After being on and off again since June 2004, I’m done with renting DVDs from Netflix. I can remember when I signed up like it was yesterday: I just graduated high school, and received my first debit card. So what did I do with my newfound way to spend money? I signed up for Netflix.
My first movies were Stop Making Sense and a U2 Concert. One changed my life, the other didn’t.
My mom was upset at me that I was spending so much money a month renting movies when I could get them from the library. She was right, but the library didn’t have Zelig. For a then aspiring cinephile, Netflix was amazing.
The last two years or so, my DVD watching habits have really gone down. I used to give myself a month before I sent a movie back. I just mailed back The Maltese Falcon; I never watched it, and it was in my house for over three months. My priorities have changed as I’ve gotten older. I’d like to think that I still watch a fair amount of movies, but I’m not 18 any more and my free time is significantly less now than it was then.
One thing about Netflix has had me wondering lately: if this company knew my viewing habits for the last decade and a half, why are the streaming recommendations shit?
It’s silly to me that in the DVD part of Netflix there’s still the star rating system, but the streaming portion did away with that and replaced it with thumbs up or down. It’s obvious that two different product teams work on this, but if you have years of my movie watching data, why the heck do I get crazy recommendations for things I’ll never watch? I don’t believe algorithms are their forte, as they’re busy investing in a lot of original shows.
You were my friend Netflix and the recommendations back in the day were pretty solid, but now it’s a firehose of content that’s fighting for screen time, and I’m exhausted from losing my free time trying to make a choice of what to watch as I weed through all these garbage suggestions.
The real tragedy here is movies that were stuck in the Saved part of my queue for what seemed like forever. I’m confident that Luc Besson’s Subway will never be available on Netflix, but I tried for years to watch it. Same with Buckaroo Bansai and Outlander.
So long Netflix DVDs. You were really great to me through the years and I’m sorry that we had to part ways. But your convenience took advantage of my laziness in not ending this sooner. Curse these subscription services!