Selectivity over saturation is the future.

I’m no longer chilling with Netflix.

Up until last month I’d had an account for almost 15 years, starting with the DVD by mail thing that made the company famous. Giving it up was hard, even though I barely watched it anymore.

I found that increasingly there was less and less stuff on there that appealed to me. The tenth season of Stranger Things? GTFO. How old are those “kids” now anyway, like 30? Good lord, will they just get fucking eaten by a monster already and be done with it?

Netflix had its moments. Back in the day, I enjoyed Orange is the New Black. A show not exactly made for me, but one I looked forward to every year. But even then it became clear that the streaming model was built not on worthwhile storytelling, but on filling up space with “content” meant mainly to mildly appeal to different audiences. But it “appeals” only in the sense of a corny corporate joke that you laugh at out of politeness, not enjoyment.

The last straw might have been Rebel Moon, which is like the quintessential douchebag dudebro film, making 300 look like a Ken Burns documentary by comparison. Zack Snyder’s cringy Star Wars ripoff, following his 2021 Aliens ripoff Army of the Dead. Who the fuck thought that film merited a two-part release? What algo called for that? And for what audience? Lobotomy patients? Was it made for headless torsos stored in a medical school morgue waiting to be dissected? Or maybe Rebel Moon wasn’t even made for humans. Maybe it was actually meant for AI bots roaming the dead internet, to placate them from wiping out humanity.

I’m so done with some computer algo dictating how and when I watch something. Here are words that come to mind that describe what it feels like getting puppet stringed by some Silicon Valley dork’s coding: Unnatural, weird, uncomfortable, disappointing, unsettling, uncanny, unsatisfying, creepy, skeevy, and just plain wrong.

“Attention by algorithm” is such a strange thing. Letting some impersonal random code feed you “content” (hate that word) on some digital liminal space just feels bizarre. Dystopian, almost.

It’s not even how I’ve found some of the best movies I’ve watched over the years. Recently I discovered two solid thrillers, Eden Lake and Triangle, from reading posts of people I follow on X. That’s also how I found the trailers for the upcoming horror flicks Cuckoo and Longlegs, two releases I’m looking forward to seeing this year. X is where I first heard about Late Night with the Devil and last year’s Talk to Me.

I follow filmmakers I like, such as Sean Baker, and usually get the latest trailers or updates directly from the source when they post them.

I kept hearing positive things about Das Boot and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on Reddit before finally checking them out years ago.

It was coming across all the “Think, Mark!’ memes everywhere that got me into my new favorite show, Invincible.

There have been exceptions. Netflix spotlighted Dragged Across Concrete last year. A great, gruesome little thriller starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn as crooked cops trying to procure some ill-gotten gold. I would probably have never discovered that one had it not gone to the streaming afterlife. 

But for every Concrete or Spectral there’s a whole mess of uncanny valley-esque stuff that doesn’t even look like it was made for humans or by humans. Stuff like I Care A Lot or The Perfection. Or just unwatchable garbage in general, like Adam Sandler’s Netflix deal “comedies.”

Nearly every great movie I’ve ever seen I had reccomended to me from a friend or family member, or I sat down to watch it with them. In the past you might have stumbled across something on cable. But those days are mainly gone, replaced by whatever Netflix feels like throwing at you.

Lately, I’ve become a lot more selective about what I watch. It could be from getting older and becoming more conscious of the trickling sands in the hourglass. Maybe it’s due to getting tired of the endless inundation of “content” from the streaming factories. Or maybe the high junk-to-jewel ratio the streamers keep spitting out has just made it not worthwhile to sift through the silt.

Entertainment should feel more sociable, organic, and communal. Not programmable. It should feel like a fun process of discovery, not like having your head dunked in a bargain bin DVD pile at Wal-Mart.