"Netflix Wars"
When I signed up for my free month of Netflix about a year ago I was so
very excited. Clicking through their list of available DVDs revealed cool
old SciFi films, Frank Zappa videos, all the Monty Python movies, Buster
Keaton, W.C. Fields, Bettie Page - everything a guy could
want from a DVD catalogue.
This, I thought, will change my life. And I was right.
In case you don't know how Netflix works, here's a little mini-tutorial:
You are allowed to have three DVDs at any given time. They are mailed
directly to you from the Netflix Mega-Warehouse. When
you mail one back, they send you the next one on your list. If you mail
all three back, they send you the next three on your list. What list?
Well, the one you create at their web site. You choose from what must
be hundreds of thousands of movie titles, and you create your own personalized
little queue which you can change any time you are online, from any computer.
Even if - and this is the part I didn't really think through - you
are my wife, sitting in the next room, on your very own computer.
I could have taken the low road. I could have spun some techno-babble
tale of how a knowledge of HTML is necessary to hack your way through
the Netflix cyber jungle to find your next movie. I could have offered
to look up movies for her and then claimed that they don't actually have
them, and then gone ahead and ordered the Criterion Collection of "The
Bad News Bears."
I could have done that, but there are those who would consider
that lying. Besides, I knew she'd figure it out eventually.
But I could have held out a bit longer. I could have kept my grip on the
glory days of my very own Netflix for a little while before I gave away
the keys to the kingdom.
"Look," I said a few minutes after signing up. "It's easy.
You just click on the movie you want and it puts it in line for you. So,
you can see that I already have 'Caddyshack,' 'Meatballs' and 'Stripes'
at the top of our queue."
"What if you change your mind?" she asked. "Can you move
things ahead of the line so that they come first?"
This should have been a clue.
"Well, sure...but I'm not sure why you'd want to. I mean, like I
said, I already have Caddyshack, Meatba..."
"OK, thanks," she interrupted. "I'd like some time
alone now, please."
"Sure. I'll, uh...go polish the DVD player."
Our first shipment arrived a few days later. Each movie was completely
devoid of a 1980s Bill Murray, and was instead chock full of Elizabethan-era
costumes.
I stormed to the Netflix site intent on canceling my free subscription.
I found that my Zappa, Python and Keaton movies were now down at around
No. 50 on the queue. The top 49 were now populated with DVDs by the likes
of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, documentaries on Quantum Physics,
Economics and The Kennedy Assassination.
Oh. Now I see how it's going to be. Noam Chomsky is cool, I guess, but
that hardly gives my wife the right to place him above "The Adventures
of Rocky and Bullwinkle" in the queue. In MY queue.
I suffered through the costume movies and quietly returned the DVDs in
the pre-paid mailers, never saying a word. Later that night I quietly
made a few adjustments to the queue.
Three days later our new batch of DVDs arrive. No "Tony Hawk's Secret
Skatepark Tour." No Bullwinkle. No "Twin Peaks - Complete First
Season." Just a bunch of educational crap about the world and stuff.
From that moment on, the secret war has been on. Now each time we return
our Netflix it's like a heated Ebay bidding war, with
each of us jockeying our choices to the top three positions, back and
forth, up and down, right up until Netflix HQ gets our DVDs and locks
in the next three choices. We never really know when this will be, so
it's always down to the wire.
And it's getting nasty.
"I need to check my email."
"Yeah, uh...I need to look something up on Wikipedia real fast."
"I need you to leave the house now. Without your laptop."
I may never get to watch "Meatballs" again.
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