"For Your Convenience"
A rant
So, I have this thing where I'm a little unhinged from time to time. I went from having zero filter as a child to not speaking up at all in my teens and early twenties. I think I'm starting to find a balance, but occasionally, I pop off and don't know how to say things "nicely"... I guess.
This might be one of those times. If you haven't been here before... Hi, I'm Sara... and I'm a little all over the place sometimes, but hang in there, I have a point, I promise.
A few nights ago, I was watching my emotional support show (The Golden Girls) on Disney Plus lulling into sleep like a precious little angel emoji 😇 when I heard dead silence followed by a loud voice saying, "WHICH AD WOULD YOU LIKE TO WATCH?"
Excuse the fuck out of me, Disney. How dare you startle me like that? I usually put Disney Plus on while I fall asleep because it's the safest option if my kids decide to walk in at some point throughout the night. I once fell asleep watching a movie on Tubi and was awoken by soft core pornography in a movie that started up after on its own before my sleep timer turned off my TV. That's just not something I want my kids walking in on. I am ok with them coming in and seeing a commercial about "Liberty Biberty".
Anyways, this got me thinking. You remember when Netflix came in the mail? TiVo? The way Hulu started out as a website you could just go to and watch things online for free? Recording things to be able to fast forward through commercials? Then streaming came along and we were promised that for just one low monthly price, we would NEVER have to watch another ad. What happened to that? Now for more than that low monthly price we all started out with, we get to watch ads AND some of the content is still behind a paywall. Why am I paying a monthly fee to get unlimited content but yet, I still have to pay for a movie from the 80's? And why am I not allowed to share the password for the account I pay for? Especially when Netflix once shared this:
The way my mind works, those thoughts just had a trickle effect on everything else going on right now. It's no secret the world is a blazing dumpster fire of despair at the moment. We are constantly bombarded by bad news. We just had an entire "alleged" sex trafficking and cannibalism bombshell blow up right in front of us and nothing was done. They released hundreds of pages of evidence and then had the audacity to tell us; it was all a hoax and there was "no evidence" of a sex trafficking ring. So, Ghislane Maxwell is apparently in prison for trafficking minors to... no one. What...?
And with all that going on, I'm over here mad about ads on Disney Plus. Maybe that's because I can't do anything about the rest of the stuff going on. I feel utterly helpless. If I can just watch Golden Girls and disassociate for 30 minutes, let me.... without the added pressure of choosing which ad I want to watch. I looked up why they added that feature. It was to "increase engagement". Apparently if the user chooses what ad they want to watch, they are more likely to actually watch it- thus creating more revenue for both Disney as well as whatever product is being advertised.
I remember when I signed up for Disney Plus, I did it for my kids. It was $4.99 a month. No ads. I currently pay $21.59 monthly for my current subscription. It's a bundle plan with HBO max and Hulu with ads. That's still more than 3 times the amount of what I started with. To me, that's insane. I keep it for the kids mostly, but also, I love Welcome to Derry on HBO. Do you know what they watch though? Old stuff. My kids have literally no interest in anything current. They want to watch The Little Mermaid (1989), and Phineas and Ferb (2007). My son loves Cars (2006) and The Suite Life of Zach and Cody (2005). All of these movies and shows are significantly older than they are.
It's amazing to me, we are paying so much to watch old content. Welcome to Derry is the only current show I watch. When I am watching TV, I am usually watching Lost (2004) or old movies and shows from the 90's.
They keep telling us just to work harder. Get another side hustle. Resell things. Invest in crypto currency. I even saw an article insisting Americans can just skip breakfast to save money on groceries. I understand having a streaming platform is considered a luxury. Having food should not be. That should be a basic human right. Meanwhile, in 2021, the US and Israel were the only countries to vote against a United Nations committee’s draft that asserted food as a human right. Which brings me back around to how fucked up the world is currently.
I have seen so many posts on Facebook about how certain states are banning certain items from being bought with food stamps. This is because they are trying to "Make America Healthy Again". I'm not against making America healthy. That would be great...
But how can we make America healthy when we literally spray the produce in poison... and then charge double for "organic" produce? Health foods... are not healthy. They are loaded with just as much bullshit as anything else... and are also twice as expensive. I am not the pinnacle of health. I down Monster energy drinks like a butterfly drinking nectar. But... to sit there and tell a low-income family that they cannot purchase a candy bar or birthday cake using food stamps because they are American tax dollars is a sad to me. Especially when they see no issues using American tax dollars to put shrimp on treadmills or fund studies to find out why monkeys throw poop.
Call me crazy, but the fact that the people in charge of our well-being were (and likely are still) purchasing minors for sex seems a little more concerning to me than someone buying a damn soda using their food stamps. But yeah, let's die on this hill.
Also, the people supporting this are insane to me. Why are YOU mad someone bought Oreos with food stamps? You do not care about the health of any other person. Stop pretending like you do. You just want to make people as miserable as you are. I have seen these same people filling their carts with mountains of junk and saying, "I paid for it with money I earned, I can buy what I want." You're absolutely right, you can buy whatever you want. I don't give a shit. No one does.
It's when you pretend to care about someone's health that it gets muddy. You're a hypocrite. If you are against something, say it with your whole chest and quit hiding behind your fake empathy. You make me sick. (I say this as someone who does not even receive food stamps or any kind of help. As a single-income family, we make too much to qualify for anything and I still believe you should leave those people alone.)
I am exhausted. Social media is ads over friends updates. I can't even think about something without picking up my phone and seeing an ad for it. We are all products now, not people. We need a "persona" to market ourselves online and a theme for our content (which really doesn't work for me since I'm such a scatter brain 😅) We are walking dollar signs. Our worth is measured by how much money we can generate for millionaires who don't give a single shit about any one of us. Minimum wage alone is the most offensive thing ever. That means they are literally okay with paying you the absolute lowest legal amount while demanding you show up and give 110 percent. You are replaceable. Someone else will always do the job and thank them for the scraps they throw their way.
But you know... pay your taxes. Work harder. Be okay with the fact that life has become an endless supply of streaming services and "convenience fees" (The fact I have to pay a fee to pay a bill is mind blowing. 😶🌫️🤯)
This is a subject with endless conversation that I will literally never shut up about... and I'm not really sure how to end it. 😒
So, in the words of Hilary Duff, "That's my life. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I hope you enjoyed it because I know I did."
About the Creator
Sara Wilson
I love Ugly Things.
I try and be active AND interactive.
I write... whatever I feel.
Sometimes it's happy.. sometimes it isn't. But it's real. And it's me.
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Comments (3)
Perfect
I agree with so much of this. It was like listening to myself rant. I'm still angry that everyone else looked at what Netflix was doing and decided instead of letting Netflix buy rights to stream their shows they should all make their own streaming platforms so we have to buy more subscriptions ourselves.
I am gonna tell ya. I completely agree with you. Nothing is ever simple. Ads help us to watch programs...unless you pay to get rid of them. We are f-ed.