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They use more technological firepower than was required for the first moon landing: two laptops, two iPhones, iTunes, Skype and FaceTime. Pablo Cordoba, of Barcelona, Spain, said he had “movie days” on Saturdays with his girlfriend in Mexico City. This way, they could listen to the show as well as laugh and talk, without the clashing of two audio tracks a few milliseconds out of sync. To make the experience maximally binding, each party used its own Netflix connection for the visual but used Skype to relay one side’s audio connection to the other. Julianna Aucoin, 19, said she and her family used a combination of Netflix and Skype to sync-watch “Lost” when she went off to Harvard, as if to distract themselves from the realities of homesickness (on her part) and a shrunken household (on theirs). When The New York Times used Facebook to invite the global public to share stories of synchronous viewing for this article, the testimonies poured out, each watcher describing an elaborate personal method, seemingly unaware of how many others employed similar ways. Nations may no longer watch together, but people coordinate their own little republics of two or a few, warding off solitude by sharing leisure hours in the same room - virtually - with loved ones or friends. Among friends, I keep hearing chatter about the great lengths people go to to watch in pairs. But it has struck me lately that the longing to watch together has survived the Cronkite age, though with considerable mutation. We no longer all watch Walter Cronkite at the same time, which apparently is dangerous for the republic. Perhaps like me, you’ve read the recurring obituaries of so-called appointment viewing. “It’s the 21st-century version of distant lovers writing letters to each other, saying that they’ll look at the stars and know the other is looking, too,” said Adam Robbins, a graduate student at Boston University, who sync-watched “Doctor Who” with his girlfriend, Sarah Palmer, last year when, just months into their new relationship, winter break tore them briefly asunder. An outgrowth of these efforts is the little-reported use of Skype, FaceTime and the like to send content across borders, coordinate viewing and skirt copyright restrictions and even censorship in places like China. But even as technologies create new ways to disregard others in pursuit of entertainment, people seem to crave shared viewing experiences, sometimes inventing complex technological schemes to arrange them. Never has it been easier to watch television and movies solo: on your own time, on your own terms, on devices you need not share. It’s obsessively synchronized media consumption in this age when supposedly every viewer is an island: Sync-watching, I call it. While glimpsing each other’s faces on cellphone video chat. While Facebook-messaging about it on another slice of the laptop screen.

They count down - 3, 2, 1 - to begin “Breaking Bad” at the same second.

Now they take it in sharing the little screen. FAR-FLUNG lovers once took solace in sharing the same big sky.