Netflix suffered a net loss of 130,000 American subscribers during the second quarter of the year, and this is not at all surprising.
I’m a Netflix fan going back to the earliest days of the company’s streaming service. Back then it was a great service at a great price.
Today?
Not so much.
For a whole $12.99 a month there is certainly a ton of content to choose from on Netflix but most of it is crap and too much of it is political. As I browse the menus, be it documentaries, comedy specials, sitcoms, or dramas, I get the sense Netflix doesn’t like me very much. In fact, I feel an abiding sense of hostility toward all white, male, Christian Trump supporters.
So much Netflix programming is “woke” and therefore no fun whatsoever — it’s just pious and scolding as opposed to entertaining.
And there’s way too much gay sex, which makes me extremely uncomfortable. I am now done watching two men get romantic. I just won’t watch it anymore. I shut it off. You can attack me as a bigot over this, but then you are the one attacking my sexuality when I was born this way, when I can’t help the way I feel.
What do you want me to do, get conversion therapy?
Everyone tells me to give Stranger Things a try, but one thing I’ve learned over the last 25 years or so is to not get invested in a television show until it’s into season five or six. I’m tired of investing in the show only to have it take a far-left turn. Looks like that was the correct call with Stranger Things.
My wife was a Stranger Things fan. She loves those kids, so it turned her off to see them suddenly cussing like sailors during this last season, losing their innocence, even as Netflix bowed to the idiots who rage against cigarette smoking.
Netflix’s priorities and values are a mess.
Netflix also spends waaaaay too much effort aiming for water cooler status with its programming, tries too hard to capture the zeitgeist, to be edgy and cool instead of just producing good, reliable television — like, say, Amazon’s Bosch, which is now an all-time favorite of mine, but one I waited five seasons before giving it a try.
In fact, I like Amazon Prime a whole lot more than Netflix. Amazon has a more diverse (in every imaginable way) supply of movies and television shows, especially ones from the past. All Netflix has going for it is the second season of Mind Hunter, which proves I will break my wait-five-seasons-rule in special cases.
Naturally, Netflix’s biggest turnoff, at least for half the country, is its obnoxious political preening. In his own look at Netflix’s recent woes, Christian Toto laid this out perfectly:
- The company named former Obama advisor Susan Rice to its Board of Directors.
- Former President Barack Obama signed a massive deal to create new content for Netflix.
- The company threatened to pull productions like “Ozark” out of Georgia to protest the state’s strict new abortion rules.
- Netflix brass brushed off concerns that “13 Reasons Why” inspired real-life suicides … until it didn’t.
- The streaming company still lacks a go-to conservative show.
If Netflix wants to add extreme left-wing partisans like Obama and Susan Rice to its roster, that’s fine. But who is the equivalent coming from the other side? Who is looking out for the content I want to see?
Here’s the thing…
I believe entertainment should be made for everyone — for gays, leftists, vegans, atheists, teens, women, one-legged Eskimos… That doesn’t mean I’m going to watch that stuff, but I’m all for it.
What is Netflix producing to entertain me?
The only sweet spot of mine Netflix does at least try to hit is true crime, but the problem here is a creative one. It seems as though everything Netflix produces in this genre is so ungodly overlong, is a ten hour slog when two hours would have sufficed, I usually can’t finish it. Why do they do this? Forensic Files kills it in 22 minutes? Why does some guy in Wisconsin or a missing child require 570 minutes?
What’s more, I’m not necessarily interested in a “conservative” show, or even an apolitical one Bosch is political. Bosch has a lesbian character and has spent its last two seasons dealing with the Black Lives Matter movement. But Bosch handles this without lectures and virtue-signaling, handles it with nuance and intelligence… It’s fabulous and compelling.
For the first time in some ten years I’m thinking about canceling Netflix, and I can do that easily because there are other major streaming options out there … and a whole lot more a coming.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.