pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



Can you smell it? It's everywhere. Impossible to miss. The way streaming media keeps being divided into smaller and smaller plots of land, every company determined to jump into the same pool, collectively put their own legally distinct eggs into the same basket. It's going to collapse. It's not a matter of "if" anymore, simply when. Next year? Next week? Who knows.

We're already seeing the signs - people are already refusing to sign up for any more services, seeing that the whole point of "cutting the cord" was to make their monthly entertainment cost go down. You've already got people who pick two or three of the platforms they use the most and settle.

Someone recommends a new show, someone else asks what it's on, they answer, the other person responds, "Oh, I don't have that one." And the conversation simply ends there. There is no attempt for one party to convince the other to get that streaming service. That would be like trying to convince your American friend to drive all the way into Canada just to try Tim Hortons. Nobody cares enough, and they're certainly not going to vouch that strongly for these uncaring corporations.

People are starting to see the cracks - the HBO Max shitfest of the past month, merger after merger, rights issues, shows and movies flip flopping from platform to platform, disappearing entirely, being preserved incorrectly.

I can only sit and wait for the Moment to come, some catastrophic collapse, whether it be a matter of the bubble popping and the people spontaneously deciding to stop spending money on these services, or - more likely, in my opinion - through the corporations' own doing. A self-inflicted wound so massive it immediately pushes away all but the most ardent streaming proponents. Imagine the HBO Max/Discovery debacle but on an industry-wide scale. Some cataclysmic event that wipes out half the catalog of every streaming platform permanently. It's not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe it won't be that big, but it might not take something that big to collapse the market.

And I want all of it because I just want to see physical media come back. Yessir.


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