Why I deleted Netflix App

 

There are times when you know something would happen a certain way; you still do it; and it does happen exactly that way. I am reminded of this phenomenon with regard to my Netflix experience.

I had got Netflix access free of cost due to my mobile plan. I was not using it for many months fearing I would get addicted to watching movies that way and would waste lots of time. I love watching movies and before Netflix, I used to watch one movie in the evening on TV, if a good movie was on air. I feared that unrestricted 24/7 access to movies would spoil me. After a few months, I happened to install the App to watch something. And then, the binge began. I often watched 2-3 movies daily and it felt like a paradise. I justified all the time spent by saying to myself that it was only temporary. I knew I had fallen into the movie addition trap, exactly what I had feared in the beginning. In the end, one fine day a week back, I uninstalled Netflix. I also uninstalled Hotstar because I never watched anything on it except IPL which is long over.

A week without Netflix felt just as fine. Now I wonder how I was able to take 4-5 hours a day out of my daily schedule just for Netflix. I wonder how I am so naturally able to adopt to life without Netflix or spending days without movies, since I have not yet subscribed to movie channels on TV too. How can humans be so flexible. Addition is expected to want us to go back, but after one year of complete binge-watching movies, and abruptly ending it, it seems I didn’t mind it at all!

Although I am still not able to believe how I ended Netflix so easily, I am happy to get rid of it. I had stopped reading books and newspapers and quitting movies must be good for my eyes too. Life without Netflix appears as good or bad. And I also feel I was right in the beginning about not starting Netflix, because in last one year I must have wasted a few months of time in hypothetical and far away world of fiction.

I think the wakeup call for me was the realization that due to movies (and Twitter), all the world’s negativity and filth is getting into my mind which I did not deserve. There was 180 degrees of difference between my real life, my real self, and what I was exposing my mind to, due to Twitter and Netflix. So, I am happy that I have ended it and not going back.

Happy to be living in the real world.  

- Rahul Tiwary