Is Netflix Tearing Apart Your Relationship?
Posted by: Catherine Strawn
Filed in:
relationships
11:00AM, Monday March 30th 2009
Shared taste in books, movies, or music can bring two people together. But they can cause tiffs, too, if you don’t share the same preferences. It used to be the debate over who controls the TV remote control was a big deal in a relationship, but as technology has progressed, so have our entertainment-related arguments. In Sunday’s New York Times, writer Michael Wilson considered the battles that wage in households that share a Netflix account. Wilson spoke to couples whose tastes in movies (and watching habits) didn’t mesh, and arguments ensued over who got the next pick in the Netflix queue.
Most of the fights, however, seem to be about how long the couples keep movies without watching them. Louis Marino had “The English Patient” for six months because his wife didn’t want to watch it. They never did see it before sending it back. Tom Smith has decided to limit the amount of time his girlfriend can keep a movie, because she’s really slow about getting to them. Greg Albrecht’s fiancee returns his DVDs after a week, regardless of whether he’s gotten to watch them. The fact that people are setting limits on how long their significant other keeps a movie goes against the whole point of Netflix—that you can get whatever movie you want and keep it until you’re ready to give it back. But why don’t couples just cancel their accounts or move to a less expensive plan if they’re only going to get to one DVD a month?
There has been one known “Netflix divorce,” in which a couple didn’t actually divorce, but they created separate accounts on the DVD rental site after having trouble sharing a queue. Smart people, however, will do what my friends Colin and Amanda do—they have one account but different profiles that operate independently of one another. So, if she keeps a movie for ages without watching it, he can still get new ones at his own pace. [NY Times]
TheFrisky.com is part of the Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 30 2009 @ 03:45 pm: [report]
Just pirate them, when you’ve got 3 terabytes of storage you can afford to keep them as long as you would like.
joyy
wrote on March 30 2009 @ 04:12 pm: [report]
@Cheese - welcome to my life. Granted I don’t have *that* much storage, but you get the picture. I actually don’t have a tv - my nerdynerd bf has a computer monitor that is bigger than our tv, so we run everything through an old laptop through that monitor - even a wireless mouse so we don’t have to keep walking up to it to change shows (see also: hulu).
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 30 2009 @ 07:11 pm: [report]
@Joyy: That is my plan for when I get my own place, forgo the television and go all out on a computer (Most likely build it myself) and at least one big monitor for a TV/movie like experience and several smaller monitors for every day usage/up close.
Oh btw, 2 tb of that is dedicated for pornography, however at the moment it’s not full :( The other tb is for television (I probably have 10 full shows perhaps 35 odd seasons, and by my last count 225 movies)
retro chic
wrote on March 30 2009 @ 10:09 pm: [report]
If Netflix pics are creating such an entertainment detente, why not the separate accounts or profiles (a la article)? It’s such a small price to pay in the scheme of things, let alone the big bad world of theatre ticket prices.
ps:@CheeeeEEEEse: What the hell are terabytes?... extra large buffalo wings?
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 04:05 am: [report]
@Retro chic: A terabyte is 1024 Gigabytes. A Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes.
joyy
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 08:14 am: [report]
@cheese - impressive. Maybe you’re that old college buddy my bf tells me about who wrote a bot to download pretty much every porn clip that hits the internet haha. Since we only have a 300 gig external, the best alternative was to burn dvds. I’ve got a huge binder full of dvds. SO never going back to cable.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 09:25 am: [report]
@Joyy: No, that is some guy in Sweden. I am born and bred American, I can’t afford to download everything or my ISP would flip a #&@$%.
writergirl
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 09:28 am: [report]
The biggest fight of my marriage—I am not kidding—centered on the Netflix que…we switched to the two-que thing.
The my husband removed it.
Then we had another fight.
He’s starting his own que again this week.
I can’t wait until we get Digital Joy…then all this sh*t goes away!
joyy
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 09:30 am: [report]
@cheese - this would have been a guy in salt lake city, not sweden ... but I highly doubt that there is only one guy in the world trying to collect all porn on the internet.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 31 2009 @ 10:28 am: [report]
@Joyy: LOL Utah! True, that is every man’s dream, I just don’t have several million dollars for a data center. Bleh.
IrishErin
wrote on April 2 2009 @ 03:04 pm: [report]
Precisely why the boy and I have separate accounts. There is sometimes overlap of interest on our lists, so we keep each other posted on which movies we have in our possession (or we can go look at each other’s pages since we’re “netflix friends”) and if we want to watch together, we do. If not, we watch solo. Easy peasy lemon squeezy my friends.