The Dyson Airwrap is $749.99. The Netflix you want, without ads, with all of the content recorded in Ultra HD, costs $26.99. SKIMS just collab’d with Nike, and the collection just dropped, and it’s hot, and it’ll run you $129 (plus shipping and handling) for a pair of leggings with a 29-inch inseam. 

It’s not required that you buy any of these things (even though everyone has it/that/them, from your circle of real-life friends to the one in your phone), but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Overconsumption doesn’t stop at tangible objects; rather, it determines the types of emotional connections you create, audiences you may be a part of (or even have for yourself). We are all susceptible to this psycho-temptation. Why do we continue to consume things despite being previously left unsatisfied by them? Why do we go for another forkful when we’ve just spit out our last bite? 

Streaming services: over the hill 

These practices in overconsumption aren’t new, but Gen Z has likely been introduced to them through visual pop media. From TV-movie specials, like Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie (2009), or live TV recordings (that in previous years, were not stream-able) such as Grease Live! in 2016, as children we knew that on some weekends, there was something to miss out on … and it’d be better not to.  

Cablevision wreaked a plague on my parents’ life. I got to witness firsthand the predatory nature of billion-dollar cable conglomerates … and as is the nature of conglomerates, you probably have as well. Netflix’s come-up and its DVD delivery system was a savior from the ol’ ball and chain, the cable box. It was kind of hard to watch Little House on the Prairie (1974) if you didn’t happen to purchase the channel package that included the Hallmark Channel. 

Which my parents didn’t, because the $9/month that it cost for a Netflix subscription in 2008 was cheaper than any upgrade fee, according to Alex Munchaky in 2023, a freelance writer for the Flixed blog. Plus, Munchaky timelines, in conjunction with its delivery system, Netflix made its content available to stream unlimitedly … for those who’d spend the $9 (as opposed to the originally $5 Netflix cost that was then presented as the less committed option). It was nice to watch whatever we wanted, despite that ‘whatever’ being limited to what they had — which wasn’t everything. 

As more audiences caught on to the concept of on-demand content, more streaming platforms began to spring up with little overlap in the content they hosted. In a recent episode of the PBS news podcast, ‘Settle In’, Evan Shapiro explains that when he — similarly to Netflix, in this case — was first working in entertainment, ”it was a lot easier because your competition was a few other channels. Now your competition is everybody, all seven billion people on the planet Earth with a smartphone”. Shapiro, long ago, founded the NBC-subsidiary-streaming platform, Seeso. It dissolved in 2017, only two years after its start-up. When Shapiro talks on the turnover rate of a mass audience’s watching preferences, he’s speaking firsthand. It’s a bit of a timejump from 2008 to 2017 to now, but the streaming pool is laughably larger today. Tubi, Mubi, and Crackle are all real platforms that have popped up (and lasted into 2026), and despite competition, they offer their content for free.  

Granted, their content is mostly B-movies: movies that go straight to DVD. Or in this case, straight to Tubi. People aren’t buzzing with excitement over Zombieland: Double Tap…which ends up being hugely important when it comes to what we want to watch and therefore, what services we subscribe to. 

Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments 

If you lean more toward the HBO max-Hulu-Paramount+ side of the range in terms of preference, these fringe streaming platforms might be news to you. Or they may not, as you might just be a movie buff and spend your free time watching what’s out. 

Because it really is as simple as that ’might as well’ attitude. At least 37% of you feel this way, according to Solomon Asch’s set of studies in the 1950’s as relayed by frequent Salem Press Encyclopedia contributor, Michael Ruth. Asch’s experiments and studies revolve around social conformity and consequently, groupthink. His experiments explain a variety of social situations, from agreeing with someone on what to eat to holding prejudice against a group of people in order to conform.  

Asch’s first experiment testing his hypothesis, that ”social pressure could force people to profess to holding demonstrably untrue beliefs” according to Ruth, went as follows: he gathered eight men, seven whom he told to answer his question incorrectly. Each man was presented with a card and asked to name the suit and color, and the seven answered incorrectly. The test subject (asked last), 37% of the time, followed suit and answered incorrectly. 

In the case of the streaming end-times, the 37% is the aforementioned movie buff with the ‘might as well’ attitude. It all adds up, presumably resulting in a monthly bill right on par with that of Cablevision’s 2011 Optimum’s iO Gold plan, $102.95, but honestly the number should be higher than that. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator, a 2011 $102.95 is a 2026 $152.96, which isn’t crazy, but it is deceptive enough to keep people paying to watch.  

If 37% of watchers are happy to go along with whatever streaming platforms are asking of them, no matter how impacted by inflation, they’d probably also jump off a bridge because friends do … or at least buy an expensive pair of leggings, simply because it’s the kind of pair that everyone has.  

Girlblogged too close to the Sun 

If you can type something and publish it to the world for free, why would you try to do it the ’right way’? Shapiro says that everyone, essentially, has an audience at their fingertips, and there’s at least three apps to download to try your luck to gain one. Start a Substack because your favorite niche celebrity starts one; post on TikTok because you see your friend getting some decent views on her videos. Why try your hand at a cold email when you could just publish it yourself, and share the link wherever? I mean, that’s what I do. Why should I pay for The Cut to read an article every once in a while, when plenty of reputable writers have moved to Substack and begun to share their musings for free? Like the visual media industry, the written one is just as saturated. 

When everyone is allowed to have their own platform and garner an audience, any sense of critique is discouraged out of a fear of being disliked or having the unpopular opinion. In terms of Asch’s conformity studies, this ostracization is what we are inherently trying to avoid. 

I think Rayne Fisher-Quan, 21st- century essayist and niche celebrity, semi-explains this when she writes that “the intersection of fan, critic, and subject is girlblogger.” Again, the tools to become any one of those things at our fingertips. But if everyone’s a critic, let alone the other two things, how is anyone getting anywhere?  

The simple answer is that they aren’t. It’s hard to become a recognizable name, and these social positions are seemingly exclusive and ratioed: ‘this doesn’t happen to just anyone’. In the streaming end-times; however, it can and does. Combine that with a definition of cancel culture of your choice, and the whole entertainment industry is cancelled out. Sometimes these celebrities make it back into the public eye, and sometimes they don’t, but this Industry includes everyone with a phone and at least one active social media account. The turnover rate is so fast, and there’s always someone new to loathe or be enamored by, that we don’t care about who has fallen out of the mainstream. 

It’s a Pirate’s life for me! 

Have you ever heard of P-Stream?  

It’s a free streaming platform that can pull content from anywhere. Every TV show and movie, spanning the globe, complete with multiple sources to stream from if you run into any technical difficulties. It’s not the only way to ‘pirate’ either … as in, downloading the P-Stream extension to your browser is the easiest way. When torrenting gets involved is when it gets difficult-to-download, but not impossible. Sometimes P-Stream gets shut down, because pirating is illegal but … not that illegal. It always pops back up eventually.  

We’re all contributing, in a way, as performers in our own right. Why should we bother with paying for these services that we are rendering obsolete? 

There are ways to ’jailbreak’ your TV set-up, too, that is, make it possible to bypass payment for what you’d like to watch. The Amazon Fire Stick is laughably easy to jailbreak. Downloading third-party apps is a cinch if you know–and care–that you have that option.  

When we’re all buzzing over the latest episode of Euphoria (available on HBO max), I think it’s worth it to be more open-minded to the idea that maybe you might be a part of that 37%.  

Swallow that pill. 

Gianna Boccone was a senior, English major at the State University of New York at Fredonia.