Battling a terrible addiction
For the average university student, Netflix can approach addiction levels suddenly and unexpectedly
Aidan Mouellic
Other Press (Douglas College)
NEW WESTMINSTER (CUP HUMOUR) – Richard Hawthorne was an average Canadian in every sense. He worked full-time for a beer company, enjoyed chopping wood on the weekends and loved hiding from the nasty Saskatoon winter indoors whilst watching the shopping channel. This all changed a few months ago though, when Hawthorne discovered Netflix.
Netflix, the Internet video streaming program, transformed Hawthorne from a productive member of society to a mass Netflix content consumer – commonly known as a Netflix Zombie. This growing phenomenon manifests itself in ways that are extremely harmful to society, both from an economic and from a sociological standpoint.
The Netflix Zombie has been known to spend upwards of 22 hours per day watching Netflix content. This was the case for Hawthorne, who has been placed into the recently opened National Centre for Netflix Addiction (NCNA). The centre already has a waitlist of over a year and finds that most people who enter for treatment often recover from their addiction.
“I didn’t show up to work for a month. They tried calling me but I was busy watching Community. Finally they sent the police over since they thought I was missing. The police found me wearing an adult diaper, re-watching Community and laughing like a maniac.” – Richard Hawthorne
“The patients we deal with often come here once they reach the saturation point; this is the point when they have watched all content on Canadian Netflix two times over and finally realize they have a problem,” said Emily Jacobs, the centre’s director.
For Hawthorne, this point came when he got fired from his job.
“I didn’t show up to work for a month. They tried calling me but I was busy watching Community. Finally they sent the police over since they thought I was missing. The police found me wearing an adult diaper, re-watching Community and laughing like a maniac.”
The toll that Netflix has on the individual is staggering; hygiene and health are completely foregone for the sheer pleasure of watching episode after episode of thrilling television.
One unforeseen side effect of the Netflix Zombie situation is that the economy in Canada is failing under the strain of subpar employee performances. Employees are either in a Zombie state due to Netflix induced sleep deprivation or they miss work altogether.
Analysts report that the recent dismal performances from Blackberry maker Research in Motion was due to 75 per cent of their workforce being addicted to Netflix. Now all of their subpar products make complete sense.
The Canadian mobile phone company has agreed to send those of their employees who are addicted to Netflix to the NCNA and the company is expected to make a full recovery.
For Hawthorne, his life is again bright, he is now free of Netflix addiction, and has also found work as a rehab counsellor at the NCNA. He encourages everyone to cancel their Netflix subscription after they have finished watching season three of Community and all of Arrested Development.
Photo courtesy of wikipedia.com
We’ve tried both and decided on Blockbuster. As far as how fast the dvds arirve, they are pretty even, but Blockbuster does provide you with 2 online coupons every month for free rentals and other deals. I believe Netflix had a little more variety as far as hard to find movies, but we are usually too busy with the new releases to even get to those.