flamieraWhat was good while it lasted?
What was good while it lasted?
Yeah, once Netflix and other streaming companies discovered exclusive content it all went to shit.
The entire point was to have content distribution separate from production, and available in one place.
Streaming was supposed to 'replace' cable television, because people were fed up of forced commercials, unavailable content and restrictions on cable television.
Well, streaming got maybe some of that corrected. However, it has turned itself into a hydra where the content is here, there and over there with price tags on every service. Ads are now forced onto us but we now have "control" over them, I guess (if you don't ad-block).
So it's like cable television all over again.
The whole streaming thing is capitalism in a nutshell.
It forces innovation that creates awesome thing
It’s never happy with the amount of money it makes, so it keeps pushing harder and harder until the awesome thing turns into shit, and on its way of turning into shit it pulls up the ladder behind it so new competitors have a harder time competing.
It’s definitely been warped and beaten, but I at least appreciate that it’s a far more open system than cable, and thus there are ways to escape the worst of it for those who try. I let my Netflix sub expire, and instead have turned to library apps and PBS - there’s still far more content than I’d ever finish.
AmbiguousPropsI miss the mailed DVDs…
「黃家駒 Wong Ka Kui」 | (aka: 鳳凰院 凶真 Hououin Kyouma)I remember Brooklyn (NYC) Public Libaries had DVDs you could borrow. They even have foreign language TV shows lol.
Used to? Like they don’t anymore? That’s disappointing. My local library still carries DVDS.
No idea if they still have them, I don’t live in NYC anymore. NYC, even Brooklyn is expensive as hell, rent was going up. My parents barely managed to borrow money from close friends + some savings to be able to afford a house in Philly, where I’m now. The last time I’ve been to the library was… idk 4-6 years ago… I literally only go to libraries to use their computer or like I wanna skip school and chill a bit there so I don’t get home too early.
When I was younger, I remember borrowing comics and stuff… I never actually wanted to read “books”.
I was facing a lot of issues…
On one hand, I barely know enough Chinese to read a Chinese book (except like a childrens book, which is just cringe for me, yes I know very hypocritical since I was a kid myself)
On the other hand, my English wasn’t remotely good enough to read an English book.
So like comics were the only thing I could read.
As for the DVDs, I didn’t pick them, my parents did. And it was interesting enough for me, so I just watched it anyways since there wasn’t much to do. Early days I wasn’t allowed much computer time / internet time, when I did have more access, I wasn’t knowledged enough to find free stuff to watch. So its just TV shows in Mandarin from those DVDs. It probably helped with expanding my Mandarin skills for a bit longer, because like it soon atrophys when you don’t use it. I haven’t really spoken Mandarin for like… 15 years. Except rare circumstances when there was a Mandarin-speaking classmate. I kinda remember the pronunciations, but I’m gonna have to think in Cantonese, then convert it to Mandarin… so there’s a bit of a lag, sort of.
I used to live off the video game equivalent of the video disk delivery service…. I forgot what it was called, but that was the shit where basically you could “rent” a game but keep the game as long as you wanted unless you cancelled your membership. That was the shit.
Maybe… I don’t remember. But it was the shiiiit!
Captain AggravatedOh they’re working on bringing that back.
Software/Apps costing a fixed, one-time amount rather than subscription models for everything
☂️-Already there friend!
SkullgridDoubt the million or so Iraqis that died during that time period would agree
Re read the content I replied to, they were praising the period between 1989 and 2001
So you don’t want to engage with a literal what-about-ism?! Pff what has the internet come to, when dishonest arguments get shot down…
This word you are using, it doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not whataboutism to say “no you are wrong, that period you say was great, really wasn’t, here’s one example”.
Its me, I am them. I was praising that period. Lots of iraquis die constantly outside of the timeframe I chose and had stuff happens all the time. Doesn’t change the key factors of being after the threat of global nuclear destruction and before the stamping down of human rights in the west
Motherfucker, the black people were segregated until the 70s and early 80s. Get that propaganda “stamping down of human rights in the west” bullshit outta here.
Grab a book and see how the west has been at the forefront of “stamping down of human rights” throughout most of recent history.
the liberal international order
the liberal international order
🤷
There’s always bad shit happening somewhere. I specified this timeframe as it signified an end to the looming threat of nuclear annihilation and before the start of the “war on terror” which signified a start of a ramping up of civil rights abuses in the west.
My view is biased towards the west, but everyone has their own frame of reference. I am entitled to my frame of reference, as are you, and you are free to post your own timeframe you believe is “good while it lasted”.
I was agreeing with you… but okay. The time period you specified is dominated by the largely uncontested ascendancy of the liberal international order, aka the West.
an end to the looming threat of nuclear annihilation and before the start of the “war on terror”
There’s an underappreciated film that came out during this period called Canadian Bacon, one of John Candy’s last films. Basically the president of the United States is trying to improve his approval rating as the military industrial complex is imploding and sending the nation into a recession, so he drums up a cold war with Canada instead. Its honestly a brilliant time capsule of geopolitical sentiments at the time, as well as funny as hell
We have ways of making you pronounce the letter O
explodicle
Omg, they were gonna actually give undocumented immigrants legal status, then fucking 9/11 happened and suddenly xenophobia popular again.
Imagine how much better that 9/11 never happened timeline would be.
2000 United States presidential election in Florida
After an intense recount process and the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, Bush won Florida’s electoral votes by a margin of only 537 votes out of almost six million cast (0.009%) and, as a result, became the president-elect.
I lived through this, and to this day when people say that voting doesn’t matter, it makes my hair stand on end.
The early Internet, where every company aimed at kids had a website with free games, where everyone who wanted to share about themselves or their interests did so in their own little corner so you could rabbit-hole your way through the link trees, most stuff was non-monetized or had easy-to-block ads, and no tracking of your behavior was really happening.
People who weren’t online at the time can’t possibly imagine how truly awesome the Internet used to be.
I miss separate websites.
whelkYea. These people always fantasize about personal websites. There are still a lot of those outside of the mainstream websites.
I would rather a guess that it’s way more than the early days of the internet, but it seems like the most amount of effort these people can put is to whine about the good ol’ days.
Reminds me of MAGA folks.
I didn’t have internet till like the 2010s
What did I miss out on?
You used to visit websites. News aggregators weren’t a thing so you’d visit the different sites focusing on different things. Search engines actually worked so you’d constantly be stumbling upon passion projects by highly knowledgeable people. You’d also find geocities sites teaching you how to go Super Saiyan, it was the wild West.
Instead of reddit and Lemmy, there were hundreds of niche forums. Maybe this is just me but human connection was a LOT easier. The internet was mostly populated by tech-savvy people who were excited to be online
Memes as we know them weren’t really a thing. They existed but you’d reply with them when they were relevant. People didn’t really “post” memes and no one was making the mass-market garbage that fills the Internet today.
I could go on a tirade on the last one because I truly believe memes were a significant factor in the downfall of internet culture
Every Cartoon Network show having it’s own free games on their website was peak computer room time for me in elementary school. Fun fact: If any of you remember the Amanda Show from the early 2000s, their website AmandaPlease.com was up til 2017. It was a true nostalgia moment to remember to look at once in a blue moon as a chuckle to old website styles.
The first game I every played that had “dailies” was a Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends browser game, that gave you a “chores list” you had to complete before accessing certain activities. You’d get a new list every day, and if you didn’t complete them, you’d have a longer list the next time you played. There was no login or anything, I assume it just worked off of browser cookies.
All this stuff is still around, you just ignore it in favour of things like lemmy which are better at stimulating dopamine production.
Yes but since most users aren’t using these spaces they are not the same.
All this stuff is still around
This may be true, but,
you just ignore it
is an unfair claim. It used to be easier to find unmonetized small sites and blogs. I know some still exist, but I can’t help but wonder how many more are buried out in the web, unable to be accessed by newcomers because those who run search engines have different interests than their users.
mesa
FenrirIII