I read this title as "Piano man..." several times until my brain finally parsed it correctly. It made for very curious thoughts on an alternate future involving Billy Joel.
I thought I was the only one.
Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
191–200 of 264 posts
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good record stores outlasted Tower Records. What failed were record stores which were basically Tower records, only watered down weaker versions.
Good bookstores didn't outlast Borders/Barnes & Noble/Books-a-Million etc. (or at least 90% of them didn't.) It was really annoying when people were mourning the destruction of 15 year old book warehouses by Amazon, when I was still mourning 100 year old bookstores.
I don't go to bookshops anymore. Books are just a commodity now, they push the latest product for a few weeks and move on the next.
It is all part of the hype machine.
After a month or so it's like the book never existed at all- it had it's five minutes of fame.
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#193I was in Bend a few months ago and swung by the last Blockbuster. I rented a movie (and bought a t-shirt), and had to sign up for an account. I received a laminated paper Blockbuster card with an account number scrawled in Sharpie on the back. I wouldn't have guessed that the store was still calling out to these old servers; that's pretty cool. The movie cost 99 cents to rent, which I thought was surprisingly cheap.…
Man, this job would be great, if it wasn't for the fucking customers!
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the website equivalent of Dave? Surely it has to exist somewhere? Maybe it's not personalized for you but it's close enough for a lot of people? I've visited a TON of taste-making sites and some used to be OK at suggesting what to watch, but it's been tough to find good ones lately, and I'd pay good money for somebody to sort through all of the cruft for me. You've got your "decider" and other sites, but somet…
https://www.gnod.com/ ?
Worth a shot! After visiting it seems more like I'm training the thing rather than the thing helping me, but it's certainly interesting!
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blame your government. The only thing that the 99 section/11 chapter GDPR accomplished was to make the web worse with shitty Cookie notices.
GDPR has proven incredibly useful to me and others in imposing cost on organisations and businesses that want to fuck about with our data. Someone's acting the maggot? No matter where they are, they get a subject access request. Followed by a request to correct or delete data. The ability to legally force companies to correct inaccurate data is incredibly useful.
Facebook and Google didn't announce any harm from the GDPR. There are many companies that announce lower earning expectations from a simple 5 line App Store change by Apple and a one time popup asking you whether you want to be tracked.
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blame your government. The only thing that the 99 section/11 chapter GDPR accomplished was to make the web worse with shitty Cookie notices.
Websites don't need notices if they're not doing anything shady or unnecessary tracking, and just about every cookie notices I see is going against either the wording or the intent of the law. If they want to be annoying on purpose, we should blame them, not the GDPR.
So it's an effective law just not effectively enforced. Isn't that a distinction without a difference?
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue… I got curious, so let's look it up. Googling, it looks like maybe Netflix has 17,000 titles total in in it's collection internationally in april 2022, but only a portion of those are available in a given market. One page from 2021 said the US catalog was ~5K titles, but I bet it's bigger in 2022 as the overall catalog has grown as mu…
It's just your usual nostalgia. I lived in the age before internet and it was shit. Then Kazaa happened and I could finally download Naruto and Gundam.
For me (my 2 cents), I think it's more than nostalgia. It's about community. It's about face to face interaction. I recently listened to a piece on NPR about lunches and working in France and why it's important. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103566695/lunching-work-when...
The part I took away was how everyone sat together for lunch and you might find yourself at a table with a stranger who is not in your field but you just talk and you create community.
And face to face is different than online. I do both and for me the face to face interaction is what makes life enjoyable.
That, in a nutshell, is what is valuable about going into a Blockbuster (or any store, restaurant, etc ) meeting people and building relationships.
Take this comment for instance; if I were to have this conversation face to face, it would be a completely different experience. The other party could hear the tone of my voice, see the expression on my face. We could shake hands, slap each other on the shoulder, and share a drink together.
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's just your usual nostalgia. I lived in the age before internet and it was shit. Then Kazaa happened and I could finally download Naruto and Gundam.
For me (my 2 cents), I think it's more than nostalgia. It's about community. It's about face to face interaction. I recently listened to a piece on NPR about lunches and working in France and why it's important. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103566695/lunching-work-when... The part I took away was how everyone sat together for lunch and you might find yourself at a table with a stranger who is not in your field but…
I agree with you, I miss it. And some of this is pandemic-inspired too, really missed human contact then, and in the USA I worry some of it is never coming back.
And yet, my city DOES have an independent/artsy local video rental store, that I'm sure has all sorts of things I'd like watching. I don't go to it. I don't even have a DVD player or VCR. I stream.
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the difference isn't so much that you have AI recommendations or that of a human, but rather the entire environment is fundamentally different. With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue coupled with ease of access to get ratings/critiques/etc. There is so many things to choose from and it's so easy to just say "no" to a suggestion, and likely that thing you said "no…
> With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue… I got curious, so let's look it up. Googling, it looks like maybe Netflix has 17,000 titles total in in it's collection internationally in april 2022, but only a portion of those are available in a given market. One page from 2021 said the US catalog was ~5K titles, but I bet it's bigger in 2022 as the overall catalog has grown as mu…
Blockbuster carried the latest movies from all the studios. Everything newest and most desirable. They had a smattering of classics and art house and older genre films, but mostly it was about everything latest and greatest.
Netflix streaming seemed like that at first, but better! Now, they have a tiny slice of content. And as a content-producer, they seem willing to throw money at anything B-list.
Meanwhile, the studios became more risk averse as people started preferring to watch at home. Then theaters shut down and studios became more risk averse. And Netflix and Amazon arose and started playing studio games and studios became even more risk averse.
That trajectory of fear is mirrored in the content. The 1970s were known for directorial freedom and risk-taking. The 70s gave us Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Star Wars, Animal House, Annie Hall, Rocky, Halloween, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, MASH, and more - not all high art but all complete gems. Every decade since, we've seen a gradual progression toward samey-ness.
Re: Plano man keeping Blockbuster alive
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like the difference isn't so much that you have AI recommendations or that of a human, but rather the entire environment is fundamentally different. With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue coupled with ease of access to get ratings/critiques/etc. There is so many things to choose from and it's so easy to just say "no" to a suggestion, and likely that thing you said "no…
> With Netflix or whatever Streaming Service you have you have an immense catalogue… I got curious, so let's look it up. Googling, it looks like maybe Netflix has 17,000 titles total in in it's collection internationally in april 2022, but only a portion of those are available in a given market. One page from 2021 said the US catalog was ~5K titles, but I bet it's bigger in 2022 as the overall catalog has grown as mu…
I’ve been to a lot of Blockbusters and no way did any of them carry 6500 movies. Maybe 1000 tops. The majority of shelves were 20 boxes of the same tape/dvd for the most popular titles + 1-3 for other titles