Toastmasters - Get to the Point Speech - Caught in the Net

By a show of hands, how many people here subscribe to Netflix?

I myself have been a long time subscriber and as if I’m not digitally manipulated enough on a daily basis by emails, text messages, or voicemails, I have an iTunes library that’s in constant disarray and a torrent bin that’s messier than a 1 yr. olds diaper after he’s just been fed Taco Bell.

So when I want a break from being a 21^st century digital boy I do so by engaging in the act of something that is exclusively 21^st century. I try to unwind by watching a movie via Netflix.

This never works out the way it was intended.  

You see, every time I pull up my Netflix I can never watch anything because there’s too much of EVERYTHING.  

Just how much is everything you may ask? Close to 9,000 movies and over 2,000 TV shows. That’s a lot of everything.  

In fact I think it’s safe to say that Netflix could easily be called the Walmart of the movie streaming industry due to the sheer volume of crap they have on hand for you to consume.

Whether it’s action /adventure, comedy, drama, horror, romance, foreign, foreign drama, foreign romance, foreign horror  or foreign drama horror comedy that has a romantic edge to it as prevalent in the Spanish film Witching & Bitching, there’s literally something for everybody.

My biggest problem is, which one is for me? And thus, every night when I go to www.netflix.com I feverishly ponder that question and stare quietly into the abyss while the abyss stares back at me.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that nothing is more valuable than time. Everything else, more or less, you can make more of except for time, that one is always a losing sum game.

So when it comes to how I’m going to spend my leisure time I take it very seriously. I don’t want to become too engrossed in a movie that’s not for me. So I’ll attempt to peruse that which dwarfs the library of congress 10 fold in an attempt to figure out what type of cinematic experience best tailors to the unique individual that I am.

This is always nothing short of a Sisyphus task which bears no progress and ironically squanders the very time that it is I’m trying to save.

Sure, I’ll come across some interesting titles that, after reading at least two pages of user reviews I think I may like, but I never want to commit to anything because I’m afraid if I do I’ll be missing out on something better. So the movies that may be for me but just aren’t for me right now get thrown on to my Netflix list where it can be saved for me to ignore at a later date.  

I believe the whole concept of the Netflix personal list is empirical proof that Netflix knows that they’re bludgeoning the consumer over the head with too many choices to the point that the customer can’t think straight or make a decision.

In 1970 a book came out called Future Shock. In it the author coined a phrase called Overchoice. 

Overchoice theorizes that consumers can have too many choices and therefore are unable to make an optimal choice which causes stress, anxiety and unhappiness. Not to mention the inability to make a choice.

I’d say that this perfectly sums up my Netflix experience.

Now of course one could easily suggest that I just all together cancel my Netflix subscription and put an end to the tyranny of small decisions and quit entering that dastardly hedge maze night after night. 

But then I wouldn’t have access to all those choices I can’t make a choice on.

I hate it, but I’m inexplicably drawn to it. And at only $7.99 per month I can easily justify the cost even though I hardly ever watch anything because I’m too busy looking at…everything.

Truth be told, Netflix really is just like crack. It’s cheap, easy to get and incapacitates you for hours at a time. The side effects are irritability, loss of time, anxiousness, paranoia and sleep deprivation.  

And, it’s a national epidemic.

Just last week I was in a conversation with some friends and they were complaining about their lack of ability to choose what to watch on Netflix. 

They, like me, spent massive amounts of time just scrolling through the endless titles of movies, documentaries, musicals, indie films and Japanese cartoons which ultimately led them back to the safe confines of a Family Guy episode they’d watched at least 100 other times that week because they didn’t know what else to watch.

They say variety is the spice of life, however there’s a really good chance that “THEY” are a group of people that are clinically and legally insane and more than likely work at the upper echelons of the Netflix empire.

So to “THEY” I say, hey, enough with all these decisions. Man was not made to spend all of his free time deciding. Just put up a total of 5 movies for us to watch instead of over 5,000. That way we can complain that there’s nothing to watch instead of complaining that there’s too much of everything to watch.

If you liked this speech, you can watch it in it’s entirety on Netflix.com in the horror comedy foreign titles. Please note its only foreign if you’re watching it outside the U.S.