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{{trope}}{{outdated}}
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{{quote|''"Computer. Define 'Earth'.... Define 'Sea'.... ... [[Wiki Walk|Define 'Hoedown']]."''
Picture the scene. You're just idly surfing the web. You find a webcomic and read the most recent one. You laugh. You decide to read the previous one. That's funny as well. You read a week's worth and laugh at all of them. You feel the urge well up inside you. It's time to go on... an Archive Binge.
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The depth of the resulting addiction can be estimated from the disruption of daily life caused and from the degree of [[Awesomeness Withdrawal|withdrawal]] symptoms once the reader finishes and has to follow the update schedule from then on. More sensible people time themselves and read up a little at a time. These are the people that can eat only one potato chip.
Firefox extensions like [https://web.archive.org/web/20101205023812/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925/ Autopager] can help by automatically adding the next page as you scroll, so you don't have to click on links. For some of them, you need to be quite technically minded, though.
The site [http://www.archivebinge.net/ Archive Binge] lets you subscribe to a
It is not unusual for fans who have already been following a series to undertake several more archive binges, often initiated by an [[Archive Trawl]]. It's also good practice for [[Fanfic]] writers to undertake this, especially in a new fandom, or one they're going back to. It's often called "Canon Review" in these circumstances.
Contrast with [[Archive Panic]]. Compare [[Browser Narcotic]] for the non-linear equivalent.
See [[Webcomics Long Runners]] for a list of especially binge-worthy comics.
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Newcomers to [[Anime]] often fall victim to this, due to the sheer amount of ([[Fan Sub|fansubbed]]) material readily available on the Internet. Note that Archive Binging makes reading long arcs easier, cutting down on [[Arc Fatigue]] and eliminating the need to wait a week for the next installment.
* Don't feel like (or can't) torrent? Uncomfortable with fansubs? The below mentioned [[Hulu]].com offers a RIDICULOUS amount of professionally subbed anime. And it has the entire series too. No downloading necessary. It even has a few dubs, though those are harder to get the rights to. Especially if the dub is still airing.
** [[No Export for You|Only for Americans.]]
** But one could always check Crunchy Roll, they have quite a few series an average person would've never heard of otherwise.
* Scanlated manga hosts have a very good chance of turning into an
== Comic Books ==
* Certain comic books (such as Action Comics, Detective Comics, and ''Batman'') have been running continuously for over 70 years. Their long history and continuity changes seem to be enough to prevent most people from doing full-on binges... but heaven help you if you, say, read a particularly interesting arc from fifteen or twenty years ago that crosses over into three or four different series, all of which you get through [[Blatant Lies|perfectly legal methods]], of course. And then, of course, you need the context, and then you want to know what happens next, and before you know it, you've read all 153 issues of ''Nightwing'' in two days. And then, after you've read every comic book in existence, you suddenly get a hankering for a favorite arc of yours, and it starts all over again!
* While ''[[
* As a gift to fans, every issue of ''[[
* Thanks to online archives of traditional print comics on gocomics.com, the website of the two biggest newspaper comic syndicates in the United States, you can put traditional pre-Web favorites like ''[[Peanuts (Comic Strip)|Peanuts]]'' and ''[[Garfield (Comic Strip)|Garfield]]'' on there too. Bonus points awarded, since many of these comics and their archives stretch back ''decades''.▼
* ''[[Blondie (Comic Strip)|Blondie]]'' has been running since 1930.▼
* ''Adam@Home'' features this when Adam stumbles upon [[Lost (TV)|Lostpedia]].▼
* Thanks to its recent public domain status, you can now read all of ''[[Little Nemo (Comic Strip)|Little Nemo]] in Slumberland'' [http://www.comicstriplibrary.org/ online].▼
* Reading ''[[Dykes to Watch Out For (Comic Strip)|Dykes to Watch Out For]]'' feels much the same as an extensive archive binge, and as it was produced between the late 80s and late 00s it is no small binge to engage in.▼
== Fan Works ==
* The fan made game ''[[Heta Oni]]''. It starts out dull at first, but you'll get hooked by the suspense, especially when {{spoiler|Japan goes into the kitchen of the haunted house to investigate, only to hear strange sounds in the foyer and find that the three he came with -- Italy, Prussia, and Germany -- are all gone.}}
* ''[[I'm a Marvel And
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Gaedhal's "Queer Theories" has been going for almost a decade now.
* The ''[http://lightning.ffstories.net/browse.php?type=categories&id=2 Sacrifices Arc]'',{{Dead link}} recced on the ''[[Harry Potter (
* ''[[Cat
* Arguaby, ''[[
* [[The Captain]] in ''[[WALL-E (Animation)|WALL-E]]'' does this with the starship's encyclopedia after [[City in A Bottle|learning about Earth for the first time]].▼
* Leeloo in ''[[The Fifth Element (Film)|The Fifth Element]]'' when she is learning about Earth for the first time on the computer. She's supposedly going in alphabetical order, which is why we get a [[Break the Cutie]] moment towards the end when she gets to W (for ''war''). The movie seemed to present her selections as fairly random. A contrived setup for sure, but it makes more sense than if she just skipped some entries.▼
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings (Film)|The Lord of the Rings]]''. Regular editions: 9 hours. Extended editions: 11 hours. Extended editions with the appendices: 92 hours. That's 4 days. Not even counting the regular editions, [[Rifftrax]], or regular edition's special features. Good luck!▼
== Film ==
▲* [[The Captain]] in ''[[
▲* Leeloo in ''[[
▲* ''[[The Lord of the Rings (
== Literature ==
* The ''[[
* The ''[[Darkover]]'' Cycle are also loads and loads of books, it helps a little that they are categorized by the time area in which they are set.
* Introduce someone to ''[[
* ''[[
* [[Baen Books]] via the [http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ BaenCD at The Fifth Imperium], a promotional site sponsored by Baen, haas nearly their entire library on the internet for free for promotional purposes. ''[[
=== Print Media ===▼
* The '''Complete National Geographic'' has every ''[[National Geographic]] Magazine'' from 1888 to today: every page, every ad, and every article.▼
* The ''Oxford English Dictionary''. I'll just see this one little word... Hmm, while I'm at it, I wonder when exactly did "orbiter" come into use? Hey, there is a word "orby"? Gotta check it out. Hey, look, they've got an entry for [[Our Orcs Are Different|"orc" and "orcish"]], too! Come to think of it, into how many possible meanings can they distill the word "too"? Hey, a [[Robert Ludlum]] quotation! Are there any more quotes from my favorite writers?
== Live-Action TV ==
* [[No Export for You|If you live in America]], [[Hulu]].com offers several complete television seasons (sometimes series) available for free. These are mainly old action shows (''[[
* Subscribers to Netflix have access to the instant list in addition to the mail order stuff. They have many series that stream instantly, including (completely): ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer
** Guess what? [[Offer Void in Nebraska|Only available]] [[No Export for You|in the U.S. and Mexico]].
** Now in the UK too, although the selection is not as great as in the US. The UK also has [[Love Film]] Instant, a service run by Amazon, although the DVD rental selection is better than that available for streaming.
** Netflix isn't all roses though. In "[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-ways-binge-watching-will-ruin-television/ 4 Reasons 'Hemlock Grove' Is Television's Shitty Future]", [[Cracked.com|J. F. Sargent]] accuses Netflix and other Archive Binge outlets of encouraging TV writers to drop substance in favor of shallow entertainment with lame [[cliffhanger]] gags to addict viewers into watching one more episode. And there's no threat of mid-season cancellation to keep showrunners honest. ''[[Hemlock Grove]]'' is guilty.
* ''[[
== Music ==
* Japanese noise artist Merzbow released a 50-disc boxed set. And then Atlanta-area college radio station WREK [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|broadcast the entire thing over three days]]. Also notable is [http://ifuckinglovemerzbow.blogspot.com.au/ this blog] where somebody listened to and gave a track by track summary of the whole box. Spoiler: 90% is SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
* [[
* Jazz musician Sun Ra has over a hundred full length albums, which add up to over 1000 songs.
* Spotify has almost all of recorded music in history, for free.
== New Media ==
* [http://www.zmescience.com/ ZME Science] may be a fairly sensationalistic website, but they are quite good at linking to existing articles on the site that are interesting, and before you know it you've got 30 tabs on the go from topics from sex to jellyfish.
* [[Ted]], a yearly conference, places most of the recorded presentations on its website under the Creative Commons license and has over 500 listed as of this writing. Good luck getting through them all in under a month.
* The same thing happens on [
* ''[[
* [http://dailycoyote.net The Daily Coyote] has updated every day and includes archives back from when Shreve Stockton first started to take care of the coyote we know as Charlie.
* [
* Most online streaming services, notably Netflix where you have access to entire seasons worth of TV shows at a time can be useful for wasting an entire day... or several.
* [http://www.cracked.com Cracked.com] Those countdown articles are addicting... and plentiful.
* Skeptical blogs such as [http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ Pharyngula] and [http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/ Respectful Insolence] not only make reference to older articles about similar topics or the same person, they often reference other skeptical blogs that have written about the same topics/people.
* Facebook's newly introduced "Friend X and Friend Y" friendship review pages can have this effect.
* [http://gettyimages.com/ Getty Images] has been around since 1993 providing stock and editorial images, illustrations, and video. That might not seen like much, but they've also acquired older photography collections and digitized ''them''. [
* Darn you, [https://web.archive.org/web/20131101105136/http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ Damnyouautocorrect.com]!
* When going through a language program similar to ''Rosetta Stone'' you may end up going through a whole language without getting any sleep for several nights, then forgetting most of it.
* The ''[http://www.customerssuck.com/board/ Customers Suck!]'' forums. Especially Gravekeeper's posts.
== Newspaper Comics ==
▲* Thanks to online archives of traditional print comics on gocomics.com, the website of the two biggest newspaper comic syndicates in the United States, you can put traditional pre-Web favorites like ''[[
▲== Print Media ==
▲* The '''Complete National Geographic'' has every ''[[National Geographic]] Magazine'' from 1888 to today: every page, every ad, and every article.
▲* The ''Oxford English Dictionary''. I'll just see this one little word... Hmm, while I'm at it, I wonder when exactly did "orbiter" come into use? Hey, there is a word "orby"? Gotta check it out. Hey, look, they've got an entry for [[Our Orcs Are Different|"orc" and "orcish"]], too! Come to think of it, into how many possible meanings can they distill the word "too"? Hey, a [[Robert Ludlum]] quotation! Are there any more quotes from my favorite writers?
▲* Thanks to its recent{{when}} public domain status, you can now read all of ''[[
▲* Reading ''[[
== Video Games ==
* The ''[[MUGEN]]'' fighting game engine has LOADS of content available for it. Not only will picking your favorite characters to fight with be a total binge, but setting your stages, motifs and other add-ons is a massive adventure. And all of this considering you don't do any editing or creation yourself.
* ''[[Freedom Force]]'' likewise has a huge number of skins and models for pretty much every conceivable superhero and supervillain, as well as many other characters.
* ''[[Sid Meier's
* Any video game with an in-game encyclopedia can turn into an
* The proliferation of
== Web Animation ==
* Strategically keying up all nine-plus hours of ''[[
== Web Comics ==
* Oh God, don't get us started on ''[[
** Lampshaded in [https://kevinandkell.com/2024/kk0121.html the strip for January 21, 2024], appropriately titled "Archive panic".
* ''[[Its Walky]]'' (and its spinoffs) has been going on for 15 years, but is especially bad because it has a rather detailed plot.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Pity on the one who decides to just now get into ''[[
* ''[[
* [[Lampshaded]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110810004239/http://fanboys-online.com/index.php?comic=169#60 in] ''[[Fanboys (
* ''[[
* ''[[
* [http://xkcd.com/214/ This] ''[[
* ''[[
** [[The Merch]] includes a [https://web.archive.org/web/20160427064959/http://store.schlockmercenary.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=OE%2DSMM warning sign]. "{{smallcaps|Deep archives: productivity will suffer}}".
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Good luck trying to
* ''
* ''Funny Farm'' has lasted for 9.5 years. And it updated every, single day. There were only a few months in which he didn't update every day. Instead he updated 4 days a week for a month or two, then 5 days a week for a month or two, and then back to every day. However, the entire archive has been removed so he can post the 9.5 years worth of 7 days a week over 5 days with commentary. So the weekend strips tend to rest on weekdays now. It's no longer an archive binge, more an archive wait.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Many new fans of ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Sequential Art (
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* There's over 1300 ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[8-Bit Theater
* Screencap comics ''[[
* [[BZ Power]].com 's The Editorialist made a series called ''Psycho Dogs and Carbonated Beverages''. It has over 300 strips. They even lampshaded this trope in one comic.
* ''[[
* In ''[[Grey Is
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* New fans of ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Penny Arcade (Webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]'': Though it's entirely episodic, you really can't not read the old strips. And since Tycho and Gabe have been doing the same strip for longer than most webcomic creators have been in the business, you're in for a lot of reading. It doesn't help that they seem to have a comic on just about any topic even vaguely related to video games, which are frequently linked to on this very website. Yes, there's PA in your [[TV Tropes]] so you can binge while you [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|binge]].
* ''[[
* ''Superosity'' has been running for 11 years daily, with a large amount of continuity.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Something
* ''[[
* ''[[
* Deliberately averted with the ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[
{{quote|
'''Harper:''' ''(blows raspberry)''
'''Greg:''' Everyone's a critic. }}
* ''[[
== Web Original ==
* [[All The Tropes|This very wiki]]. And unlike the TV Tropes example cited below, we can host pages they can't, so while you can binge on their archives, we have some they don't and vice versa.
* Don't you dare go to [[College Humor]] and start watching all 350+ episodes of ''[[Jake and Amir]]'', because before you know it you'll be [[Hardly Working]][[Incredibly Lame Pun|!!!]] It doesn't help that ALL of [[College Humor]]'s shorts are about 2-3 min. long and are hilarious, you can't help but watch one, see that it is only 8:00 so you say "one more won't hurt, what's 3 mins gonna do ... IT'S 4:00AM!!!"
* This is ridiculously easy with [[Let's Play
** The 10-minute (later changed to 15 minutes) video time limit of [[YouTube]], the most commonly used host for Let's Plays, doesn't particularly help either. This is how two hours of gameplay gets spread across 12 videos, and how veteran LP uploaders can rack of ridiculous statistics like having on average a new video uploaded every 10 minutes.
** Videos can be as long as they want now, although Let's Play videos rarely go above 20 minutes, though.
** And then there is this [http://www.youtube.com/user/cubex55 World of Longplays' Youtube channel]...
** [http://www.youtube.com/user/mcgammar?blend=1&ob=4 Boltage McGammar] has over ''1800 videos''... and he's ''still going''. His ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
** Speaking of [[YouTube]]... [[The Amazing Atheist]]'s videos are an example of this. He does on average 1 video a day and had 664 videos at one point.
** [http://www.youtube.com/user/garudoh The Music of Video Games]. 529 videos and growing.
** [[
** Series of Let's Plays. Want to experience Nakar's wonderful tales about the exploits of [[Heroic Sociopath|Steve]] the [[Ultima|Avatar]] in full? Then you have six full-length Let's Plays ahead of yourself (''[[Ultima]] 4'', ''5'', ''6'', ''Martian Dreams'', ''7'' and ''Serpent Isle''). Love The Dark Id's snarky style as he tears apart the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games? Again, seven entire Let's Plays.
* People visiting the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]'' website for the first time usually indulged in one of these, until they realized how much information was available and it descended into an [[Archive Panic]].
* [[TV Tropes]], of course.
** Case in point: [http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=676491&postcount=30 A poster on the Steve Jackson Games forum discovers TV Tropes for the first time.]
** It's even worse
** Listening through all the links on the ''[[
** Casually ''glancing'' at the index at the bottom of the page, particularly if you see a trope you're unfamiliar with or haven't seen in a long time, only worsens the problem -- ''especially'' with the various groupings/lists of related tropes.
** This page is especially bad. If the other examples here are offenders, this page is an offender squared. A large archive of large archives...
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130515132933/http://www.cracked.com/forums/forum/ps-contest-archive The Cracked.com Photoshop Contest Archive], there goes your afternoon, and your evening, and your night, and your morning, and your noon,... and your afternoon.
* Even websites ''about'' comics succumb to this, such as [http://www.joshreads.com The Comics Curmudgeon]. C'mon, I dare you to not keep flipping back through the archives of commentary.
* [http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-350792/Anime-motivational-posters.html?pg=0 The Anime Motivational Posters thread at Crunchyroll.] First you see an anime you recognize, then you see one that's really smart, then you start to notice the hilarious banter between the moderator and the regulars, and before you know it, you've gone 200 pages. The fact that it grows around 5 to 10 pages a day does not help.
* This is frequently caused by ''[[
* Half the point in Board Hunting on [[
* The ''[[
* Archive binges can get ludicrous when applied to text-heavy mediums, like blogs. Long-running, text-heavy, frequently-updated blogs can easily take your free time for a week to properly binge. Of course, this also applies to series of novels, newspaper columns, and other similar media, but blogs tend to be the easiest to access.
* ''[[Loading Ready Run]]'' can easily qualify. Over 300 videos (most of season 1 is unavailable, but the bonus vids easily make up the difference), averaging, oh say, 6 minutes a piece. That's over 30 hours folks.
* ''[[
* ''[[The Salvation War]]'', with two ''eighty-plus'' chapter books complete (alright, the chapters are quite short, but the point still stands), you'll spend at least a week catching up if you read at a reasonable pace.
* ''[[
* ''[[
* [[That Guy With
* Long-running [[Play
* The Yogscast contains more than just Simon and Lewis. Don't let yourself get pulled into their wacky British Minecraft shenanigans.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Webcomic Tropes]]
[[Category:Audience Reactions]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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