by Dear readers, it is my absolute pleasure to announce that cable 2.0 has returned in the form of streaming services. Yes, the thing that was designed as a superior alternative to cable at a far more incentivizing price is now wholly inconvenient and an insult to the customer. What do I mean by that? Well to explain that I need to explain what the purpose of streaming was. You see, back when Netflix launched it provided a convenient way to watch your favorite shows and movies that renting, pirating, or watching on cable just simply couldn’t provide. It was streamlined, user friendly, and most importantly, convenient. Why would anyone go through the effort of going to a pirate site and potentially risk a nasty computer virus that would cost you potentially hundreds of dollars to fix when Netflix was only 8 dollars at the launch of its streaming service.
But therein lies the problem, it only works if it’s convenient. Whether you like it or not, paying 12 dollars for Spotify premium is easier than going through the headache that was Limewire and Napster. However, that was back when it was just Netflix. Nowadays, every company, every studio, every corporation has the need to pivot to streaming. Netflix only worked because more often than not, what you were looking for was already on there. So for one price, you can stream thousands of titles from the comfort of your home. But now, it’s not even just Netflix anymore. Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, MAX (previously HBOMax), Peacock, Paramount+, and on and on with every company trying to cash in on that streaming service pie. Now remember, Netflix was only 8 dollars at launch, even adjusting for inflation, that’s only $12.38 in today’s money. However, the only incentive these companies have now is to turn a profit, year after year. Which led to the garbage we have to deal with now.
Ad free plans, multiple streaming packages, locking content behind different plans, straight removing and deleting exclusive content that can never be shown again for a tax write off. The ad free plan should just be the default, because what is associated with ads is a free product, but no, here you have to pay for the privilege to use their service with ads. Even if you decide to pay for those ads, what do you plan on watching? Because everyone is determined to give you less variety while charging you more for using their service. Just last year, Warner Bros. Discovery nuked a bunch of upcoming nearly completed projects for a tax writeoff and removed hundreds of preexisting shows and films from their streaming service. Hours and hours of untold labor, blood, sweat, and tears just wiped out of existence just so the CEO who sits in a chair and does nothing of value or contribute terrible ideas can earn just a tiny bit more money. It’s infuriating not only as an artist but also just as a fan of media in general. Entire passion projects just wiped off the face of the earth. It’s gotten so bad that if you do pay for a MAX subscription, the only thing flooding the site isn’t the high quality produced shows that HBO is known for, but instead miles and miles of trashy reality tv that offers no benefit other than being cheap to produce.
It is clear that these companies do not value the customer but instead their bottom dollar. If they can just erase content that they own with no regards to the creators then there is no point in supporting these companies with your money. It’s gotten far too expensive, there’s too many services everywhere, and it’s far less convenient. It’s cable all over again except you have to pay for every channel with the slim hope that they have something worth watching now, more often than not they don’t. So we’ve looped right back around to having piracy being one of the only realistic options outside of purchasing physical media, which should absolutely still be supported. They can’t take away a physical object that a person owns no matter how badly they want to make that profit back. The best part is that you can get a stack of disney blu rays for like 12 dollars second hand on Ebay or Mercari. Even better, you only have to pay for the stuff you want instead of everything you don’t plan on watching. Alongside that, streaming piracy has become so convenient and has such little effort attached to it, literally only requiring at most an ad blocker, with options like ublock origin being completely free to install, there’s little reason you shouldn’t be doing this. Now, legally it’s in a grey area but considering just how much content that modern studios have out blocked, deleted, or otherwise made inaccessible, I consider it justified. Obviously, we should still support the individual creators with donations, watching the films that do release in theaters, and spreading word about their work, but with how difficult companies have made it to support the artist legally, it’s very much in a grey area.
Welp, that’s the rant. From all of us here at Happy Hobbyists, happy hobbying.
Very intuitive. I like your point. Streaming has become such polluted expensive garbage.