Not watched Netflix in last 6 months

It was a snap decision. One day I decided to stop watching Netflix or any other streaming platform. I thought I will try this for few days and see how it goes. Weeks turned to months and now it is almost six months since I sat in front of my TV to watch anything.

Suddenly, I had too much time after work. I learnt cooking and now I am a full-stack cook. I listened to tons of podcast and audio books while cooking. Somehow listening to podcast and cooking go very well together for me. I am about to earn the Master badge on Audible.

My eyes hurt less. Somedays, I would feel a burning sensation in my eyes after a binge session. Now, I could avoid this. I was also standing and walking more leading to better health.

My thoughts are in much more control. For lack of better word, they feel sanitized. It is like my mind is off the junk food. I feel calmer.

Sometimes, I do think about watching Netflix on a cheat day. But, now I feel no real urge to do so and so I let the feeling pass.

To All The Romantic Comedies I’ve Loved Before

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Luckily for me—and for all of us—Noah Centineo’s swoonsome Peter isn’t that kind of good guy. In this respect, the film departs, winningly, from the novel from which it’s adapted. In the book, Peter is that kind of guy—or at least, his boorishness in insisting that “no rom coms” be written into the contract by which he and Lara Jean establish the terms of their fake romance, is a clever feint suggesting we have on our hands a character reminiscent of the insufferable John Thorpe in Austen’s Northanger Abbey. In the film, by contrast, it’s Lara Jean who writes in to the contract the condition that Peter must watch Sixteen Candles, while he in turn stipulates that she must watch Fight Club. The mutuality of the agreement sets their relationship on the right terms. The scene in which we watch them—Peter, Lara Jean, and Lara Jean’s younger sister Kittie—watch Sixteen Candles together is all the proof we need that the onscreen Peter has evolved from the Peter on the page.

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Sarah Tindal Kareem — Avidly

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THE TRUTH-AFFIRMING POWERS OF A GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED NETFLIX BINGE

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For people who need to justify their Netflix binges.

The Netflix Binge works on the theory that there’s nothing wrong with the web that can’t be fixed by what’s right with it. Close out the brain-cell-bruising Facebook, and skip over to the neural luxury resort that is Netflix. With no mandate to sell ads, and because Netflix’s profit motive craves your love more than your data, the shows aim only to enthrall. Let yourself be enthralled, then, by shows that subdue consumerism—Netflix doesn’t want you bouncing to Amazon mid-binge—instead of amplifying it.

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Virginia Heffernan — Wired

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Business Lessons from Reed Hastings (Netflix)

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The way Netflix has evolved and has reached where it is today is incredible. A detailed 2 part article on business lessons from Reed Hastings.

3. “By 2011 we realized that many of the firms we were buying from were eventually going to want to run their own streaming service. We had no reliable supply. We had to go vertical since it was not going to be in their interest to sell to us over time.”

Hastings is saying that Netflix understands the dangers associated with “wholesale transfer pricing.” Eugene Wei has written specifically about how the concept applies to Netflix:

“Netflix had a great advantage when First Sale Doctrine permitted them to buy DVDs at the same wholesale price as any retailer since it capped their costs. But in the TV/movie licensing world, the content owner can constantly adjust their price to squeeze almost every last drop of margin from the distributor as you can’t find perfect substitutes for the goods being offered. Ask TV networks if they make any money licensing NFL, NBA, and MLB games for broadcast. Hint: the answer is no. In the digital world, transfer pricing can be even more of a cruel mistress.”

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25iq

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What Netflix doesn’t want you to know about how its synopses are written

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Have you ever written a synopsis of something you never watched or read?

From Haas’s description, the job sounded pretty straightforward. Why, I wondered during our conversation, would they want to hide that? Then Haas dropped a bomb: “As I’m sure you have noticed those don’t always actually match the content of the film very well which is because they did not pay us well enough for us to actually watch the movies,” Haas said. “So we would write the synopsis based on what we found online. That could be kind of challenging.” Bingo, I thought. That’s what Netflix doesn’t want us to know. No, not the possibility that they pay their writers poorly, but the possibility that SYNOPSES WRITERS DO NOT WATCH THE FILMS These synopses are based off other synopses, a feedback loop that would’ve given Baudrillard fits.

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Ann-Derrick Gaillot — The Outline

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Did 13 Reasons Why Spark a Suicide Contagion Effect?

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There is a debate going on whether the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why should have depicted suicide the way it did.

The study, while troubling, is not entirely surprising. In May, I examined how 13 Reasons Why managed to break virtually every rule that exists when it comes to portraying suicide, featuring a graphic, prolonged scene of the main character’s death in the final episode and glamorizing it as a force for positive change in her community. One of the biggest concerns among psychologists and educators was that the show might spark a contagion effect, where increased coverage of suicide in the media leads to a related increase in suicide attempts. Netflix doesn’t release data regarding its viewing figures, but the wide discussion of the show on social media (it became the most-tweeted about show of 2017) implies that a significant number of people watched it, particularly teenagers. The rush to produce a follow-up season (currently being filmed and scheduled for a 2018 release) indicates the show has been a big hit for the streaming service.

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Sophie Gilbert — The Atlantic

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