I hated cable/satellite companies because their idiotic insistence on "packaging" everything made it so that you have to pay for channels you have zero intent of ever watching. Many times they made me pay for channels I actively hated.

Then streaming happened.

Finally, you could buy only the channels you wanted to watch. It was cheaper and didn't mean your money was going where you didn't want it to.

It was good while it lasted.

Now streaming has gotten just as stupid and expensive as cable/satellite ever was. Netflix, for example, has started "cracking down" on password sharing. I don't share my password, but this is the kind of idiotic shit that makes me want to start.

No, I don’t think the entire world should be able to share one account. No business could survive on that, and I want to support those services I use. But I do think that if you pay for an account, it’s none of Netflix’s fucking business who is doing the streaming or where the streaming is being done. Just lock it down so you can’t stream more concurrent streams than you’re paying for. If I pay for one stream at a time only, then Netflix will only stream for one concurrent user. If I pay for five concurrent streams, then Netflix won’t stream six or more at the same time off my account. Software companies have been selling by seat licenses forever.

HBO's "Max" has gone a different route in fucking their customers. Right now in order to keep my subscription when it expires, I'm going to have to pay the $150 annual fee. That's $50 more than the $100 I used to pay. And it's like, whatever, because the price of everything is going up. Except in order to get 4k quality, I will now have to pay $200. So it's like... fuck that. No more paying for a full year. I'll pay once or twice a year for a month of service and just catch up on all the crap I want to see. Because nothing is worth this kind of abuse.

Right now I'm struggling to think of a single service that I'm invested enough in keeping year 'round. I'd say Disney+, but they're planning on cutting and delaying a lot of things I want to watch (Marvel & Star Wars content), so even that will likely be chopped.

It's crazy how streaming won the war only to piss it away like this.