Unpopular opinion: paying for Crunchyroll premium was a total waste for me

I signed up for the $8 a month tier back in January thinking I'd finally binge all those shows I kept saying I'd watch. After three months, I only finished two series and realized I was just scrolling more than watching. The ad-free experience was nice, but I basically paid $24 to feel guilty about my backlog. Has anyone else found that subscription services just make you pick less carefully than when you had to buy individual discs?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_young591mo ago

Man it's funny you mention that. I notice this same thing with streaming music and even grocery delivery apps. Once you pay for the all-you-can-eat pass you stop actually savoring anything, you just graze mindlessly. Used to be when I dropped $20 on a single DVD box set I'd watch every special feature and really commit to it. Now I've got three different streaming services and I spend more time staring at menus than actually watching anything.

the_richard1mo agoProlific Poster

Yeah it took me a while to figure that out too. What helped me was I started putting a limit on myself. Like I pick one movie or one album for the week and that's it. I don't even look at the menu for anything else until I've sat through the whole thing. It makes it feel more like an event again instead of just background noise. I'll even force myself to watch the credits now just to slow down and let it sink in.

the_amy1mo ago

Wait my buddy Dave did the exact same thing with Funimation back before it merged. He bought a whole year subscription on a whim thinking he'd finally watch all those classic mecha shows from the 80s. Dude dropped like $80 upfront and I think he finished maybe four series total by the end of it. He kept telling me how he'd sit down to watch something and then just end up scrolling through the catalog for an hour before giving up. What really killed him was when he realized he spent more time curating his queue than actually watching episodes. He straight up told me that having unlimited access just made everything feel less special somehow.