Benjamin Clark

There was a recent Newsweek article published on the topic of Netflix Guilt:

Perhaps you're familiar with the following dynamic: film is highly recommended; film appeals to intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities; film is added to the Netflix queue, and soon appears in the mail in that unassuming but somehow pushy red-striped envelope. Temperament, timing and ambiance is never quite right for film's subject matter—in this case, brutal and depressing. Film sits on TV for a year, taking up valuable space on Netflix queue and inflicting pangs of guilt and regret. Said intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities are called into question when "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is watched and quickly returned.

I am under constant pressure to continually clear out my collective entertainment queue: watch (and promptly return) the movies I get from Netflix each week, watch (and delete) all the TV recordings on my PVR each day, listen to all the songs in my iTunes library or on my iPod equally so that none disappear into my 12,000 song abyss--the nightmare never ends. There's always new media to consume.

It's turned me into what I can only compare to a junkie. As my queue-emptying bloodlust has flowed into my weekdays to optimize my Netflix value, my life is Consuming: I come home from work at six, immediately throw in the latest DVDs, and watch as much as I can before I pass out in front of the box. For the days I don't have Netflix movies to watch, I catch up on my PVR--and thanks to late night cable reruns, I've always got something queued up. And since I spend all day at work catching up on the blogs I read, I feel like I'm in one of those dreams where you just keep running and you never go anywhere.

Update: I got some attribution at Hacking Netflix! Right on!