When you turn a solemn promise to a blatant lie
Tubi had begun to endanger its status as an unrelieved treasure of free weird cinema earlier this fall when it suddenly disappeared two otherwise hard to come by movies of interest to me before I could recover enough from my hospitalization to write about them, and the recent appearance of an obtrusive encouragement to sign in at the start of each stream had not thrilled me, but then tonight I discovered that in the grand total of five nights since ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I last rummaged through its digital shelves the service had turned account-only. Without one, the most I was offered of any movie was a fifteen-minute preview. With one, its catalogue remains purportedly free—though presumably still in need of a hard adblock—but it had always been a huge attractor for me that in addition to resembling the experience of browsing the remoter regions of a video store where the schlock and the art films were all jumbled together, the service did not have to track its users. I never created an account. I enjoyed it not knowing what to recommend me. Any data the internet does not successfully scrape from me these days feels like a victory. Rob has offered to create effectively a burner account for me so that I do not lose access to some movies I had intentions of trying to write about, but I am feeling much more dejected about them and about the further algorithmic constriction of the world, besides which their equally recent, randomly mid-month deep-sixing of their library of classic Doctor Who makes it not impossible, but once again harder for me to rewatch Vengeance on Varos (1985) in memoriam Nabil Shaban. I am aware that far worse disasters are on constant rotation. But I just had my other social media nuked for not allowing it to extort my biometrics and I just had to wrestle my word processor back from the grip of unasked-for AI and I enjoyed being able to point people toward the occasional film that, region-dependent, they could just dial up and watch without it filing their history away for future advertisement. I just heard from my health insurance that it will cost even more in the coming year and it is already functionally unaffordable, except that I have too many specialists I can afford even less to lose. It just does not feel necessary for anything to be more difficult, even the unprofitable watching of B-movies for fun.
spatch and I last rummaged through its digital shelves the service had turned account-only. Without one, the most I was offered of any movie was a fifteen-minute preview. With one, its catalogue remains purportedly free—though presumably still in need of a hard adblock—but it had always been a huge attractor for me that in addition to resembling the experience of browsing the remoter regions of a video store where the schlock and the art films were all jumbled together, the service did not have to track its users. I never created an account. I enjoyed it not knowing what to recommend me. Any data the internet does not successfully scrape from me these days feels like a victory. Rob has offered to create effectively a burner account for me so that I do not lose access to some movies I had intentions of trying to write about, but I am feeling much more dejected about them and about the further algorithmic constriction of the world, besides which their equally recent, randomly mid-month deep-sixing of their library of classic Doctor Who makes it not impossible, but once again harder for me to rewatch Vengeance on Varos (1985) in memoriam Nabil Shaban. I am aware that far worse disasters are on constant rotation. But I just had my other social media nuked for not allowing it to extort my biometrics and I just had to wrestle my word processor back from the grip of unasked-for AI and I enjoyed being able to point people toward the occasional film that, region-dependent, they could just dial up and watch without it filing their history away for future advertisement. I just heard from my health insurance that it will cost even more in the coming year and it is already functionally unaffordable, except that I have too many specialists I can afford even less to lose. It just does not feel necessary for anything to be more difficult, even the unprofitable watching of B-movies for fun.
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NOOOOOOOOOOOO
Obviously, I'm also sorry about all the other stuff. But I definitely share your frustration on this, because I was also literally just on Tubi going "oh I'll bookmark this link for future watching" a few days ago, and now... ugh!!
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ETA: I accidentally deleted the wrong paragraph of this comment. (Posting while answering the telephone, not a plan). *more hugs*
And, noo, I had not heard about Nabil Shaban!
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I am sorry about your health insurance. My premiums are going up too. Ugh.
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(Fortunately I have my notifications set to e-mail, so I saw the paragraph before its untimely deletion and it was much appreciated. The burner account probably is the plan going forward and I resent it.)
And, noo, I had not heard about Nabil Shaban!
*hugs*
I'm so sorry! I just found out! I can at least take an old-fashioned DVD off my shelf and see him as the Martian in Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993).
Man, Sil would love the subscription model of media.
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It was perfect for exactly that kind of valuable obscurity! And technically may still be, but there used to be no barrier to entry! It was such a respite to have something like that in the landscape of expensively fractionated streaming services.
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*hugs*
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That!
*hugs*
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It's just a different angle on the same problem, which is trying to carve out the space of a life from an ever-increasing bell jar of monetized surveillance. Interactions shouldn't all be transactions. Transactions shouldn't all feel like plotting a graph of how best to be exploited. It is still possible at the Somerville Theatre to walk up to the box office, hand over cash for a physical ticket, have it torn in half and walk into the main house to choose your own seat so long as someone else hasn't already got their coat over it. It shouldn't feel like such a free-range relic of a world before everything had to be vectored through the wildlife tracker of your phone. Or your e-mail. Or your face at the mercy of human bias baked into artificial unintelligence. It's nuts. And it's happened in my lifetime like a cliff sliding into the sea and I hate it.
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Thank you. It feels inescapable and exhausting and it sure isn't serving anyone I know.
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Condolences in return! I too accumulate offsite lists of stuff on Tubi that I either want to write about or watch, which I am now feeling somewhat locked out of and much less breezy about pointing other people toward!
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They had one job! They did it well! They could have kept doing it.
I am sorry about your health insurance. My premiums are going up too. Ugh.
*hugs*
tl;dr I do not like this track of the future and it continues not to feel inevitable to me which is the worst.
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Look, whatever mysterious loophole of DRM is preserving you from the fifteen-minute lockout and the commercials, long may it wave!
Anyway, the last thing you need right now is yet another thing not working right.
*hugs*
Thank you. It's never a good time for anything to break, but the last *checks watch* five to ten years have been especially poor timing.
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*hugs*
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Ha, no - I initially wrote a paragraph of commiseration, and then the note about the burner account - and got interrupted by a phone call from my Dad, so deleted (as I thought) the latter, because I didn't have time to check it. Then when I came back, I found I had deleted all my commiserations and just said get a burner account. Which is why I should never post and answer the phone at the same time, lol. Anyway, many deleted commiserations to you!
Man, Sil would love the subscription model of media.
Nabil Shaban would no doubt claim Sil did invent it and they are all copying him!
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Thank you! Alas.
(I saw the one line about the burner account which disappeared in the edit and thought that was what you had meant: it was kindly worded and contained lots of *hugs* so I didn't feel shortchanged.)
Nabil Shaban would no doubt claim Sil did invent it and they are all copying him!
THANKS THOROS-BETA.
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*hugs*
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Amen.
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*hugs*