Tbh, the worst part is when you pay for it and still get ads anyway. Feels like double dipping, but it's obviously going to happen because wall street doesn't like when line only goes up a little.

Pirate everything. Pirate streams, torrents, whatever.

Pirate. Everything.

*unless it's an independent artist of some sort. then, just buy some merch from them or something.

The price of playing skyrim for every minute of my life until I die

With game pass: Over $9000.00

Just buying the game: $59.99

Remember when you didn't have to pay for a subscription to play console games online?

I like to bootleg the major studios and patreon the indie artists that are giving their shit away for free.

I don't have Peacock but I'm hanging out at my parents house and apparently when you pay for Peacock you have to watch ads at the beginning and end of shows PLUS every time you pause.

Every single time they paused it transitioned to an ad. What psychopaths run NBC?

Never pay any of this services BTW, I have no regrets and I never feel that I miss something.

Everyone is saying Piracy but I say Public LIbraries, which often have CDs/DVDs/BDs/games now (depending on your locale). They're taxpayer funded, so you might as well get your money's worth, and they keep track of how often stuff gets borrowed which determines future financial support.

(And if you are tech-savvy enough to be on Lemmy, you probably know how to make a ... permanent copy ... for yourself to keep)

There was a prophetic podcast episode from the series Plain English a while back that I constantly think about.

In that episode the author describes how the internet is going through a revolution.

Basically 20 years ago, the internet was all about gaining numbers. Companies could operate at a loss if they got people signed up. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Uber, Deliveroo, etc. they were all about getting you in their mailing list or consumer list and who cares what happens then.

Now there’s an issue because that model is not profitable. In order to continue, all the internet is moving towards subscription.

In a sense, I don’t think of that as intrinsically bad. Patreon is a good example. The internet is now filled up with so much shit that people are willing to pay to filter it. So with Patreon, you pay a fee to support an artist to produce the content you want. That itself isn’t a bad idea.

Now that being said, a lot of “bad things” do emerge. The fact that you can no longer buy software like Adobe and it’s all subscription based. That’s shit. But that also inspired software alternatives like Affinity Designer.

We wouldn't be ever hearing any of that if SOME PEOPLE weren't actually paying for them

The only subscription service that I pay for is tidal for music (pays artists more than Spotify, same cost) and that's only because maintaining a local library of music is too much of a pain for me right now. I may slowly build a local music library of only music I like, but I love listening to new artists so the $10 per month is worth the convenience.

YouTube? Ublock origin
Movie/tv streaming? Self hosted media library, plus some random services that are provided through my phone bill at no cost
File storage? Stored with my movies and TV on some hdds in raid
Amazon? Its not hard to find other retailers (or direct providers) with better prices and no subscription needed. Sometimes have to pay for shipping and it's slower, but worth it

What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? What will we do with a drunken sailor? Early in the morning!

..but capitalism is so good, things only get better!!! The market is too regulated, is the problem

It’s not that I don’t want to pay for the service, it’s just that I hate the automatic recurring withdrawals, even if I can cancel monthly.

I would probably use more subscriptions if I could just pay like three month of access in advance - basically like these gift cards work.

I just got charged $165 a couple days ago from two yearly subscriptions I totally forgot I had. We need a better solution. The banks should just implement the usage of Virtual Cards like Privacy.com does. It'd be so much more convent for people to cancel subscriptions, if they're allowed to have multiple different virtual cards that they can easily toggle on or off.

Why don't the banks do this?

Yes. Fucking yes. I'm so tired of it all. I just want to own things again.

Only subscriptions I pay for is Plex, Drunkenslug, and Newshosting

Bezos is no longer relevant to Amazon making changes.