For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn’t want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.
Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh
Unpopular opinion but I don’t feel sorry for anyone who isn’t pirating their media these days. If anyone can look at the multiple $15+ per month subscriptions and think they’re worth it, they deserve to be fleeced even more.
You realize that the people who pay for content are subsidizing your ability to pirate, right? I personally don’t hold it against you, but the idea that you’d look down on the people paying to produce the content you enjoy for free is kind of idiotic.
I mean even ignoring the philanthropic take, it’s just straight up worth my time to pay for the services. It’d be stupid not to.
An hour of my work time in a month pays for Max, Spotify, Hulu (with ads), Netflix, and YouTube. I’d be spending more time than an hour to go through other methods.
And to put it in perspective I’m only in the top 20% of US households. Tens of millions of Americans are making this call even easier than I am. There’s definitely a wage gap forming and it’s interesting to see streaming be at the forefront of it.
With what? Most torrent I’ve seen sites have ratios. You can use a VPN to hide your origin but even Mullvad has dropped the ability to set incoming ports to seed so…
Ever singe Rarbg went down, I haven’t torrented much, mainly Usenet which doesn’t have ratios. The /t board can be good if you look past the dozens of porn threads, too.
I like to help support the production of new stuff to watch. This was great with Netflix for awhile, but I didn’t really like their shows lately, so I canceled them and got an HBO account. It will take me awhile to get through the shows there I want to watch. Then I will cancel and do another, either hulu or paramount or Disney, depending on shows.
I feel like paying for one service is a fair amount still.
Sounds a lot like when people say they use Spotify to “support the artist” when a single t-shirt sale gives them more money than ten thousand plays ever do. If I really want to support a show, I’ll leave a review online, but I won’t compromise my already tight budget to pay some billion-dollar company on the hopes that my subscription will trickle-down to the content creators.
Imma buy a t-shirt when shipping to Ukraine is available