There is yet one more alternative to pirating, and that is to simply not play the game. I’ve been so much happier since i stopped consuming mass media. No cable, no streaming.
Pray they don't alter it any further
Submitted 6 months ago by The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f206c4ac-b77b-43db-b1f0-4dfe1b32ac65.jpeg
Comments
rustydomino@lemmy.world 6 months ago
TheSlad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Right? Like what do you even get for paying all that money? The next generic marvel movie? Cashgrab nostalgia-bait sequels like fucking happy gilmore 2?? Disney’s next culturally diverse not-quite-princess movie???
Learn to paint. Plant some flowers or vegetables. Build something. Create instead of consume.
jnk@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’m luckily young enough i haven’t finished my list of actually good “old” media, so yeah, seven seas all the way
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Fascinating! My taste for it has kinda gone away as I’ve got older, to the point I can’t imagine how I could sit my ass down for over an hour. Instead of doing literally anything else.
I do still watch some streaming stuff for video essayists, music, and tutorial/instruction videos (work or personal project related)
Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I pirate things I could stream legally. It’s often a better experience.
GhostTheToast@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My only issue with piracy is it doesn’t add to the number of streams. So it might cause some studios to cancel shows they don’t think are performing well.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They’ll cancel them anyway.
UxyIVrljPeRl@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well thats why i wait untill they are done. Too many canceled shows burned me.
Squirrel@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
I do the same. It’s just not worth dealing with the ever-increasing shittiness of streaming services.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
It’s getting to the point that I want to do it just on principle.
But for the most part I just don’t watch stuff at all
Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
for your convenience~
CommunityLinkFixer@lemmings.world [bot] 6 months ago
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Prox@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I get a 404 here… I’m using Boost and I’m on lemmy.world. Would either of those be blocking?
Fish@midwest.social 6 months ago
lemmy.world might be blocking it. Just visit lemmy.bdzer0.com
Blackmist@feddit.uk 6 months ago
This is the way.
Zatore@lemm.ee 6 months ago
If you give me what I want to watch and no ad’s then I’ll pay a fairly high amount for it. The moment there are ad’s I’m out. I’m so sick of ad’s that are forced on me. Slightly unrelated, but billboards should be banned outright.
TheOakTree@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Isn’t this effectively asking for the higher-tier ad-free subscription? Not that I inherently disagree with you, but I feel like they already offer (part of) your solution.
shasta@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Not all streaming services have a completely ad free tier
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 6 months ago
We can do all the ad blocking we want for our digital lives, but ads in the physical world cannot be blocked. I’m somewhat okay with political ads and ads for events, maybe even local business, but ads suck and probably worsen our mental health.
Ledivin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
When you realize streaming services cost as much as cable did
Someone never actually paid for cable, huh?
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️😎
Katzastrophe@feddit.de 6 months ago
I pay 5€ for a VPN just to be extra safe, still way cheaper than all the other stuff
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yup yup.
slurpinderpin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Fair winds and following seas to you sailor of the high seas!
troglodytis@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yo ho ho
resetbypeer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Soon the pirates will be dominating the digital sea again.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Pretty sure that many never stopped. There’s certainly more than during the golden age of Netflix, when they were the only service doing it.
midnight_puker@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Time to hoist the jolly roger high.
samus12345@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Fortunately, Lando has experience with such things.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Yo ho ho.
jayrodtheoldbod@midwest.social 6 months ago
I bailed on Netflix when I realized that damn, I’m going like a month with this on my phone and haven’t really watched much, maybe one anime? Can I get something other than shitty anime, Netflix? Fun action flick from the last 5 years maybe? No? Never the good one, always the knockoff, the shitty sequel, nothing at all? Canceled Mindhunter? Because of course. Okay, no more pay money, and then I didn’t miss it. That decision took a shameful amount of time to make.
This was way before the password share thing. I don’t know what the rest of you are even doing. Stuff for the kids I guess.
I guess I do this bullshit, now, for entertainment, but this Suuuuuucks with a capital S, so the next step is to find the government chip that makes me scroll and metaphorically remove it. Fuck socials, too. Fuck all this shit anymore.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I hate netfucks & co, but in the case of mindhunter, they were innocent for once. Author just lost interest and canceled it. Nothing they could do about it. But it’s a damn shame though.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Coild it be because the executives that used to be in cable are now in streaming?
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
But they’re the same execs at the same companies.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part,
With a pirate head and a pirate heart
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well to do,
But I’ll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King
I am a Pirate King!
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I’ll weigh in.
I saw the writing on the wall when Netflix was forced to remove shows due to licensing.
Like many of you, I was on the “Yay Netflix” bandwagon for a while. And I remember the moment I realized I had to fish my black tri-point hat and eye patch out of the bin. It was the early 2010’s and I was living in a single rental bedroom (student style). I had Netflix and I’m in Canada, but I was experimenting with ipv6, and I realized that Netflix’s ipv6 geolocation stuff was flawed. I wasn’t using a VPN, but my V6 address was a “US” address, so if I turned off IPv4, I could watch US Netflix. I was watching the show “Arrow”, which I got really into early on. After a while, poof, it vanished. A bit of research and the license was pulled. It didn’t take long for me to piece it together. They were going to make the show available on their own streaming platform.
Suddenly, I saw the whole picture. It was like cable, but worse. Each studio was going to have a streaming service and like cable packages, you’d have to subscribe to their streaming service to see their shows, while getting access to a bunch of crap you didn’t care about, then have to find some way to track what shows were on which platforms and stay informed as to when new episodes were released, etc… Same as with cable. I said to myself, hell no.
I got my hat and eye patch, hung my flag, and I’ve been sailing the seven seas since. Fuck that noise.
My main issue with it all (beyond the obvious cost) is managing, monitoring and using multiple services. I wanted a central dashboard of shows that will update with new episodes from shows I watch as they are released. I found Plex. I’ve been using it for something like 10 years or more, and I’m pretty happy about it.
Cable had the merit of channel flipping. You could easily flip from one studios station to another without barriers. Now, you have to go to a completely different app/website/whatever, to change. You probably have to log in, etc. It’s a whole thing. What was a simple push of a button is now an entire ordeal. No thanks.
I knew this would be the eventual outcome and I was entirely right. My friends, if you haven’t already, it may be time to dust off your own hats and eye patches and set sail once again.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 6 months ago
When Disney announced they were “looking into their own streaming service” and everyone followed suit, I knew enshittification was coming. It was obvious Netflix only worked because it was one happy medium with everything in one place, it was convenient…
But… I knew once other companies started making their own, it’d create a situation where you had to pay for multiple services to have a decent variety of things to watch. And once they had everyone suckered in, there was room for further monetization.
This is why I consider Tubi the only ethical streaming service.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Dumbly, I consider Disney+ to be the only worthwhile subscription to get. Not because they’re particularly good, but because they’ve eaten most of the “good” studios. They have the most content I’d actually be interested in watching.
But I still hoist my flag. Yarrr.
Their interface sucks though. I feel almost spoiled by the simplicity of the basic interface from Plex. It isn’t complicated at all, and there’s no algorithm to fight to try to find that show you like… On other platforms I sit there struggling to find the link to it and give up and search and search comes up with all kinds of random nonsense that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the query… It’s a mess.
So I go poke my little sailing ship with the black flag and a VPN, to go find it, the Linux ISOs are dropped into Plex and I get sweet sweet relief from the struggles of dealing with garbage interfaces.
I just look at recently added content and there it is. Play it without issue and sail away.
dan@upvote.au 6 months ago
Each studio was going to have a streaming service
And they all have different apps, mostly written from scratch, all of wildly varying quality. Some of the pirate apps like Weyd and Syncler have a significantly better user experience compared to most streaming services.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The return of the pirate
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 6 months ago
🎶 Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me. We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot. Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho. We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot. Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho. 🎶
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
LOL, no. Basic cable was like $70 without any premium movie channels.
nxdefiant@startrek.website 6 months ago
And that was late 90’s/00 dollars.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
According to my calculations, prices have roughly doubled since then. So a $70 package then, would be $140 or so now.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
I get roughly zero commercials on Netflix. That probably varies somewhat depending on how you access it - I use a super old Chromecast bc my super old TV’s app doesn’t work anymore.
On the other hand, most shows I used to watch on it are gone now, leaving me either to watch the Shitflix content that’s left, or just 1-2-3-it elsewhere.
Neato@ttrpg.network 6 months ago
Commercials are present on Hulu on lower paid tiers and now on prime unless you pay extra every month. The latter is new.
OpenStars@discuss.online 6 months ago
And present in Netflix as well at lower tier subscriptions.
It’s not so bad to have one subscription service that is like $15-20/month, or even less with ads.
Where it really adds up is having to pay for all of them, like Disney+ and Paramount+, and that is also (relatively) new. One of the reasons I got Netflix in the first place was to watch Star Trek shows… but now those are elsewhere, as too is most everything else, and I’m wondering what all I am getting from Netflix anymore.
Here’s my list:
(1) fantastic streaming tech, I almost never have buffering issues these days (possibly significantly lower resolution but it switches seamlessly)
(2) ability to download an episode to watch offline, e.g. at a gym and it even auto-advances to download the next one in a series.
(3) Netflix produced content, except this tends to be crappy content (not always, but… not worth the pricetag definitely, for me)
(4) Anything that Netflix is successfully able to license from other places, which unfortunately tends to rotate and sometimes doesn’t even get whole entire series (like you’ll get up to a certain season and then no more).
It is licensing that ruined television for everyone, not Netflix, but still… am I getting my value? We’ll see as time goes on.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Amazon Prime does commercials too. You have to pay more to get rid of them.
Bongles@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I got back into torrenting media and using plex because of all this nonsense. I’m not watching ads on a paid service and I’m not subscribing to 6 services at a time just because every company wants their own Network+ service. I’m also not going to pay more because you decided to add ads to an existing “tier”.
Then I learned through lemmy about real-debrid and stremio/torrentio and decided to try that. Now I’ve got the equivalent to these services for much less cost and the only difference is before I press play on an episode or movie, I just choose the cached torrent. No ads, don’t even need the space on a hard drive, good quality, and almost everything is immediately available.
FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 6 months ago
Bro, are you like 15? Do you have any idea how much cable costs? Lol.
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, yarr harr fiddle dee dee!
Sorry, what are we talking about?
asif@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I think we need to remind companies why streaming started…time to sail the seven seas yet again, fellas!
Got_Bent@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve been getting back into reading, buying up used books for pennies. It’s been good for my head.
TootSweet@lemmy.world 6 months ago
At least with streaming services, you don’t have to call every year to get a decent price.
callouscomic@lemm.ee 6 months ago
You still can pay to remove ads sometimes, and you also get to pick what you’re watching instead of waiting for whenever it’s on TV. You also can cancel any time. Things are getting worse, but they’re still immensely better than cable.
crispy_kilt@feddit.de 6 months ago
Arrrrrr!
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
It’s a bit high horse-y but other than my parents’ / ex’s Netflix subscription (they share it), I just switched to paying for journalism. You get used to after a while, honestly.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I grow weary of all the attempted comparisons between streaming and cable. Even if it cost the same (streaming is still cheaper), you don’t have to call a tech to fix the dvr, which will wipe all your recordings… or pay per tv you own, rather than the number you are actually using. Of and you can watch it when you aren’t even home. Streaming is sooo many 1000’s % better than cable in soo many ways. Is it enshitifing, he’ll yeah. But still way better.
pastabatman@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Streaming is getting worse, but it’s still way better than cable. Everything is on demand without having to fuss with a dvr, you can subscribe only to the services you want or rotate through them one at a time, and there are no contracts so you can cancel whenever you want.
Things could obviously be better, but we are nowhere close to how bad cable was/is.
sag@lemm.ee 6 months ago
papafoss@lemmy.world 6 months ago
One thing I want to debate about this is I remember how expensive cable used to be. It was like 120 bucks. Maybe you got like a $70 package or $80 package where you had barely any channels. I ain’t spending that much on streaming services!! I don’t know if I’m an outlier but I got Three and that’s about it. I pay around 40 bucks a month.
Xin_shill@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Yea these memes are dumb and I feel made by children who never paid for cable.
soloner@lemmy.world 6 months ago
But the direction is certainly heading towards the realm of cable prices…
Total: $79.44 per month
So maybe when you account for inflation it is still only half of what cable costs,.perhaps. but those are the cheaper plans. For HDR support for Netflix it’s like $25, and it’s the reason I cancelled Netflix.
I don’t think the meme is dumb, just ahead of it’s time, but it’s calling out what is certainly happening.
Most streaming services now include ads in the paid subscription.
Inch the ad ratio and prices up another 40% and we are getting pretty close to cable experience/cost. And that’s only a few years away when we look at how much costs have raised over the last 10 yrs.
If each service raises price $1/month every year and you have 6 services, then in 5 yrs you’re paying $30 more per month, prob around $100+.
cm0002@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Or watched cable ADs apparently, cable TV ads were like…5 minutes or maybe even longer. Just commercial after commercial, so long that it was viable to use them to go-to the bathroom when you didn’t have DVR lmao
FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 6 months ago
I brought that up too and was downvoted…this platform is ridiculous.
ResoluteCatnap@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Exactly. Cable had contracts for X months, and everything was packaged so you couldn’t just get one channel you liked.
Now streaming is splitting off into a bunch of services. That’s not great but on the other hand I’m not on a contract. I can stop and start whenever i want. I spend anywhere from $12-25 a month. All i ever wanted was for cable services to be unbundled. If I’m wanting to be subscribed to every service all of the time then yeah that’s going to get expensive. But if i just want to watch 1-2 shows at a time then I’m still much better off streaming than i would’ve been with cable 10+ years ago.
roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
It sucks that Netflix doesn’t have as much as they used to because stuff has been pulled for other services but the value proposition for streaming still blows cable out of the water, even with price increases. Adding free or low cost commercial tiers for more price sensitive people doesn’t give me commercials.
With all the premium channels and three HD-DVR boxes I used to pay over $200 more than a decade ago with much of that going to a shitty middle man company. And that’s for commercial, appointment TV. Even with the premium stations you had to DVR shit to watch later. I subscribe to a ton of services, even some fringe ones, so I almost never come across something that I can’t watch immediately, with no commercials. And with annual rates, discounts from my phone company, and kickbacks from credit cards I’m still under $100. And now the money goes to companies that actually produce content, even if some of them suck for other reasons.
With what I’m getting I would pay double what I used to for cable, but as it is I’m paying half.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
The thing is they didn’t add a new, cheaper or free “ad supported” option. They added ads to the current price, and then told us to pay more if we wanted to keep the same experience. This is one of the 7 dread turd pillars of enshittifi ation.
candyman337@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Cable didn’t start out that fucked. People switched from cable because they were tired of it getting more and more packages and more and more pricey. We are seeing the exact same thing with streaming.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 6 months ago
My mom’s is the most basic she can get in her area, and it costs 218 dollars a month.
rabbit_wren@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Wow, that’s a lot! Is it at least bundled with internet? I haven’t bought cable tv in over a decade, so I’ve no idea what the real price of it is after the intro prices they try to lure me in with.
Acinonyx@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
that’s still more than pirating it, even if you pay for a vpn
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
It’s also a lot more than a metal coat hanger shoved in the top of your crt
shasta@lemm.ee 6 months ago
People always forget inflation in these discussions too. Inflation has been about 50% since 2007 around when Netflix started to become popular. So multiply those prices by 1.5 and you’ll have a more accurate comparison to today’s prices. Not only that, but the cable bundles that have all the best high definition and spirts packages were well over $200 at the time ($300 in today’s currency).
Streaming not only has better features, better resolution, less hassle, but is 100% still cheaper than cable. And don’t forget that about 50% of airtime on cable was ads. Those cable companies were milking us for every cent and all of our patience they possibly could. People were sick of it for decades by that point and that’s why Netflix was so successful in the first place.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Me and my parents certainly never had the fancy cable packages (the ones with MTV or specialty channels etc) until way into the first death knells of cable services, where they were practically giving the channels away as a rider for internet packages