I’ve been unmotivated in the past but i think it’s time to sort out an alternative.
Because how else am I going to get those deep creases out of my blouses!
Do your own ironing! It’s quite easy. Heat the iron to the proper temperature. Not too hot. Use steam liberally. Use an ironing board and a sleave attachment. Turn your garment around so you can reach everywhere. Some creases are meant to be there. Make sure they are straight before ironing them.
Excellent advice 👚
Do you remember when EXTREME IRONING!!! was a thing?
Hulu is treating me with impunity when I reported errors with their apps. Hulu, an eminently cancelable service that a lot of people never paid for in the first place.
Sail the seven seas, friends. These people deserve despondency.
Everyone here forgets cable was under threat of piracy until streaming came along. They think the US has cracked down but pirates have gotten more advanced. I just can’t get over these streaming services not realizing if you take away the only safe port then all that is left is piracy.
You are just one drop in an ocean pal.
You guys are starting to sound like you agree with the practice.
Just answering your question. No matter how dystopian, it is the reality we live in.
I’ve ditched all of them except the Disney/Hulu bundle, and that’s only because Amex gives me back $7 a month of the cost.
Amazon Prime used to be okay as a Prime customer, but now you can’t watch a 24 minute show without seeing like five ads. I tried to watch an episode of Invincible and there were two ads before the show even started, two in the middle of the show, and one at the end. It’s freaking insane.
I barely even watch video these days, I get way more mileage out of a good music service like Qobuz or Tidal.
Their entire survival hinges on keeping investment money flowing, which means they essentially have to lie and over-promise.
A chronic issue plaguing the entire tech and media sector right now. Line must go up no matter the costs.
Pirates life for me
Statistics. You’re still there and only complaining. I purged all subscription parasites from my life in 2019.
I live by the abstraction, “you can’t fix stupid in anyone else but yourself.” All you can do is tell others what you did with your one wallet vote and hope that others do the same at some critical mass.
They do it because you’re still there, and you care while they do not. You want to think you’re human. You’re not. You’re a new deck chair on a yacht if you’re lucky. Most likely, you’re no more than a liter or few of diesel.
The answer is apathy.
You have to remember that most users simply don’t care. The majority of consumers are some combination of either not technologically savvy or just outright intimidated by technology, are not very well educated, are incredibly reluctant to read, are not particularly observant, will not leave their routines or comfort zones without very significant motivation, and have spent their entire lives being the very frog in that gradually boiling pot of ever more numerous and intrusive advertising to the point that they just accept this as “normal.” They’re busy. They don’t read tech headlines. They don’t understand what’s going on under the hood, and nor do they want to.
Normal people don’t see the world like us nerds do. I am positive that these streaming services (and many other businesses) have studied this and understand it very well. If they lose 1% of their business which was made up by vocal nerds, but whatever odious change the just rolled out results in an increase in profit that is greater than the revenue from those subscriptions lost, they’ll go ahead and do it anyway.
They think they have a captive audience because by and large they functionally do have a captive audience. This stuff works, and people keep paying for it en masse.
Which is functionally a captive audience.
I mean, look at Reddit. Huge uproar last year, nothing happened really.
Pretty much every service, platform, app has become worse over the last two or three years. But people keep using them. And not for a lack of alternatives. They are actively hostile against change and many really don’t care. They are so used to being fucked over, squeezed for pennies and bombarded with bullshit ads, that they gave up.
The same thing happens in politics, btw. People just vote whatever - if at all, because they already expected to be fucked over. All those activists you see on TV or online are a tiny minority.
They don’t care about you. They don’t even want you as a subscriber, you’re a pain in the ass. Most people are too tired and not tech savvy enough to pirate. A lot of those will eventually do something else, too, but they can cram ads into the streams faster than those people can find the wherewithal to leave.
In short, this is profitable, and no amount of raging will make it less so. Take care of yourself, but don’t pretend you’re making line go down.
I’m not saying I’m going to start a revolution. I’m only saying it’s time to break the chain, again.
It’s always about the 💰💰💰they’re getting.
Because of the people they loose due to the price hike, more will stay for the new price.
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They’re sure you will, or some will, but the number of customers they lose will be offset by the revenue gained.
Since that’s the only metric they really care about at the end of the day it makes “sense” to them to do it.
Remember when Netflix was totally dead and doomed when they cracked down on password sharing? And then it turned out people just upgraded to the new plan and kept on consuming.
Consumers do be fickle
A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right. The same thing happened in the early 80s when cable television advertised themselves as the pay-for-ad-free service, then started sneaking ads in. People complained, sure, but we all saw the outcome. They got away with it.
B: Greed, capitalism, and fuck you.
i haven’t had cable, or even a tv, in many years. stayed at a hotel the other day and flicked on the tv because the internet was out (helene), and was flabbergasted that for every 2 minutes of programming, there was at least 5 minutes of the same commercials over and over. people fucking watch this shit? on purpose?
When my wife and I stay at a hotel we watch cable and put on like QVC shopping channels.
It’s fun to overreact and be like “this is 100 genuine silver painted lead.” Some of the channels will have like changing infographics that flash and explode every second as the price keeps dropping so we make wooshing sounds as it keeps falling to a new low.
Ye ol bait and switch
A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right.
Yes. Remember when Netflix put a stop to password sharing and the internet went aflame with people declaring that Netflix had shot itself in the foot? Netflix subscriber counts went up.
The average person will put up with so much more of this nonsense than techie people will.
Subscriber counts went down in the affected areas.
But total revenue increased.
I’m saying that it’s false to insinuate subscribers going up due to this change. That’s false. Anything about total revenue is a completely different sentence. And it likely decreased or stayed about the same as the United States is more or less the most expensive reigon.
Perhaps they hid it among a period of growth to fool investors.
Subscribers went down while monthly fees went up.
Ohh right I didn’t account for that.
I’ll upvote dissenting opinions for the sake of argument.
It’s time to start shaming people who think like this
I’m just as angry as the next guy but I’m not gonna shame my boomer mom for not being able to figure out pirating or how to stream things to her tv. Could barely get her to figure out her tv man.
Yeah nah, but a small remark about dropping the streaming service for doing something bad could be reasonable
Boomers are perfectly capable of figuring this stuff out. I mean they managed to figure out and ruin so many other tech related things.
Hey now, I don’t think like this, but sometimes it’s just not worth the effort to think unlike this.
It’s why I highly recommend Fmovies, sudo-lol, and others. The barrier to entry is literally a browser and ublock origin and you can watch just about anything.
You can send someone a link to an episode and they can watch it. No sign ups, no ads (with ad block), and pretty decent service. No explaining what a torrent is. No VPN (though I recommend it of course).
Just pure content.
How important is a vpn - in your opinion?
It depends on your threat profile. I don’t go so far as to use it at home unless I’m downloading torrents or watching porn, since my legislators don’t have a fucking clue how the Internet works and thinks they can PrOtEcT tHe ChIlDrEn by blocking porn.
I’ve started to use VPN when I’m on guest wifis, even encrypted ones. I don’t want their owners to know what sites I visit.
Do you live in where I live, that sounds exactly like my country
I live in the US. If you live in a state or country that’s totalitarian, then yes a VPN is probably a good idea, tor if you can handle the latency.
It’s only a matter of time until both of those technologies are made illegal.
Exactly. These companies are governed by profits. To expect anything other than greed from them is foolish.
I already wasn’t using them by then. I couldn’t stop harder.
Cable television never advertised that. Cable TV started as a “community antenna” system that served people in valleys with existing off-the-air broadcast channels (which had ads); the existence of those systems created a market for satellite-fed channels like HBO (which was always a separate subscription and ad-free) and TBS/CNN (which always carried ads). Other than the premium channels like HBO/Showtime/Cinemax, cable channels have had ads from the beginning.
Once the small cable systems and the media publishers both got consolidated, we started seeing content licensing deals and higher costs to the subscriber to pay for it - but the channels (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc) always carried ads.
Yes and no. Networks had ads but cable began inserting their own ads in addition to the network ads. When I ran a company I did large media buys with cable companies. I would buy ads from the regional cable company which would air in between the national ads of Comedy Central, Discovery, etc.
It definitely did. I remember it vividly (I was alive back then). And I’m talking about the premium services, specifically (e: which was the point of my comparison: the premium paid services back then advertised no-ad service, then included ads, just like the premium streaming services are doing today).
Here’s an article from the NYT in 1981 on the topic:
Literally the first sentence of that article:
Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers’ monthly subscription fees.
The premium services mentioned in your quote (HBO, Showtime) also still do not run ads even today.
That’s not correct. My parents were early adopters and I remember there were newspaper articles when the first channel started showing ads.
…a newspaper is like a primitive early printed facebook.
Point A is covered by the last part of point B
