Netflix has been through a plethora of changes in the last 15 years. It went from being a mail service to its video-on-demand service to its app and interactive media. All in all, moving from a DVD service to an easy-to-access website seems like a good improvement, but it seems that as of late, Netflix has done nothing but make bad decision after bad decision when it comes to their company. I believe that we will soon see the demise and fall of Netflix, and it will not be pretty.

Starting with their obvious tendencies to cancel shows that seemed to draw good responses and to continue shows that people seem to dislike. For example, the show ‘I’m Not Okay With This’ was canceled after just one season. It had an 86 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was canceled by Netflix for “Circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” There is a string of coincidences that could imply that Netflix canceled it for prejudiced reasons. The connection between some of the more recent canceled Netflix shows is its diversity and representation of people of color and queer relationships. Some shows include ‘Inside Job’, ‘Dead End: Paranormal Park’, ‘One Day at a Time’ and many, many more. Of course, that’s all just speculation but you know what they say. ‘Twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern.’

Senior Emma Simmons is quoted as saying,”I think [Netflix] sucks. They keep canceling all their good shows!” They also go on to state that, “To keep canceling all their shows, that’s not good.”

They also greenlight a lot of shows with such outlandish plots, it makes you wonder, “Who is still watching this?” and obviously I’m talking about ‘Riverdale’ because what was going on in ‘Riverdale’? They let ‘Riverdale’ go on for seven seasons! By the end, it was so far from its source material, it is essentially someone’s dark fan-fiction. To be fair, I never watched more than the first episode so I could very well be a little off. But, every time I hear about the show it gets weirder and weirder. They also greenlit the ‘Dahmer’ series which is too controversial to get too into here and would take too long. But, the show was severely offensive to the families and the victims of Dahmer. Rita Isbell, the sister of Errol Lindsey, a victim of Dahmer’s, was portrayed nonconsensually in the show. Her powerful victim statement was acted out in the show and they never even asked her. 

That’s all the nit-picky bits about why I personally think it began decreasing but statistics show that Netflix lost a lot of subscribers in the first quarter of 2022. It was reported that Netflix had lost two hundred thousand subscribers. Some of that was contributed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it was also because Netflix announced they were upping their prices by rolling out a quality tier. Meaning the more you paid, the better quality you would have. They stated that they would also start playing ads for the lower tiers. Almost immediately, people began to cancel their subscriptions. With the economy steadily rising, a lot of people simply couldn’t pay the new bill.

Netflix had also announced an anti-password sharing system. With this system in place, you would need to set a “Primary location”. You would be required to verify this location every 31 days or be kicked from the account. But don’t worry, if you simply must have someone outside the house or if you are out of town you can just pay more money to this Kingpin of a company as the inflation rises to 6.5 percent. While this is still being tested in countries like Canada and New Zealand, it isn’t long before it reaches everyone.

I miss when Netflix was a Red-box service that would mail you DVDs of your favorites. Sure, sometimes it was inconvenient, but it was better than what Netflix has turned into. Netflix, as have most streaming services, simply stopped seeing the people and started seeing walking dollar signs. They are a hollowed shell of what they used to be and eventually, they will wither away from trying to grow too big.