Netflix and Forget

With another eight-hour flight on the horizon, I’m doomscrolling through Netflix, Prime, and the rest of the streaming services I should’ve canceled months ago but never do. My problem? I’m a picky asshole. I’ve seen more movies than I can remember, and half the time, I can’t decide what I’m in the mood for.

So I do the smart thing. I search beforehand, download a few movies before the trip, narrow the options, and save myself from the two-hour scroll of indecision. And the flaw is simple… I have to predict my mood days in advance.

The other night, I hit my limit. Picked a random movie with a guy holding a gun on the thumbnail. But when I went to hit play, it said “Resume.” I’d already watched it. A few nights before.

Imagine my surprise when I didn’t recognize any of it…

This isn’t early-onset dementia. It’s not even bad memory. It’s the medium.

We’ve turned watching into grazing. Something we do mindlessly. Watch. Forget. Repeat.

Think back to the video store. That was an experience. You got in the car. You drove. You walked the aisles. You picked one or two movies because that’s all you could afford. You paid actual money for them. And you had to return them by Monday. Your choices had stakes.

When a movie sucked, you remembered. When it was great, you remembered. The trip, the smell, getting prepared to watch… It burned the movie into your brain. You weren’t just consuming; you were committed.

Streaming killed that.

There’s no cost to start. No cost to stop. No risk. And consequently, no reward.

We don’t watch movies anymore. We put them on as background noise, filling the silence while we stare at our phones. These platforms are engineered to numb us, but keep us watching. They don’t care if we liked the movie. They care we didn’t leave.

If a movie plays in a forest and no one remembers watching it, did it really happen? My watch history seems to believe so. But if someone asked me what any of them were about, I wouldn’t have a clue.

We’ve gained infinite choice, but lost the ability to care. And somehow, we barely noticed.