5 leads in the first week, 3 of which were panning out. Then the accident happened and everything had to come off the table for a while.
One more example: I also like to watch shows that pertain to behavioral analysis, e.g. Criminal Minds and Lie to Me. I've found these have a fair bit of application in the real world.
It's interesting to me how people feel the need to proactively defend how much they watch, or put down the notion altogether. I can go weeks at a time without it occurring to me to watch anything, but I can also go weeks at a time watching an episode or two nearly every evening. It completely depends on what's going on with my life, and I personally feel that both options are completely valid, one not being any "worse" or "better" than the other.
