Would you pay for Netflix if you weren't riding someone else's account?

in Netflix & Streaming3 years ago

I say this with a bit of irony because my entire persona here is based on Netflix and my username is @netflixr. There was a time when I had a lot of love for the streaming service but this has been diminishing over the years.


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Years ago when I signed up for the trial of Netflix it was a pretty new thing on the market. I was thrilled with a couple of things about it

  • all the films were good quality (torrents were riddled with HD Cams and other such in the theater nonsense at the time)
  • the system would remember where you were in a film or a season if you ever decided to stop watching in the middle of something

These were great features to me at the time as my life up to that point had consisted of going to cinemas and also simply "stealing" films from various pirate websites and especially with series, I would forget which episode I was on or switch it off halfway through an episode, not remember which episode or even season I was on, get frustrated, and then just abandon the entire process.

With Netflix all of this was cured.


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At the time it was under $10 a month and I was thinking to myself that "well, there isn't any financial reason to not do this, so why not?"

Later something happened with my credit card and I suddenly found myself Netflix-less until a friend of mine said that he had extra slots left on his account and if I wanted, I could just piggyback on his account if I wanted to. That was over 3 years ago.

Since then I haven't paid a dime for Netflix and therefore didn't have any reason to gripe about how their quality in programming, with some exceptions of course, has really gone downhill since then.

I realize they are the biggest players in the game by a long shot and are basically untouchable, but then the political agenda started to kick in and social issues started to invade almost everything that they made.


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This reached an apex during the Trump campaign and Presidency and it seemed like every other thing that they were releasing was some sort of educational diatribe attempting to coerce us in to behaving like the political party that Netflix clearly favors. I didn't watch many of these things but rather, just waited until the inevitable point that it started becoming preachy. Then the really crazy programming started happening.


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I would imagine that Netflix really regrets ever releasing the above but what was even worse was when they tried to defend it despite the fact that there are a few things that are off limits and sexualizing little kids is one of them. I didn't watch it and had no desire to do so, but the fact that it remained on the service anyway was kind of crazy in my mind.

Also, it seems like nearly every shithead comedian, most of who are not even funny, get a 1 hour special on Netflix


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being funny apparently isn't a prerequisite for having a special on Netflix and of the hundreds that they have featured over the past few years very few of them were even able to get so much as a chuckle out of me, especially Amy Schumer, who we all know would not be in Hollywood at all if it weren't for her famous and connected family members.

In the past year or so, I have found myself rewatching old series such as Family Guy again and again rather than bothering with new series because there is always some sort of social issue agenda in everything that they make and man oh man, am I tired of being preaches to by my television that I am mostly just wanting to use as an escape from my daily life.

There have been a few good series here and there but mostly, I think I would be better off just taking other people's advice and getting torrents of the shows that are recommended to me rather than suffering through what Netflix features because aside from standouts like Squid Game and Arcane a vast majority of their content is just flat-out garbage.

So I will answer my question that was in the title of this blog entry. No, I would not pay for Netflix if I had to. The only reason why I have an account is because someone else is paying for it and I get a free ride on his account. I am sure there are millions of people around the world that do the same thing every single month. The person that I know that pays for the account only does so because he thinks that we depend on him.

I think I need to have a chat with him and tell him to go ahead and save the $12 a month to spend on something else.

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Its not only about the Netflix series.
This same goes to Hollywood too. The last decades (1990-2010)were amazing with movies and series but now they are only showing vulgarity and world politics. The old movies and TV shows were time worthy. Sadly now a days we are only wasting our time and money.

That's a good point. There are a lot of great films that get released but we never hear about them because if it isn't some sort of repackaged super-hero crap with a 150 million dollar budget, they can't get a global audience. I think that Hollywood is very focused on profit now and not so much on making things that are actually good. This may also explain why studios out of South Korea are becoming so popular these days. They never really had a global audience and a lot of folks are discovering how great their films are for the first time now

I love to watch films but I mainly watch them during the Winter or if I (had to) kill time.

I started with one of the first movie senders 'Filmnet'. The introduction period was great but after that you had to pick a period. For example day, evening or the night. Inoticed if you watched for one month you should consider yourself happy if one new film was added every 3 months. I decided not to pay for that.
I always bought films, bought a large collection on vhs tape as a video store closed down. I buy films on dvd and recorded them since 1983. Most of them are still in a great condition esp the tapes (have video recorders).
We used the Piratebay for many years and found sites where we can watch films for free too. My children included.
We share a Netflix account too but I admit at the moment I use it more than three of my children. They find their film on different sites if they don't watch our series on dvd.

If you watch Netflix frequently you saw everything. It's no longer about good, quality but a lot of low budget films not worth the time. Kind of pity.
The benefit is you can watch something else for a change and without comercials (the reason why we don't watch television for at least 15 years by now).

I wouldn't pay for Netflix since there are plenty of ways to watch films plus Netflix is expensive. We pay over 16 euros a month.

16 euros a month? Wow, that's the highest price I have heard for the service of any place.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I still watch Netflix, but not nearly as much as I used to. I feel like the quality of their original programming has diminished (with a few exceptions) and their library seems to be getting worse as more streaming services gain traction (hbo max, paramount, peacock, etc.)

I have Netflix plan for myself. I only watch very limited content on it. I hate their feminist & SJW and far left propaganda peddling in their shows. But I guess that would go on as along as the money is being pumped into them.

And we cant help it but apart from that world does need alternative service to Netflix so that we can watch content on demand. Rest I guess Netflix is so far doing good.

I'm pretty sure they are making a lot of money and as far as i know the other streaming services don't even come close in terms of subscriptions. I do think that if they were for some reason to start to try to enforce that everyone had to have their own account that their numbers of viewers would drop a great deal.

As far as the SJW stuff is concerned: When it starts happening normally I will just switch it off at that point.

You do not have tv channels broadcasting films only? What about 123movie or freemoviesfull.comor other sites where you can watch for free?
Heard there's a Telegram channel where you can watch Netflix films too.

Certainly the netflix platform is releasing junk content lately and I honestly do not want to write posts about junk series that are not worth it, it seems that now they just want to sell us the junk that they have not sold in previous years.

I wouldn't pay netflix

Same story with me!