(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* I've had Netflix pretty much since it started, but now I literally only have it for Stranger Things and that's dumb. I am going to do one more rewatch and likely cancel. I may buy it on DVD at a point, but right now a lot of listings are bootlegs. I've cancelled all my other streaming stuff which... wasn't a lot. I was only paying for Netflix and Paramount. I have Amazon Prime access but pretty much only used it for FreeVee and temp subs to Paramount / AMC / HBO / etc.

The writers are not yet calling for a boycott of anything, but as someone who is also a gamer and has been following news of the poor treatment of game writers and devs for a decade it's like... I am just tired. I am lucky that I like games by smaller studios that generally do better by people. There are Blizzard devs in my guild and they literally post daily how many days until their contracts are up. In this economy, they are looking forward to losing their jobs. (Not going to get into the Blizzard problems here but... it's a lot).

Honestly, I am just so tired of people who actually make stuff getting dumped on that I have lost any interest in most shows and movies. I'd planned on buying the D&D movie as soon as it was in early access but again I've lost interest in giving Paramount money. Despite my deep love of Stranger Things I am tempted to just drop netflix tonight

* And if the studios suddenly turn and give the writer's what they want, I'll probably only look into AppleTV for that My Kind Of Country show.

* And hey, I can always just watch youtube videos about Quibi, the streaming service that tanked during the biggest streaming boom ever. A lot of the writer's signs are Quibi jokes and man, I will never not find that mess funny. And then Quibi's founders blamed the failure of their streaming service on the pandemic. Oh god, 1.7 billion to producers who could just not make anything decent just... Murder House Flip and a skit show about being a secret Kardashian twin and that deeeeply WTF show about Dan Harmon's wife dealing with, uh, one of his, um, toys. Also they greenlit a show that was straight up plagiarism of another show. There was an article with tons of quotes from the founders of that mess and I need to re-find it. It's like... how was any of this real.

From Wikipedia: "The service raised $1.75 billion from investors.[1] It launched in April 2020, but shut down in December 2020 after falling short of its subscriber projections.[2][3][4] In January 2021, Quibi's content library was sold to Roku, Inc. for less than $100 million"

April 2020! They could not have been blessed with a better time to unleash new content on the world.

Comments

[colls]

My plan was to rotate streaming services, instead I have half a dozen active. A couple are annual subscriptions, so.... a new way they suck you in I guess.

Anyway, if you do get Apple+ for a temporary period of time - I highly recommend both Ted Lasso and Severance before you discontinue it.

[olivermoss]

Oof, yeah I've always stuck to monthly subs which is pretty nice. I wonder if more services will go towards yearly for that reasons, make you commit to a year to get the show you really want... and then get invested in what else they have. It makes a lot of sense.

I will check those out if I get it! Here' hoping that despite all signs to the contrary the studio crumble and I can nab the country music show :)

[mistressofmuses]

I've got a couple streaming services, but am starting to think about whether I want to drop them. (I've got Netflix, since before it was a *streaming* service, Hulu, and Prime. Other services have one or two things I'd like to watch, but it's never enough to make me want to pay for them, and I CERTAINLY have no interest in adding or upgrading a service WHILE the strike is happening.)

I'm with you on just being so *tired*. I care so much about creative things - games, shows, music, writing, art - and the people who do the MOST in terms of making those things amazing are so often treated so terribly. I hate it, and I'm tired of it, and it breaks my heart even as it's become the norm, and that breaks my heart more.

But holy shit, I forgot about Quibi, lmao. HOW could they fuck it up that bad with that gift of timing!? If you find a particularly excellent video with a rundown of the whole thing, I hope you share a link. I remember how hard they tanked, but never knew the details of what terrible ideas they had, lol.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I've had Netflix from the start. I've dropped it a time or two due to financial reasons or just not getting around to watching the DVD, but I've mostly had it this whole time and it has most of my favorite shows.

And like, if the WGA can't fight back against exploitation and not being given the tools to do their job, who can? And if they win, that is going to teach a lot of people about having unions and standards and not tolerating people making 300M a year off of people making diddlysquat.

I haven't seen a really good video on it, but I am rewatching Amanda the Jedi videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYoyN-4U7U4 it doesn't get into the batshit founders statements, tho

[mistressofmuses]

I really hope that they have an extremely decisive victory, and that it DOES create additional ripple effects for people in all creative fields, in terms of not allowing exploitation.