opinion
Netflix: A Story of Greed, Apathy & Karma
1As longtime Netflix subscribers, we were really miffed to learn earlier this Summer that they’d be dramatically increasing their rates. While we previously paid $9.99 per month for one DVD at a time plus unlimited streaming, the same combination would, effective September 1, 2011, cost $15.98 per month.
Note that this new pricing included no additional features—in fact, they’ll have less to offer since Starz Entertainment has terminated its deal as a content partner. Netflix claimed the increases were necessary to continue to grow & improve their service. Maybe. After all, the streaming service was initially a freebie but had grown significantly, so the need to shore up the infrastructure could be legit. But the company’s unapologetic, cavalier attitude struck a sour note and many customers were understandably angered, threatening to cancel their subscriptions entirely. Given the company’s withering stock value since—especially plummeting since Sept. 1st—a lot of those rightfully disgruntled customers have followed through with their threats. (In fact, we did too!)
Today, subscribers were treated to a personal message from Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, with as backhanded an apology as you may have ever heard. He feigned remorse for how they handled the rate hike but still did nothing to earn back customer trust or instill faith in his leadership. He explains that the company is rebranding the DVD mailing portion of their service as “Qwikster” while retaining the “Netflix” brand for streaming only. This divisive maneuver is sure to aggravate customers who’ll have to bounce back & forth between the two sites, never knowing which movies will be available for streaming vs. delivered. Beyond that, this just seems like a feeble effort to distance the now-disgraced Netflix brand name from the price hike debacle. It’s a desperate move by short-sighted, greedy, leaders whose faulty management and slap-in-the-face customer service have just cost them the keys to the kingdom.
Netflix is embedded in TVs, DVD & Blu-ray players, videogame consoles, and well… just about everything but your toaster yet rather than continue to gradually build on the captive audience within that already-installed base, they spurned their loyal fans, got greedy and blew a phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime market lead. Especially given how flippant the company’s management has been about all of this, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle if they ever fully recover. This is pure, swift consumer karma in action. Make room on the loser’s bench, TiVo & Palm!
Were you a Netflix subscriber before the price increase? Did you stick with ‘em or jump ship?
Be sure to check out Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander put a hilarious spin on this situation:
Accustomed to Violence
4There’s been a surge of articles in parenting magazines, blogs, and news coverage about bullying lately. Children are being tormented in America’s schools and online—sometimes to the point of committing suicide. It’s hard to believe that something I had been so totally unaware of is such a huge problem, yet the media has declared bullying to be a national epidemic.
There’s some contention about just how severe this has become; some experts insist that bullying is no more prevalent now than it was back when little boys yanked little girls’ pigtails and that the media’s portrayal is unrealistic and excessive, making behaviors that might simply be cruel into something more criminal. Maybe physical bullying has taken a backseat to psychological or emotional bullying, but even if the media has blown this out of proportion, there’s no denying that bullying is a credible and increasing problem.
As a parent, I’m thankful for all of the efforts to shed some light on this problem and I fully support both punishing bullies and helping kids learn to better cope with pressure-filled situations. But maybe we should put forth as much effort looking at some of the root causes. I believe a big contributing factor is how acclimated we’ve become to violence.
Horrific, explicit, oppressive violence is now an accepted part of our everyday lives.
Remember the movie Robocop about a terminally-wounded Detroit cop who returns to the police force as a powerful cyborg? What you may not recall is that the 1987 movie was initially given an X rating by the MPAA due to its graphic violence. Right, the movie was rated “X” not because of explicit sexual content, but for its shockingly-violent imagery. To appease the requirements of the ratings board, writer/director Paul Verhoeven pulled back on the significant blood & gore in 3 scenes so the movie could be released with an “R” rating instead.
Yet compared to what we routinely see on TV, movies, and video games now, the uncut version of that movie is tame by today’s standards. Within a 20 year span, what was shocking and socially repulsive has become acceptable, commonplace entertainment. Movies have become gleefully gruesome and morbidity is now mainstream. Consider the “Saw” series that let us watch as people are brutally murdered in twisted, torturous manners. Compare the likes of a Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris martial arts movie to that of the endless barrage of bloody carnage shown in contemporary movies like “Kill Bill.”
Likewise, TV shows even feature a stunning degree of graphic violence. Procedural cop shows like C.S.I. are far more realistically gruesome than that X-rated version of Robocop. Even when the violence isn’t necessarily visually graphic, there’s still some extremely negative behaviors at play. Consider that toddlers now watch wrestling on TV, which was strictly the guilty pleasure of Dads when we were kids—much to the disapproval of most Moms.
And where playing video games in our teen years meant shooting squiggly blips to make pixelated aliens disappear, now video gamers are immersed in battles where they fire super-realistic weapons at convincingly-real, three-dimensional opponents who yowl in agony when hit, spurt blood, limp, and finally collapse in a nauseating mass on the ground when they’ve sustained too much damage. (Until recently, this is the sort of thing that only soldiers would have to endure—and sometimes suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.) Other video games reward players for beating up women, stealing cars, pistol-whipping passers-by, and inflicting varying degrees of terrible carnage on, well, anything that moves. According to some estimates, by the time typical American children reach the age of 18, they’ve already seen 200,000 acts of violence and 40,000 murders on some sort of screen.
We’ve allowed our society as a whole to become fully engulfed, acclimated, and accustomed to horrendous, gratuitous violence as a normal component of daily life. Perversely, our society actually savors and glorifies extreme cruelty and destructiveness! And as we’ve become numb and indifferent to negativity and violence, bullying has escalated to epidemic proportions. Surely, that’s no coincidence.
Terrorists, No More
0In response to the recent shooting of Congresswoman Giffords in Tucson, Hillary Clinton empathized that America has loony, sometimes dangerous extremists just like nearly every other nation. While I don’t especially care for or agree with her uneven comparison of this lone gunman’s actions with that of militant groups like al-Qaeda, I did like Clinton use of the word “extremists” rather than “terrorists.”
I wonder if, by calling nutjobs (here or abroad) “terrorists,” we’re giving them a certain amount of power? Perhaps we’re tacitly admitting that they’ve accomplished their goal—they’ve instilled terror and disrupted our lives. Are we in some way giving these loonies exactly what they desperately crave?
So maybe former-President George W. Bush had it right when he called them “evil-doers.” Sure, at the time, I thought it sounded juvenile and had some odd evangelical connotations, but maybe I just failed to understand his rationale. Was Bush just trying to avoid giving terrorists the satisfaction of living up to their label?
Therefore, I’ve decided we should mandate that anytime they’re mentioned in the media—be it print or broadcast—terrorists must be referred to as “buttheads.”
Just imagine the headlines:
”Buttheads Delay Flights in NYC”
”Domestic Buttheads On The Rise”
”Citizens Foil Libyan Butthead Plot”
What better way to trivialize and emasculate these buttheads?
Biff Tannen would approve.
The Crust of the Matter
11Ever heard of Smucker’s Uncrustables for kids? These frozen peanut butter sandwiches (of dubious nutritional caliber) come in a variety of flavors, are made from whole wheat or white crustless bread, and are thawed out an hour or two before lunch or snacktime.
I bring this up because earlier this week I read a brief post over at Bargain Briana about a kitchen tool that lets you make your own Uncrustables-style sealed pocket sandwiches. I read the article and promptly left a comment hoping to generate a little discussion on the broader topic of cutting crusts. Frankly, I’m kinda miffed that Briana apparently not only opted to toss out my comment, but didn’t even email me. Okay, fair enough—her blog, her prerogative. Perhaps she just didn’t want to get mired down in the dicey, controversial waters of crust-cutting. So, I thought I’d broach the topic here:
Let’s not mince words: I’m opposed to the idea of cutting crusts off of sandwiches for kids on a number of levels:
- Babies don’t come out of the chute with an inbred hatred of bread crusts; parents implant that notion. Why foster the idea that crusts are bad?
- Crust-cutting not only creates more work for harried parents, but unnecessary waste as well. Why instill the expectation that someone will always gladly take the time to needlessly trim off and discard an otherwise good portion of a sandwich?
- The crust is the most nutritious part of bread, containing 8 times more antioxidants and more dietary fiber, which helps prevent colon cancer! Why wouldn’t you want your kid(s) to have the full benefit of the foods you’ve chosen (and paid hard-earned money) for them to eat?
- And lastly, in support of my pro-crust position, I offer the following:
If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars [and] heavens.
—English poet, Robert Browning (1812-1889)
But maybe I’m missing something here. Is there a valid reason for crust-cutting that simply eludes me? Am I some kinda retrograde Luddite or just being downright negligent by not trimming the nefarious crusts off of Liam’s otherwise delicious sammiches?
So, what do you think? Do you cut the crusts off of your kids’ bread?
Lost Library
6
A recent blog about beautiful libraries triggered some old memories. As a kid, I loved going to the public library — and still do. Our library wasn’t elaborate or grandiose, yet it seemed immense. People spoke in hushed church-like tones. There was that nameless scent. The obscure Dewey Decimal System held untold secrets just waiting to be decoded. The shelves just dripped with potential. Yes, going to the library was a rich & wondrous experience!
But it’s an experience I fear that my son may never know…
Booked-filled libraries are becoming a thing of the past. But while virtual libraries of e-books are certainly more accessible, I don’t think they’re as appreciable. There’s not the same sense of vastness nor do they inspire the same reverence or wonderment. Digital books seem less tangible and substantial. You can electronically duplicate the content, but not the context or sensual aspect, the smell, feel, heft & texture, of actual books.
I’ll admit that even in spite of my love for real, physical books, I’m not immune to the hype & allure of e-book readers. The idea that in a matter of seconds, you can download a new book rather than ordering it and waiting days or weeks for it to arrive make devices like Amazon.com’s Kindle really attractive. But several factors — not the least of which is the price — have held me back. I’ve seen a Sony e-book reader and the screen was surprisingly easy on the eyes, but deep down I’m still suspicious that the e-book reader experience just wouldn’t be as satisfying or comfortable as reading a book.
But sadly, the trend of replacing actual books with digital versions is only accelerating. In fact, Cushing Academy near Boston is one of the first schools in the U.S. to abandon traditional books in favor of virtual ones. In lieu of a library, the academy is instead creating a media center, spending nearly $500,000 equip it with with flat-screen TVs, e-book readers, and a coffee shop.
Is it just me and this is just nostalgia rearing its head once again? Do you think there’s anything lost in the transition from physical to digital books? Have you considered making the move to e-books? Are libraries all but lost as we plunge ever deeper into the cyberworld?
Tax-Free Insanity
2
The annual, three-day Sales Tax Holiday begins today in Texas. During the "holiday" weekend of August 21—23rd, back-to-school shoppers get a break from state & local sales taxes on most clothing, shoes, backpacks, & school supplies priced at less than $100 purchased for use by a student in an elementary or secondary school.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being frugal and realize that even small savings can add up, but just as I wondered how did shopping become a holiday? a couple of years back, I continue to question this insanity. There’s little doubt as to our government’s underlying motives for this "holiday" — oh sure, we get a little relief from sales taxes on a few select items, but they get a massive shot in the arm from the influx of taxes on incidental purchases — purchases we’d be much less likely to make if not for this artificial incentive.
And really, unless you’re spending hundreds of dollars, an eight percent savings isn’t a tremendous net. (C’mon, we’re talking about less than a Frappuccino or two.) In fact, I suspect that if instead of this pay no sales tax all weekend event, retailers advertised a take 8% off on back-to-school purchases sale, the response would be, um, "yawn."
Rapacious retailers are, of course, banking heavily upon this "holiday" to lure budget-crunched consumers into the stores and help pry open their wallets. These annual sales tax holidays have become a huge event that extend, in many states, well beyond sensible school supplies to include big-ticket items like large electronics, major appliances, & furniture.
And the tax-free insanity doesn’t end there…
Some states also have separate sales tax holidays just for firearms. Firearms? Yup, you can get your weaponry & ammo tax-free in Louisiana on September 4—6th and in South Carolina on November 27—28th!
Texas Road Etiquette
0For Texans, there’s a set of unwritten, yet fully understood rules of etiquette that apply when driving on highways. If you’re the slower-moving vehicle on one of the hundreds (thousands?) of two-lane highways that weave throughout the state and a faster one approaches behind, it’s simply expected that you’ll ease over onto the shoulder and let the faster driver pass without having to occupy the oncoming lane. And accordingly, if you’re the faster driver who’s just been afforded this courtesy, it’s expected that you’ll give a little wave as you pass and/or after that slower car has moved back into the lane after you’ve gone by.
If you’ve never been a part of this graceful driver’s version of the Texas Two-Step, it may sound a little complicated, but it’s not — it happens so frequently throughout any trip within the Lone Star State, it’s instinctual.
Over the Easter holiday, we found ourselves on many of these two-lane roads and noticed how this Texas road courtesy is becoming a thing of the past. Out of about 6 hours of driving on two-lane roads on that trip, there were very few drivers who would move over and allow us to pass. Also, I noticed that when I pulled over to let people pass me, not a single person on this trip gave me the customary “wave” to say thank you.
All of this really bothers me a lot. I’m saddened that people aren’t teaching their children the common driving courtesies that my parent’s did. It seems that it’s mostly my generation that has done this. What happened? Have we become so impatient & self-absorbed that we’ve completely done away with common courtesy?
Generation Z – The Natives Are Restless
0I’m sure you’ve heard of the demographic groups "Generation X" and "Generation Y" — and there’s a good chance that you fall into one of those two — but did you know there’s also a category for our kids: "Generation Z." While there’s some contention about the exact start & end years, this generation generally consists of children born after 1995 and will cut off at 2021. (Some insist that this group begins in 2001 and accordingly, label it the "9-11 Generation.")
However you define it, today’s kids will be the most connected generation ever in terms of technology and on a worldwide scale. They will have never known a world without the Internet, notebook PCs, digital cameras, iPods, DVDs, & cellular phones. They will have never known life without MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and a vast sea of other social media stuff that many of us are only just now tentatively dipping a toe into. Generation Z children are, in other words, digital natives. Or to put it another way…
I recently ran across those terms from Marc Prensky and the concept really stuck with me. It’s been such a pervasive notion that it’s prompted lots of introspection & raised some very interesting questions.
I’m amazed by how appropriate the concept is, especially thinking in terms of literal immigrants who come to America, with the barriers for entry and the subsequent difficulties that they face once here. As I’ve mulled this over, I keep remembering movies & TV shows where immigrants and/or their children were central to the stories. Thinking the similarities between the concepts of national and digital immigrants, I’m forced to wonder:
- Is my thick immigrant accent coming through when I rail against cell phone text messaging? (A phone, after all, is for talking to someone else!)
- Is refusing to add a DVD player in my car a bit like clinging to archaic Old World values that’re out of place in today’s society?
- By not embracing MySpace, satellite radio, or streaming movies, am I like an aggravatingly stubborn immigrant who struggles with (or simply chooses to remain mostly ignorant of) English language?
- Do my arguments that technology is making us impatient and short-sighted seem like quaint, cranky ramblings about how things were back in the "Old Country?"
What about you — what do you think of the concept of digital natives vs. immigrants? Do you see how it applies to you?
Monopoly Madness
0
It seems that the drive for immediate gratification has corrupted yet another element of my childhood. Maybe I’m just a nostalgic atavist, but when I learned (from Dede) that the newest versions of Monopoly use plastic instead of paper money, I was crushed.
Yup, rather than shipping with traditional compliment of $15,140 in cash, Monopoly’s colorful paper currency has now been replaced with 5 shiny debit cards that you swipe in a digital reader when purchasing properties, paying rent, or making other transactions. That’s just disturbing.
Ok sure, it’s just a board game, but it always had an educational aspect as well. Monopoly was the first exposure most of us had to handling cash, investing in property, saving for improvements, negotiating power deals, entering into financial partnerships, and planning for future expenses—like making sure you’ve got enough money to weather the fiscal devastation should you fail to successfully hopscotch through your brother’s “Hotel Row” via Community Chest, Luxury Tax, or one of those blasted railroads.
So, do you feel that debit cards ruin the classic game or does the electronic angle give a tired old game a compelling new twist? Post a comment and let us know what your take is on this!
Related Trivia: Extra bonus points to whoever can correctly give the formal name of Monopoly’s mustached mascot. (No fair Googling the answer!)
Update: Discover the answer to the Monopoly trivia question!
Patience Needed – Now!
1
In these Bluetooth-enabled, bullet-pointed, increasingly-digital times, I’m worried that we’re losing something truly vital — patience. It appears that we’ve all but lost the ability to delay gratification and recognize that some things really are worth waiting for. Our society is so focused on the now that we’ve forgotten about the value of later.
What’s especially scary about that loss is scientists now believe there’s a link between delayed gratification and intelligence. At the very minimum, it’s a given that tolerance & patience are key indicators of emotional & social maturity—and we’re presently in very short supply of those much-needed qualities.
Gimme Credit!
So I happened to be thinking about layaways recently. For those not old enough to recall, this used to be a way to purchase an item when you didn’t have enough money to buy it outright. You’d take your merchandise to the “Layaway Counter” at the store, where the clerk would set your item back and take a down-payment. Then you’d go back from time to time to make additional payments until you had the item paid off. Only then did you get to take your new prized possession home.
But now just about anyone with a pulse can get a credit card, regardless of their ability to repay the lent money. So, people find some goodie at the store, swipe their plastic, and away they go with the new prized possession—with little or no thought about whether they can actually afford (or need) the item. Sure, we all like the immediacy of getting some great new thing right now, but at the same time, maybe something’s lost when we succumb to those impulses. (We’ve certainly seen the mess that credit can cause with the recent financial crises.)
But my point isn’t whether people should have credit or not—it’s about self-moderation and the value of delaying gratification. Deferring a purchase can give you a chance to evaluate “want” versus “need” and once you’ve distanced yourself a bit, often you’ll find that the need just isn’t there. Back when credit cards weren’t so prevalent, anticipation made the end result all the more rewarding.
Picture This!
And do you remember when you used to have to snap a roll of photos, drop off the film canister for development, then wait days to get the prints? The immediacy of digital cameras—click the button and take a dozen shots, then just toss the ones that don’t make the cut right into the bit bucket. Take the best of the lot, tweak &; crop the image, and blast your masterpiece to the nearby printer. But here again, maybe there’s something lost in the instantaneousness of it all.
I’m not ready to forgo my digital camera and revert back to film, but I do believe that the expectancy made the experience all the more rewarding when you finally pulled those prints out of the little envelope and saw your handiwork for the first time, days (or even weeks) after the shot. Certainly, we were much more judicious about snapping photos then, knowing that even the crummy ones would cost.
Listen Here!
Have you noticed that as music has become easier to acquire, it’s also become far more disposable? Count the number of truly great albums you’ve heard in the last year and compare that to maybe 5 years ago. With the immediacy of digital music, it seems consumers are at the same time more demanding, yet less discriminating. That is, why bother buying an entire crappy album when you can just cherry-pick the 2 individual tracks that are good? Many artists are feeding into this mindset by focusing on quantity rather than quality, a kind of scattershot approach.
And while a new album used to be something special—you anticipated the release for weeks, eager for the day when you could finally go to the store and plunk down your cash for the new record or CD—I wonder if we’ve lost some of the significance now that music is just a quick click away on the Internet. Music used to have a tangible quality as well, with the album cover and liner notes adding to the overall experience. I thoroughly enjoy listening to my iPod & MP3s, but at the same time, music downloads just seem somehow less substantial, slightly less meaningful than their old physical predecessors.
Hold Up!
Increasingly, there’s a startling lack of patience and everyone’s clamoring for instant gratification with very few people noticing the consequences, It’s a nasty Catch-22 loop—we want something right now, but the meaning or significance is often lost because of the immediacy and we just end up wanting more all the sooner. Or upon following that “get it now” impulse, we discover that it really wasn’t all that desirable or special after all.
Each successive generation seems to be coming down the pike expecting more & more immediate gratification. I don’t necessarily think technology is to blame, but the one-click immediacy of the digital world is certainly an unbelievably fertile breeding ground for the “gotta have it now!” mentality that’s pervading society.
What do you think? Anyone else noticed how impatient people are becoming? Is our society experiencing a massive breakdown of self-control or am I just having a massive case of nostalgia?
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