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A pile of mid tier content that i'd flick through before exiting out after an episode Automatic previews Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into ev

A pile of mid tier content that i'd flick through before exiting out after an episode Automatic previews Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on Horrible comedians that were akin to ted talks/lectures or made for people who don't actually enjoy stand up comedy. Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting Signing and hiring ex politicians Searching is a chore and recommendations are nearly never useful. (Just to have some toggles around metadata like language/genre/public rating and a text box to fuzzy search through titles and descriptions?) I cancelled my subscription a few years ago and I get more mileage and enjoyable content out of free apps like tubi, pluto, vhscast and peacock than I had in a long time with netflix.

colechristensen 4y ago
I likewise would like to watch a nature documentary once in a while which didn’t feel obligated to mention impending doom at least once every five minutes. If anybody had anything to say about said doom above a fifth grade level, I might watch that too.
- lawik 4y ago
  I was surprised how hard it was to find nature documentaries that mostly showed nature and animals and not talking heads very concerned about the planet. I'm all aboard but it wasn't what I wanted to show my 1.5 year-old. I wanted her to see cool animals. This was across a few platforms, had to really dig.
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    I would also like to see a Nike documentary that focuses on the cool shoes and doesn’t mention anything about the child labor used to make them. Not covering a recant and pertinent fact is also an agenda.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
      What would be the agenda of, say, talking about birds while not mentioning climate doomerism constantly? Is there some bird lobby we should be aware of?
      - edmundsauto 4y ago
        Destruction of natural habitat is a problem, pretty much everywhere on earth. If you're watching a show about birds, it probably covers where they live. If you like seeing birds, you probably care about them being around in the next 50 years. There is more to environmentalism than just climate change. I am obligated to point out that climate change will also change habitats, which will negatively impact many bird populations.
        colechristensen 4y ago
        It's true but it just doesn't need to be interjected into every conversation, every film, every time something even moderately related comes up. You can come up with negativity about how X is being ruined or is awful in some way or another for every X. The almond milk in your coffee uses scarce California water supplies, cows are mistreated and use water and produce methane, coffee farmers are threatened by global warming and have these other environmental concerns, Starbucks employees are mistreated and have these union issues, you drove a car to get coffee and emitted this much carbon, coffee is addictive and has these awful side effects, strip malls and big corporations ruin local economies... and on and on and on. Pick a topic and you can ramble on about awful things as though being "woke" about it and mentioning it at every opportunity makes anything better. It's cheap proselytizing for a certain morality and doubtful actual impact of mentioning it over and over in shallow ways that don't actually explain much to people who mostly already know. It's pointless and should be avoided. If you want to make a documentary about destruction of habitat, go do that, people will watch. But maybe stop trying to shoehorn it in at every possible opportunity.
- jbaber 4y ago
  I'll never be able to find it, but I remember watching an interesting clip from a nature documentary about cuckoo's breaking eggs or something. The narrator was talking through the scene, then abruptly "How could an all-loving God possibly..." It was narrated by Richard Dawkins.
- toastal 4y ago
  If we want that nature to still exist in 50 years, then yeah, it's probably good to remind folks that they should care about fixing that doom. You could argue it were unethical to pretend the environment isn't in danger, or should we just be happy we got some video footage while it lasted?
Spivak 4y ago
> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on :( I know this is a tangent but it’s always sad to see representation treated as inherently political. Like this is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen mainstream shows portray wlw relationships. Or shows portray the reality of how common and casual sexual assault is. Or characters that that struggle with depression as more than just an emo/goth archetype. I get that in some ways people tune into media to escape from all that but they become a comfort when they show your struggles and it turns out okay in the end.
- rchaud 4y ago
  The implication being that anything outside of the anodyne mainstream of cable TV must be a concerted effort to brainwash the public. Netflix has many problems, the big ones being that they lost old shows like The Office and Friends, which hurts retention. And they also kill off promising new shows after 2 seasons to save money on renegotiating cast contracts. If you read comment sections however, you'll get a very different idea. The problem is that Netflix is "too woke" and consumers are revolting. Never mind the fact that Netflix is a global network with millions of customers around the world, and thousands of shows from multiple countries.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    There's only so many times you can rewatch The Office and Friends. It can't be a major ongoing revenue source. > brainwash This has been going on forever. Check out "The Brady Bunch". Every episode revolves around a heavy-handed moral lesson. Go back even further and you've got the Hayes Code. Hollywood has always seen itself as morally superior to the rest of us, and hence entitled to preach to us. Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority.
    - ngc248 4y ago
      >>> Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority They all seem to have their own personal Reality Distortion fields
scarface74 4y ago
> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on People said the same thing in the 60s when Star Trek had the nerve to have a representative crew aboard the Enterprise and when they showed an interracial kiss.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  From what I can tell Netflix's catalog includes Stal Trek so you are just backing up his point.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Owning streaming right =/= producing content.
- breadov 4y ago
  It's different these days though. Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer. Whereas in Star Trek, it made sense that a future spacefaring crew would be made up of people with origins from all different parts of the world. This was entirely consistent with the overall storyline.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So it’s not consistent that show set in America be multi-racial and have people with different sexual orientations? Back in the 90s, they showed Jadzia Dax as being interested in men and women on Star Trek DS9. Not to mention X-men has always been a allegory of prejudice against minorities.
    - justahuman74 4y ago
      I think it's more that Netflix just has poor execution on a lot of shows. When telling a story on TV, you often want to cut the story to the bone such that it can be understood quickly and entertain without confusing the viewer with side tangents that aren't central to the story. If a non-story-essential element is too prominent then the viewer might feel it's boring
colinmhayes 4y ago
> Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting I can not stand how every "documentary" on netflix is actually an extremely opinionated political piece or true crime. And I usually agree with the political opinion, it's just incredibly annoying and divisive, and really it mostly feels dishonest.
- topspin 4y ago
  Just suffered through their Three Mile Island "documentary" yesterday while working on something else. Apparently Bechtel operates a hit squad in Pennsylvania and everyone in a 5 mile radius got severe cancer. Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident; the rest is headline rehash you can get on the first page of a Google search, emotional personal stories and a lot of self promotion. All the true crime stuff is retired officers cashing in. So much for books.
  - flukus 4y ago
    > Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident Most documentaries have always been very low on information density. Even universally loved ones like something from David Attenborough are mostly a collection of disconnected (yet amazing) film snippets with a bit of commentary over the top. It's only gotten worse as narrative has become more of the focus. There are exceptions, but when it comes to conveying meaningful information and detailed analysis youtube is far superior than mainstream documentaries.
    - onionisafruit 4y ago
      Nature documentaries are a different beast from other documentaries. They are primarily about showing great nature footage. If you happen to learn something from it, that’s just a happy side effect.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - sandworm101 4y ago
spanktheuser 4y ago
- pokey00 4y ago
  God the tone of your comment just set me off. What's the ugly sentiment and uglier mind? Just put it out there, whatever -ism you're about to accuse the parent poster of. Let's hear it without your cute little innuendo. This is the exact kind of bullshit they're calling out. Netflix stuffs pop politics into every show they can and is relentless with it. They want to make sure their viewers are getting the "correct" politics, and not the "ugly sentiments". Maybe, just maybe, some of us want to just watch some TV and not have whatever today's stupid social battle is shoved down our throats.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dillondoyle 4y ago
  It's telling that the comments calling out people complaining about representation are all greyed out. Sorry. HN has been surprisingly me lately in the viewpoints people are willing to say out loud on a public forum. or at least minimally a few vocal commenters. IDK if it's just feeling empowered not to hide anymore or perhaps progress we've made is creating stronger 'protective' reactions. It's scary though.
  - rendall 4y ago
    Yeah literally no one complained about representation. What we have instead are people astoundingly willing to see ugliness everywhere, even in the most innocuous comment or gesture. Admit it, you care less about "representation" than you like to indulge in sadistic performative outrage. We see you.
  - pokey00 4y ago
    Telling, huh? In what way? I'd love for you to expand on that.
  - 4y ago
bogomipz 4y ago
The only thing I would add to that list is the phenomenon where they list the same movie in 5 or 6 different categories.
girvo 4y ago
> Searching is a chore While my Siri remote thing makes it a little nicer, the thing that drives me bonkers is searching for an exact title that I know is in their library and getting other results instead of it as the first few results items. Ridiculous.
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  I guess this is the classic attention economy dark pattern: we know that you already know about this title you are looking for, therefore we want you to take a look at these other things first, just to make you stick to the platform for one more title.
_Algernon_ 4y ago
Only good (original) thing coming out of NF is the first season of House of Cards and Bojack Horseman. Definitely never been worth a monthly subscription. CMV
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  I like Stranger Things and the Chef’s Table series is wonderful. Castlevania is good. I don’t want to defend Netflix though, lots of crap too.
  - jiscariot 4y ago
    I like it, but Chef's Table uses "that one simple trick" 5x an episode where 18th century orchestral music is overlaid in a montage using all the available camera and editing tricks, showing someone literally is just making a cookie.
    - atombender 4y ago
      Chef's Table is mostly just food porn overlaid with chefs potentially musing about freshness of ingredients. It has nothing insightful to say about running a restaurant, about making food, or anything else. Which is a shame, because I think a more naturalistic, less pretentious view into the daily workings of restaurants could make for a nice show.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were both good. Dark, Katla, Frontera Verde. I guess those are all non-English speaking, or in Narcos' case, mixed language. As long as you don't hate subtitles, there's been good stuff. Russian Doll, Big Mouth, and Arcane were all pretty terrific among English speaking. Brand New Cherry Flavor wasn't mind-blowing, but more than worth watching. Same with Stranger Things. That's just content from the last couple years. Netflix honestly has plenty of good content. You just have to not use the in-app recommendation system at all and find content through traditional sources, i.e. word of mouth, professional critics, and industry publications, then search directly. As long as they allow you to find a title by name when you already know the name, they're fine.
hemreldop 4y ago
maicro 4y ago
So the rest of the reply chain here is...certainly something. I won't comment on most of the points, but I will just point out - you can now disable automatic previews; I believe it's in your profile settings. As for whether Netflix is still worth it...I honestly don't know, might need to discuss with my family.
tharne 4y ago
> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on This is exactly why I stopped watching Netflix.

colechristensen 4y ago

I likewise would like to watch a nature documentary once in a while which didn’t feel obligated to mention impending doom at least once every five minutes. If anybody had anything to say about said doom above a fifth grade level, I might watch that too.

lawik 4y ago
I was surprised how hard it was to find nature documentaries that mostly showed nature and animals and not talking heads very concerned about the planet. I'm all aboard but it wasn't what I wanted to show my 1.5 year-old. I wanted her to see cool animals. This was across a few platforms, had to really dig.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  I would also like to see a Nike documentary that focuses on the cool shoes and doesn’t mention anything about the child labor used to make them. Not covering a recant and pertinent fact is also an agenda.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
    What would be the agenda of, say, talking about birds while not mentioning climate doomerism constantly? Is there some bird lobby we should be aware of?
    - edmundsauto 4y ago
      Destruction of natural habitat is a problem, pretty much everywhere on earth. If you're watching a show about birds, it probably covers where they live. If you like seeing birds, you probably care about them being around in the next 50 years. There is more to environmentalism than just climate change. I am obligated to point out that climate change will also change habitats, which will negatively impact many bird populations.
      - colechristensen 4y ago
        It's true but it just doesn't need to be interjected into every conversation, every film, every time something even moderately related comes up. You can come up with negativity about how X is being ruined or is awful in some way or another for every X. The almond milk in your coffee uses scarce California water supplies, cows are mistreated and use water and produce methane, coffee farmers are threatened by global warming and have these other environmental concerns, Starbucks employees are mistreated and have these union issues, you drove a car to get coffee and emitted this much carbon, coffee is addictive and has these awful side effects, strip malls and big corporations ruin local economies... and on and on and on. Pick a topic and you can ramble on about awful things as though being "woke" about it and mentioning it at every opportunity makes anything better. It's cheap proselytizing for a certain morality and doubtful actual impact of mentioning it over and over in shallow ways that don't actually explain much to people who mostly already know. It's pointless and should be avoided. If you want to make a documentary about destruction of habitat, go do that, people will watch. But maybe stop trying to shoehorn it in at every possible opportunity.
jbaber 4y ago
I'll never be able to find it, but I remember watching an interesting clip from a nature documentary about cuckoo's breaking eggs or something. The narrator was talking through the scene, then abruptly "How could an all-loving God possibly..." It was narrated by Richard Dawkins.
toastal 4y ago
If we want that nature to still exist in 50 years, then yeah, it's probably good to remind folks that they should care about fixing that doom. You could argue it were unethical to pretend the environment isn't in danger, or should we just be happy we got some video footage while it lasted?

Spivak 4y ago

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on :( I know this is a tangent but it’s always sad to see representation treated as inherently political. Like this is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen mainstream shows portray wlw relationships. Or shows portray the reality of how common and casual sexual assault is. Or characters that that struggle with depression as more than just an emo/goth archetype. I get that in some ways people tune into media to escape from all that but they become a comfort when they show your struggles and it turns out okay in the end.

rchaud 4y ago
The implication being that anything outside of the anodyne mainstream of cable TV must be a concerted effort to brainwash the public. Netflix has many problems, the big ones being that they lost old shows like The Office and Friends, which hurts retention. And they also kill off promising new shows after 2 seasons to save money on renegotiating cast contracts. If you read comment sections however, you'll get a very different idea. The problem is that Netflix is "too woke" and consumers are revolting. Never mind the fact that Netflix is a global network with millions of customers around the world, and thousands of shows from multiple countries.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  There's only so many times you can rewatch The Office and Friends. It can't be a major ongoing revenue source. > brainwash This has been going on forever. Check out "The Brady Bunch". Every episode revolves around a heavy-handed moral lesson. Go back even further and you've got the Hayes Code. Hollywood has always seen itself as morally superior to the rest of us, and hence entitled to preach to us. Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority.
  - ngc248 4y ago
    >>> Though with all the scandals emanating from Hollywood, one wonders how they hold on to that moral superiority They all seem to have their own personal Reality Distortion fields

scarface74 4y ago

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on People said the same thing in the 60s when Star Trek had the nerve to have a representative crew aboard the Enterprise and when they showed an interracial kiss.

charcircuit 4y ago
From what I can tell Netflix's catalog includes Stal Trek so you are just backing up his point.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Owning streaming right =/= producing content.
breadov 4y ago
It's different these days though. Much more emphasis on whatever fresh sexual and gender identities happen to be in vogue right now, apparently for no purpose other than to preach about them to the viewer. Whereas in Star Trek, it made sense that a future spacefaring crew would be made up of people with origins from all different parts of the world. This was entirely consistent with the overall storyline.
- scarface74 4y ago
  So it’s not consistent that show set in America be multi-racial and have people with different sexual orientations? Back in the 90s, they showed Jadzia Dax as being interested in men and women on Star Trek DS9. Not to mention X-men has always been a allegory of prejudice against minorities.
  - justahuman74 4y ago
    I think it's more that Netflix just has poor execution on a lot of shows. When telling a story on TV, you often want to cut the story to the bone such that it can be understood quickly and entertain without confusing the viewer with side tangents that aren't central to the story. If a non-story-essential element is too prominent then the viewer might feel it's boring

colinmhayes 4y ago

> Documentaries that were more ideological than interesting I can not stand how every "documentary" on netflix is actually an extremely opinionated political piece or true crime. And I usually agree with the political opinion, it's just incredibly annoying and divisive, and really it mostly feels dishonest.

topspin 4y ago
Just suffered through their Three Mile Island "documentary" yesterday while working on something else. Apparently Bechtel operates a hit squad in Pennsylvania and everyone in a 5 mile radius got severe cancer. Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident; the rest is headline rehash you can get on the first page of a Google search, emotional personal stories and a lot of self promotion. All the true crime stuff is retired officers cashing in. So much for books.
- flukus 4y ago
  > Out of four hours you get about 10 minutes of meaningful detail about the incident Most documentaries have always been very low on information density. Even universally loved ones like something from David Attenborough are mostly a collection of disconnected (yet amazing) film snippets with a bit of commentary over the top. It's only gotten worse as narrative has become more of the focus. There are exceptions, but when it comes to conveying meaningful information and detailed analysis youtube is far superior than mainstream documentaries.
  - onionisafruit 4y ago
    Nature documentaries are a different beast from other documentaries. They are primarily about showing great nature footage. If you happen to learn something from it, that’s just a happy side effect.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sandworm101 4y ago

spanktheuser 4y ago

pokey00 4y ago
God the tone of your comment just set me off. What's the ugly sentiment and uglier mind? Just put it out there, whatever -ism you're about to accuse the parent poster of. Let's hear it without your cute little innuendo. This is the exact kind of bullshit they're calling out. Netflix stuffs pop politics into every show they can and is relentless with it. They want to make sure their viewers are getting the "correct" politics, and not the "ugly sentiments". Maybe, just maybe, some of us want to just watch some TV and not have whatever today's stupid social battle is shoved down our throats.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dillondoyle 4y ago
It's telling that the comments calling out people complaining about representation are all greyed out. Sorry. HN has been surprisingly me lately in the viewpoints people are willing to say out loud on a public forum. or at least minimally a few vocal commenters. IDK if it's just feeling empowered not to hide anymore or perhaps progress we've made is creating stronger 'protective' reactions. It's scary though.
- rendall 4y ago
  Yeah literally no one complained about representation. What we have instead are people astoundingly willing to see ugliness everywhere, even in the most innocuous comment or gesture. Admit it, you care less about "representation" than you like to indulge in sadistic performative outrage. We see you.
- pokey00 4y ago
  Telling, huh? In what way? I'd love for you to expand on that.
- 4y ago

bogomipz 4y ago

The only thing I would add to that list is the phenomenon where they list the same movie in 5 or 6 different categories.

girvo 4y ago

> Searching is a chore While my Siri remote thing makes it a little nicer, the thing that drives me bonkers is searching for an exact title that I know is in their library and getting other results instead of it as the first few results items. Ridiculous.

jnsaff2 4y ago
I guess this is the classic attention economy dark pattern: we know that you already know about this title you are looking for, therefore we want you to take a look at these other things first, just to make you stick to the platform for one more title.

_Algernon_ 4y ago

Only good (original) thing coming out of NF is the first season of House of Cards and Bojack Horseman. Definitely never been worth a monthly subscription. CMV

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
I like Stranger Things and the Chef’s Table series is wonderful. Castlevania is good. I don’t want to defend Netflix though, lots of crap too.
- jiscariot 4y ago
  I like it, but Chef's Table uses "that one simple trick" 5x an episode where 18th century orchestral music is overlaid in a montage using all the available camera and editing tricks, showing someone literally is just making a cookie.
  - atombender 4y ago
    Chef's Table is mostly just food porn overlaid with chefs potentially musing about freshness of ingredients. It has nothing insightful to say about running a restaurant, about making food, or anything else. Which is a shame, because I think a more naturalistic, less pretentious view into the daily workings of restaurants could make for a nice show.
nonameiguess 4y ago
Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were both good. Dark, Katla, Frontera Verde. I guess those are all non-English speaking, or in Narcos' case, mixed language. As long as you don't hate subtitles, there's been good stuff. Russian Doll, Big Mouth, and Arcane were all pretty terrific among English speaking. Brand New Cherry Flavor wasn't mind-blowing, but more than worth watching. Same with Stranger Things. That's just content from the last couple years. Netflix honestly has plenty of good content. You just have to not use the in-app recommendation system at all and find content through traditional sources, i.e. word of mouth, professional critics, and industry publications, then search directly. As long as they allow you to find a title by name when you already know the name, they're fine.

hemreldop 4y ago

maicro 4y ago

So the rest of the reply chain here is...certainly something. I won't comment on most of the points, but I will just point out - you can now disable automatic previews; I believe it's in your profile settings. As for whether Netflix is still worth it...I honestly don't know, might need to discuss with my family.

tharne 4y ago

> Increasing pop politics seemingly shoe horned into everything I'd turn on This is exactly why I stopped watching Netflix.