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481


It's been just under fifteen years since I did my first three-pack of Netflix DVD rentals -- The Brown Bunny (2004), La Petite Lili (2003), and The Corporation (2003) -- and with a total of 481 titles watched, paired with the resigned understanding that I will never have the time to watch the 388 titles currently in my queue, I've come to the decision that my DVD plan at Netflix will end tomorrow.

As a film lover from a rural area, Netflix in the early 00's was a godsend, and I'm sure in many ways I was their ideal customer, even if I did dial back from the 3-at-a-time plan pretty quickly. But I will say that while some of the titles I rented were watched as soon as I got home from the post office, others sat at my house for months, earning Netflix a tidy profit on my recalcitrance and sloth.

But now that I've moved to a new house, and after unpacking box after box of physical media -- some watched or played or read, some not -- it's clear that some things in life have to be put to one side. There's no room for my recliner in the new house, and there's no room for DVD's mailed to that same house, and staring out the window thinking about "the end of an era" isn't going to sit me in that chair and watch that movie any faster.

Sure, it will be weird not seeing that red envelope pop up every now and again, but at the same time, nothing matters and I'll be dead sooner than I want to be. So why wait? After all, I have plenty of stuff on Hulu and Disney+ and HBO Max and YouTube TV and, yes, Netflix to stream. Instead of a red envelope, I'll have red eyes from all that watchin', end of an era or not.

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