As an example, I recently wanted to watch The West Wing. I pay for Netflix and Hulu already, but the show is only on HBO Max. OK, fine, I guess I'll pay for a

As an example, I recently wanted to watch The West Wing. I pay for Netflix and Hulu already, but the show is only on HBO Max. OK, fine, I guess I'll pay for a month of HBO like I've done before to watch Game of Thrones. Ok, uh, what's it called now? HBO Go? HBO Now? Oh, HBO Max, ok. I live in Japan now, so I'm region-blocked, great. Time to open the VPN. HBO already seems to know that server #1243 is a VPN, but server #849 works OK for now. Ok, time to create an account. "Account with that email already exists"? Ok, so let's log in using my old HBO Go credentials. Looks like there's some kind of account migration problem and the account is stuck in the "account verification" phase but I can't get it to send me a new verification email. There's a little pop-up chat window for the support team, let's try it. Three separate support agents and thirty minutes later, I have a working verification email. But my payment information is out of date. OK, let's update it. HTTP 505 error. Wonderful. Ok, that's enough: Type "West Wing season 1 episode 1" into Google. Thirty seconds later I'm watching in full HD and there's popcorn in the microwave.