My problem with Netflix

Whoever invented Netflix is a genius.

I would suppose that’s why a ton of other programs, like Shomi and Crave TV that provide bulks of movies and television series to be watched from the comfort of our home, computer-or TV-are now booming. Right in time for winter, too.

Not so genius, however, are the people that get sucked in to the $7.99 warp of over-consumption of what these programs offer. But at such low costs, it’s hard not to. Less than $10 for unlimited access to entertainment? Sign me up.

And I did sign myself up.

When Netflix first came out, I avoided subscription as if it were the plague. I thought, why on earth would I pay to sit and watch marathons of television shows when I barely use my television?

Why would I sacrifice precious hours of my day that I could be outside, you know, doing actual stuff, as opposed to being inside watching people do stuff for me?

But on second hand, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

And that, precisely, is my problem with Netflix.

Netflix has preyed on the weakness of many North American and western world inhabitants-boredom.

Boredom is what makes social media the big deal that it is. It sells itself to us as being “social” and “progressive” when all it’s done is allow everyone to have a say and then argue over who’s opinion is the most correct. They call it social but true, authentic communication doesn’t happen through a screen.

Boredom is what makes people fat. It’s what makes us believe that eating is productive, and junk food is a real activity, a past-time of sorts.

Boredom is what makes people shop. It reminds us of all the things that we could use in our house like a potato peeler and maybe another mirror for the hallway and ou! Another jewelry organizer!

Boredom is what makes kids play unhealthy amounts of video games, so bored of playing them that they don’t even recognize that their boredom is now dressed as a habit.

Yet, the convenience of it is marketed to us in such a way that we come to believe that it truly is the greatest thing to happen. What’s better than a night in with Netflix and snacks? What’s cheaper than that?

When I first converted, I authorized my credit card for the monthly payment thinking of all the money I would save by staying in and binge watching television shows that I had missed out on because I never had any interest in them. But now, suddenly, with the opportunity to watch all six seasons of Gossip Girl, I cared about the rather pathetic series that only grew to be more pathetic and addictive, followed by all four seasons of Pretty Little Liars.

I learned something about myself, and probably many other Netflix subscribers while locking myself in my room under my blankets day in and day out:

It isn’t about enjoying the show, it’s about finishing it.

It’s as if each finished episode was another race I ran, each season was the marathon, and the completion of each show was a trophy I would put on my imaginary shelf of what I did, or didn’t do, rather, with my Christmas break.

The reality set in when I had looked at my crumpled up “Holiday Bucket List” a few nights before school started.

Go ice skating.

Visit the Christmas Market,

Watch a Christmas movie.

Drink hot chocolate. With marshmallows.

Write.

Perhaps it was the fact that throughout my entire break, I hadn’t written a thing that made me the most disappointed in myself (and in the creator of Netflix). Here I am wanting to be some big famous writer and journalist, but I was cooped up in a mess of blankets wishing Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass would just be together already.

“Ariana Huffington didn’t make it laying down watching Netflix,” my trusty inside-the-head-voice mocked.

And for the umpteenth time, it was right.

We live in a world where kids don’t ride their bikes outside as much as they used to. You don’t see children playing double-dutch . And do they even sell chalk in stores anymore, you know, for hop scotch?

There are just so many distractions that don’t require us to even think that we’ve succumbed to a very passive way of living, if we can even call it that anymore. Sadly, we have to remind ourselves not to give in to the distractions that keep us from engaging with life.

We have to remind ourselves there is life outside of other people’s lives, one especially worth living, no matter how cold or expensive. There are memories to be made.

I promise you that in five years, you will not be sharing the story of that time that you laid in bed and watched Netflix and nothing epic happened.

So don’t give up your subscription just yet; watch an episode here and there. But let’s not forget about how beautiful life is, not the scripted in some studio with a shitty cast that didn’t do the book justice. But the life that we’ve created for ourselves, and continue to create every time we do something; insignificant or remarkable.

Perhaps my problem is just that I have very little self-control when it comes to these things. That’s why my life so far has been so memorable. Because I act on impulse, and sometimes it’s the best damn thing ever. Other times it’s the worst. But it’s always a lesson, and it’s always a memory.

There are probably a lot of amazing series out there. Maybe I’m biased because I filled my head with the two most insulting shows. But I guarantee you that there is no show better than the one about your life. Where the cast is your friends and family. The setting is wherever you go. It’s actually unpredictable. And the best part?

You’re the star.

The Life Lesson Instagram Taught Me

Lately, I’ve been trying to revamp my Instagram profile.

As if I don’t spend enough of my valuable, irreplaceable hours on this planet surfing through people’s images of a life they want us to think they live, I’ve decided to “revamp” my profile.

Seriously?

Sadly, yes. Lately, I’ve noticed this trend of people cropping their photos, putting them strictly in black and white, or using only one type of filter and I feel like their profiles just look so much more sophisticated and clean cut.

So in true Stephanie fashion, I took my inspiration to the extreme and deleted about 200 photos from my profile, aware I might regret this later. (One time I wanted a fresh start so I made a new Facebook profile and lost a lot of my old contacts, photos, and posts.)

Yet here I was, ferociously tapping the delete button.

When Instagram had finally had enough of me and told me that I couldn’t delete any more photos, I complied and searched through popular images and people’s profiles instead.

It was then that I came across a girl who’s profile looked exactly like what I wanted mine to look like. Her photos were cropped, there were clean white spaces between all her photos, and despite the variation, they all seemed to be in uniform.

But as I kept scrolling, I noticed that she must have went through the same exact phase I did in wanting her profile to look more uniform. The more I scrolled, the less uniform her photos were. The more color there was. And the larger the images were.

I thought about the difference between her and myself.

I was trying to erase the past, and she was just building on it.

I thought, maybe instead of deleting my photos, I should just start posting them the way I want them to look. Why did it matter if my previous photos didn’t follow this trend?

Truthfully, I’m just an extreme person I assume, particularly after this event. I see to the very end of things. I try and look at the “big picture” even when the outline hasn’t been placed before me yet.

While it is a blessing to be so thorough, it prevents me from living in the moment, and in this case, remembering and sharing these moments with people who explore my life through my photos, and the instances I reminisce through my photos as well.

Then I thought about how seriously we, or at least I, take social media. Here I was completely restructuring my visual profile to appear a certain way to people I knew, who would certainly remember the time my profile was a mess, and conversely, people I had no idea even existed.

I learned a really valuable lesson in all of this.

The lesson is that one doesn’t need to erase their history to reshape their future. The same way a car does not need to reverse and retrace it’s route in order to take another direction. Sometimes all you have to do is make the turn.

I think ultimately, we allow things from the past that have no place in the present to haunt us and continue to remind us of who we were, and where we were in our lives, no matter how far away we might be from that place.

We hide these things from others, and in turn, ourselves, to try and forget that they ever happened, to try and forget that we were once and still are imperfect beings, when really, those imperfections highlight the most profound and unmatched beauty of being human.

Moreover, we place a sickening amount of effort in performing for other people. We accept things that deeply disturb us, like social issues, vanity, and other injustices, and become so entwined in our constructed fantasy that we, at times, even forget who we are.

So when I saw this girl’s page, it wasn’t just another page. It was a story. One that I, apparently, was too afraid to tell.

But if I don’t write my own story, who will?

If I continue to self-edit, scratch, erase, and highlight all things that should have been “cropped out” of Stephanie’s story, so to speak, who is going to display the honest me to the world?

Remember when I said that I would probably regret the deletion of 200 photos from my social media profile? Well that moment came the minute I realized that those were pages from my story that were violently yanked from the spine of perhaps one of the most amazing books to ever be written.

And certainly, they couldn’t just be put back in to place.

So from here, I know that rather than pretending to be something I’m not, being too selective in what I share and how I edit it, I’m just going to build on the foundation that I’ve built so far.

With all of it’s cracks.

And all of it’s my imperfections.

We've Got to do Better

When I share with people that I was bullied growing up as a kid, they didn’t understand why. They would say things like, “You’re too pretty to get bullied” or “They were just jealous”. While the first statement does good for the ego despite being quite irrelevant, the second is a phrase I believe myself, and other victims of bullying, male or female, hear too much to actually believe this is a real explanation.

The misconception that all victims of bullying are ugly, wear glasses, are “nerdy” or promiscuous is bullshit. And don’t pardon my French. The culture of bullying and mentally traumatizing innocent young girls and boys has to stop.

When we hear tragedies ranging from the time of Reena Virk, up until the recent suicide of Amanda Todd, it illustrates that bullying is still an issue that pushes people to the brink of death. Despite not being familiar with the story of Reena Virk when it was first talked about in a journalism lecture, I did my research and found out what I could.

In 1997, the partially clothed and brutally beaten dead body of Reena Virk was found under a bridge in Saanich, British Columbia. The girl, of Indian descent, was bullied by her peers who she desperately sought acceptance from and was teased relentlessly. They said she was “too hairy”, and “too dark”, and they felt that was enough reason to swarm her one day and beat her to death.

Then last year, more than ten years after the brutal death of Reena Virk, came the suicide of Amanda Todd. The grade ten student who, like Reena, was from British Columbia, had been tormented after a topless image of her circulated the internet. Despite moving homes, switching schools, and receiving counselling, the teen began cutting herself as a means of dealing with the inescapable bullying. She was teased in school for a learning disability, and beaten up by a group of girls who punched and kicked her relentlessly into the ground. After this incident, she attempted suicide by drinking bleach.

In September of 2012, Amanda uploaded a video of herself on YouTube with flashcards detailing how truly alone she felt, and how desperate she was for someone, anyone, to be there for her. Despite posting the video, the bullying continued. On October 10, 2012, the teen was found dead in her home, and the cause of death is reported to have been suicide by hanging.

So where do we go from here? How do we eradicate these types of cases from our society? Perhaps the better question to ask is what they’re doing here in the first place.

Reena Virk’s case illustrated both a racial and gender-specific issue. This was not just a case of “catty girls” looking to duke it out over some guy like in the movies. This was a group of sick, manipulative, and ridiculously powerful girls who looked to bring torment to Reena, for no reason at all, other than the fact she was different from them.

The case of Amanda Todd illustrated the role of social media on people’s lives and emotions; and that sticks and stones don’t hurt nearly as much as words do. Why do you think it is common for people to cut themselves like she did when they find themselves in the face of such adversity? The physical pain is no competition for the emotional deterioration this kind of bullying brings.

International Women’s Week, like everyday, is an opportunity to honour the innocent victims of crimes like these. It is an opportunity for us all to stand up and be the voices for these unspoken and unheard victims. The sad thing is, Todd and Virk are far from being the only ones. There are the tragic stories of Jessica Laney, Felicia Garcia, Marianne Shanks…

And the list goes on, and on, and on, and on.

When someone shares with you that they have been bullied, save the “You’re too pretty,” or “They were just jealous” for another time. Ask them instead if they are okay. Ask them if they have seen someone, and let them know that you’re there. The few times these gestures were made to me I laughed it off, not recognizing that I was a lucky one, and that there are boys and girls dying, literally, for this kind of support.

Let the stories of these young and beautiful girls be a cautionary tale to you. Keep an eye out for signs of bullying, signs of depression, and always be on the lookout for people who you feel may be a danger to themselves. And never, ever underestimate the effect that simply being there for someone can have.

After all, this would have been the one thing that would’ve prevented Reena’s death according to her mother, who said “If she just had one friend, one true friend there that night, Reena would have lived. I would not have had to bury my daughter.”