It’s no secret that Netflix started cracking down on password sharing a few months ago.
Now, I’ve found myself bending my knee to the streaming service that was once a DVD company. I gave in and got my own Netflix account after years of sharing my sister’s.
Welp, pure annoyance has forced my hand into finally getting my own Netflix account. Password sharing was fun while it lasted, but I’m no longer living off the man (my sister)
I imagine the rest of the streaming services will follow suit. However, I believe this is a crock of shit.
Locking down a service to one home and a few devices absolutely sucks. What if you, yourself, have more than 4 devices in your home that you want to log in on? You’re saying I can’t watch Hubie Halloween on a potential 5th bathroom TV? Absolute bullshit.
And in the case of my sister, she’s a flight attendant. She’s flying all over the country every week and can’t watch Netflix on her iPad because it’s not within the house the account is tied to? Get the fuck outta here.
What angers me the most about the service’s change of heart is that for the entirety of the streaming service’s life, I’ve enjoyed the viewing of each show I’ve binged on someone else’s account.
Mostly my sister’s, but there are countless memories of watching shows on accounts that weren’t mine.
The ultimate binge of The Office and the introduction of Stranger Things on my best friend’s account in college:
Meeting Tommy Shelby and the Peaky Fookin’ Blindahs on a friend of a friend’s couch in college:
Realizing after all these years that Temple of Doom is a prequel on an ex-girlfriend’s account:
Continuing my endless rewatch of Seinfeld on my sister’s account in order to make references like this in real life to my friends:
What sucks the most about this is that Netflix itself used to romanticize password sharing. It was a running joke for the entire human race, it was just part of having a Netflix account: somebody else was using it.
Not anymore.
Netflix made it incredibly irritating to be able to watch on someone else’s account. I’m surprised more people just didn’t do a straight up boycott instead of purchasing their own accounts.
The reason I bent the knee was to watch the live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, produced entirely by Netflix.
The original animated series is regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all-time and I agree. I’m a huge fan of the original show so I felt obligated to watch this live-action adaptation in order to compare the two and either enjoy or dislike this latest version.
When I sat down to begin the show upon its premiere yesterday, I was met with this screen:
If I had sent an email code or a text code to my sister every single time I wanted to watch something, it would become more than just an annoyance for me, it would be for my whole family. Now that me and my 4 siblings and our parents live across three different states under different roofs, there’s no way this frustration could continue.
So I did it. Are you happy Netflix? I got my own fucking account.
There are worse things. Like I said, I can watch Avatar. I can endlessly watch Seinfeld. Rewatch Peaky Blinders when I want to. Watch in awe when Stranger Things comes to an end.
I’m just worried about all the other streaming services following suit. If Netflix, the former kings of password sharing, finally started cracking down, what are the copycats going to do?
I have the Amazon Prime and HBO Max for my family. My parents have the Disney+ and my brother has the Hulu. God help us all if they come for us.
But it seems our days are numbered.
Just like the world in Avatar, we must await the return of a great force that can bring balance to the chaos. Could it be the return of cable?
We never forgot you coax cable, and now, we may need you once again.
If you need me, I’ll be using a service I’m now paying for. Enjoy it while you can freeloaders, they’re coming for you. You’d best be ready when they do.
I never thought I’d have to tell this story via the written word, but I’ve been left with no choice.
I referenced back in my apartment hunting blog earlier in the summer a few things that are relevant to this blog. 1) You can find a Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm reference anywhere and everywhere and 2) I had a story for another day involving me “going blind.” Well, today is that day.
The Crazy Eye Doctor
On 4th of July weekend, I headed into the eye doctor for my annual exam because I was out of contacts. All I needed to do was just re-up my prescription, take that prescription down the street to Costco, and get a couple two, tree boxes of contacts for way cheaper than they would be at the eye doctor.
One of the positives to being Irish is my blue eyes. While they are pretty, they are also very sensitive to light. Like legit, I have to wear sunglasses at the dentist still because looking up at that light is enough to make my eyes water.
The reason I was so adamant about getting new contacts the weekend of the 4th of July is because I planned on spending each moment of it drinking beer (my other Irish blessing) outside in the sun, to which I’d need sunglasses to do. I don’t have prescription sunglasses (or pool goggles), so I needed to get contacts to wear my sunglasses…following so far?
Good. Because this is where it starts to become a nightmare.
I see the doctor as soon as I’m able, which had me seeing not my typical eye doctor because I was a walk-in on 4th of July weekend. The atypical eye doctor puts me through the typical tests (I absolutely hate the puff of air one) and then sits me in the chair.
We get all the way to the final step to where I’m looking at the letters on the wall. I pass with flying colors, my prescription hasn’t changed at all and I should be good to go. But instead, the atypical eye doctor says “Oh Sweet Jesus, let me be wrong…“
I was like “Uh, wrong about what?“
You can’t just say “Sweet Jesus” for no reason. Sweet Jesus rarely comes with good tidings, at least the phrase “Sweet Jesus.”
She says “You have white blood cells in your eyes, it’s either from an infection from before or it’s a precursor to something bad.“
To which I replied “Okay….I slept in my contacts last weekend and had a stye earlier this year…could that be it?” And she said it couldn’t be.
So I ask, “What’s the something bad then?” She said “well, best case scenario: it’s nothing. Worst case scenario: it could be cancer.“
If it’s that easy to become a doctor, I should’ve fucking become a doctor. “Best Case Scenario: it’s nothing. Worst Case Scenario: It could be cancer….” I mean really? You could say that about any ailment! That’s such a wide range of possibilities, are you out of your mind lady? This is where she changed from being the atypical eye doctor to the crazy eye doctor lady.
I calmly ask, “So no contacts?” She says, “No! Not until you see a specialist, TODAY.”
She proceeds to hold my prescription hostage until I see a specialist. So I book an appointment with the specialist after being charged for my eye exam that day. So I paid for the contacts and the prescription that I wouldn’t even be receiving.
The crazy eye doctor lady then prescribed me with eye drops that I needed to take every hour until I saw the specialist, which now had to be the next morning because I couldn’t get in that afternoon.
She called me that night to make sure I was taking the drops. She then proceeds to say a prayer with me on the phone.
Now, I’m not as religious as I used to be and I’m all fine with saying a prayer, but a doctor saying a prayer over the phone is not the treatment or vibe I should be getting.
I feel like they save the prayer for somebody who’s about to pass away, not for somebody that has a few white blood cells in his eyes. That’s what the whole Anointing of the Sick is about, isn’t it?
See, I still remember some of my Catholic grade school education…
Just wait, I’m not even to the part that pissed me off so much to write this, but consider me freaked out at this point.
The Specialist
I had a 9:00 AM appointment the next morning with the specialist to find out if it was nothing or cancer.
The specialist was about an hour away, but early is on time. So I woke up early, ate a good breakfast, and left early to arrive at the doctor’s office at 8:45 AM. I knew this would require extra waiting time, but what’s 15-20 minutes?
I sat in the waiting room for an hour. What’s the point of an appointment if you wait that long? The appointment is sacred!
There’s nothing worse than the doctor’s waiting room either. Ellen always seems to be on the TV, there’s a sad bucket of toys from the Civil War era in the corner, the reading material is dry, including the constant refreshing of Twitter.
It’s 9AM on a Saturday the weekend of 4th of July so my friends aren’t even awake to make wisecrack comments to over text while I wait either.
So, I’m sitting there fuming. Because to this point, I knew there was nothing wrong with my eyes. I knew this was going to be a waste of time. I had skipped taking those eye drops that the crazy eye doctor lady made me pay $11 for because I knew she was full of shit.
Next thing I know, my name is being called. My anger sort of melted away back into nerves because of the prayer. Why would she say a prayer over the phone if nothing was wrong?
I sit in the specialist’s chair. The nurse or technician or whatever, the human embodiment of the trailers before the movie, took my info and added it into the system.
Then the specialist came in within seconds. He asked me what was up. I told him about the white blood cells, he examines my eye, and says “Oh, that’s nothing, you’re fine.“
I say, “Are you serious? Just like that?” And he says, “Just like that.“
And I say, “No more drops? I can wear contacts?” He sort of laughs and says, “Yes to both. And while I appreciate the concern of your doctor, you didn’t need these drops. You’re fine.“
I shit you not, I was in the exam room for like 3 minutes after waiting an hour.
I was so fucking happy. But then, I was furious all over again because I had wasted two days of my 4th of July weekend at the fucking eye doctor with a baseless cancer scare right in the middle of it.
The Bill
So it’s been nearly two months since this fiasco. The crazy eye doctor lady stopped holding my prescription hostage and I was back to wearing contacts that day. Although, reluctantly, mind you. She made me get a signed note from the specialist for proof, like I wanted to waste my Saturday morning an hour away from home only to say that nothing was wrong to her.
I’ve been wearing contacts for two months, my eyes are fine.
But I get a call from the specialist’s office today saying that I have an outstanding bill of $100. My insurance got it down to a $100 co-pay for a 3 minute check up with the specialist. He literally did nothing and is charging me $100.
This is where it all comes together. Why did that whole fiasco cost ME money??What, am I seeing Sinatra in there?
I should charge the crazy eye doctor lady $1000 for the prayer and scare tactic and I should charge the specialist $100 for not keeping the appointment time and having me wait an hour only to be seen and sent off within 3 minutes.
Everything about the medical world in the United States is a gigantic scam. At least it is for me. I’m allergic to all the good antibiotics, doctors waste my time with cancer scares, and then they come out of the woodwork like loan sharks months later to collect what they think they’re “owed.”
I’m in this whole eye thing now for over $300 between the appointments and the prescriptions. Not to mention I ran up my new insurance from my new job for literally nothing.
I’m still very much for this robbery field if it benefits me. I would love to meet a nice woman that happens to be a doctor and overcharges for simple things. I would do anything and everything about domestic lifestyle that sucks, all so she never has to lift a finger other than to write a prescription for someone that doesn’t really need it. All of which would come without a single complaint knowing that I now benefit from the system that once robbed me.
A lot of this is written in jest. Of course, I’m grateful that I’m ok and I’m grateful that it isn’t more than $100. And I would be grateful with any woman crazy enough to marry me, she doesn’t have to be a doctor.
But I also know that if this happened in a decent amount of other countries, I wouldn’t have spent a dime.
I’m praying that my checking account can withstand another case of nothing.
The Danny Diaries 