It’s an innocent enough expression.
You can reasonably ask someone “Netflix and chill?” since the question seems straightforward.
After all, almost everyone likes to watch television. But in the current trend of technology-based dating and the millennial hookup culture, “Netflix and chill” has taken on a wholly separate meaning than what someone would typically expect.
One could ask someone to "Netflix and chill" but really mean inviting someone over to hookup or partake in other intimate activities.
Allie Weis, a James Madison College freshman, said it depends on the context in which it’s being talked about.
“I’ve never been asked to ‘Netflix and chill’ seriously because it’s just become a joke at this point,” Weis said.
Ricky Kent, a James Madison College freshman, agreed with Weis.
"I find it so comical, like I laugh and joke about it all the time," Kent said. "I've never heard someone use it in a serious way because everyone just treats it as one big joke."
Weis said “Netflix and chill,” much like the term “hookup,” didn’t used to have a clear-cut meaning. Some students would use it as a literal request to stay indoors, hang out and watch a show or movie on Netflix. Others interpreted it as starting off with Netflix and then escalating into intimate action.
As Stephanie Amada, a professor within the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, discussed in her research on hookup culture, “Netflix and chill” merely continued the trend within the modern dating scene of communicating in code.
“I recall reading an article somewhere that mentioned how ‘Netflix and chill’ was used so that parents wouldn’t suspect anything when looking at their kids’ texts,” Amada said. “With how much social media is a part of today’s dating, it’s become a lot more ambiguous in what people mean when they say certain things.”
This ambiguity has been borne out of a larger shift in how young adults approach sex and relationships. When “Netflix and chill” began to take on its innuendo meaning, it was following a pattern of “dating” that has become standard for millennials.
Amada said since the 90s, the order in which a relationship had typically progressed has changed.
“Like you would meet someone, you would talk, you might meet up and go to the caf together and would have this progression of things that would lead to a relationship and then sex,” Amada said. “Now, kids who want to get into a relationship often feel like the only way to even just begin to establish a relationship or explore a relationship is through the hookups.”
She said now, the sex and hookups tend to come first.
While “Netflix and chill” has lost whatever hidden meaning it once had, Amada is confident there is already another turn of phrase which has emerged to take its place. Social media moves quickly, picking up trends as quickly as it drops them.
Left behind in their wake is an ever more confusing series of code and expression, along with equally confused young adults as they navigate dating in the 21st century.
