You may or may not be aware of the fact that YouTube has slowly been moving towards offering a sort of pay TV service in addition to their massive amount of horrible user generated content, in addition to a few entertaining vids. Google has sorta had the ability to purchase movies for quite a while...oh...sorry...I mean Alphabet Soup with a side of anal probing of your data. I have a few videos and series I've gotten there over the years, the majority for free, but they don't really push it that much. Well, they apparently just recently revamped their Library section of their page, which got me looking at the movies I own there, and made me think about checking what they have on offer.
Low and behold, right in their recommended section, just for me, the first movie, Battle Royale for $1.99. WTFH! That's an amazing deal. That's almost too good to be true. At that price I gotta get it, right?
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Now, I don't know about Terminator 2 at $11.99. I can probably get it elsewhere for a bit better. I also don't REALLY need The Dark Knight movies at $3.99. Crypto is down. I'm in savings mode. But, even Tangled is looking a bit tempting at $2.99. That's not a bad movie. Great for kids. Can throw it on when some relative is over or when lending out a tablet or something. Battle Royale at $1.99 is a fucking insane deal though! I can't pass that one up, savings mode or no!
Then I click it...
Excuse me, Bitch?! What?!?! Fucking $3 to rent an old ass fucking foreign movie that's so fucking old it's not even good color? Fuck you! Listing that as "From $2.99" is blatant fucking manipulation. I get excited about that price. Then I click in...and I see that that's the fucking price to rent. If I had been really excited to see it, I might just fucking buy it...but you know what? NO! Fuck you! Even if I was so excited to buy it that I ended up doing so, despite being blatantly manipulated by your "From" bullshit marketing, I would buy it from anywhere but your store.
Not to mention I can get a physical fucking disc for $8 or less. Where's your fucking overhead? Hosting it on servers? You fucking give away more space than that movie takes up. Serving it out to customers? You fucking run fiber! No, you just sell it for that price because the fucking studios don't want you giving too good of deals on digital copies, because they're afraid you might kill their physical disc business...which makes no fucking sense, because there's less overhead when you don't have to fucking print the movie onto a disc. How many times do normal people watch a movie they buy? Once a fucking year at most? Fucking lower the fucking price you fuckwits!
What makes it even worse is that there's no way to sort movies by price on their store. I can't search for deals. I can't see what movies are under $5 for the HD version. I can't even fucking see what movies are for rent for under $1. The only thing that I can see is their "Hot Deals of the Week", a curated list, that aren't that fucking great of deals!
The most disturbing thing is that that fucking movie, Creed 2, is actually fucking $6 to fucking rent. What the actual fuck. How is that a fucking deal? That's not even discount movies price. Is that still in the theatres? If so, I can actually go see that for less, at a theater, on a fucking huge screen, with a fucking beer, for less money. Or the same amount, if you include the beer. So, in a way, I'd be getting a free beer if I chose to watch it on a big fucking screen instead of at home. Yeah...fuck you.
Wait...nope...I just checked. Not even a new fucking release. Not still in theatres. Was released in November of last year. Yeah...fuck you YouTube. In what fucking universe is renting a movie for $6 a good fucking deal? Or buying it for $13? $6 is what some people in America earn in an hour. It's more than many people in various countries earn in a day. $12.99 is actually probably what a physical copy does probably go for in some stores...but I guarantee I could find it cheaper. It's not a great deal. It's not deserving of being a deal of the week. It's a horrible deal.
I'm sure by this time you've probably guessed that Interstellar probably isn't for sale for $2.99. But...it's actually worse than that...
Eight fucking bucks to rent it in 4k. But okay, it's not exactly easy to get 4k right now, so maybe you think that isn't so bad. You'd be wrong. You can probably buy a movie code for less than that...but that is a grey market. But $4 to rent it in HD? WTF!
What year does Alphabet Soup think this is? Do they think this is the fucking 90's with DirectTV and shit? Hell, they didn't even charge this much, and they got the movies before anyone else. This isn't even a new fucking release!
Suddenly I want Blockbuster back. It's bad when you want Blockbuster back. They ass fucked everyone with their late fees for years.
It cost more than half the price of the 4k version to fucking rent it. Who the fuck do these fucks think they are?
Seriously! WTF!
Alphabet Soup, I hope Apple fucks you up the ass with their new service and everyone switches to Linux phones and the governments of the world chop you up like a lamb on a skewer.
Don't market this shit like it's fucking deals. And don't launch a site without a fucking price search. WTF! And don't fucking mislead people with prices that say "From". That's some skanky ass marketing bullshit right there.
I hope this post offends you.