Rejecting Modernity: Going Offline from Streaming Services
So.. streaming services, am I right?
Let's be honest, this lil' trend of making every film or show you've watched, every song you've ever listened to, and every picture you've looked at fully online, has badly harmed both the film industry, as well as every other industry it has touched.
It's gotten so bad that now people can't go 10 seconds listening to music without it being on Spotify, because it's convenient, people can't watch films if they're not on Netflix, because once again, it's "convenient", and the worst part about this widespread nature and the fact that streaming surfaces have became the new norm now, the exact second something gets erased from these streaming services, they're gone forever. Like forever, forever. Like, you'd genuinely need to commit actual piracy to see these shows or movies again. (as we've seen from Disney+, HBO Max, Netlfix itself, etc.)
Why rely on something that can be made unavailable for you forever, that you have to pay an absurd amount for when you can either just play everything on your phone or.. go sailing?
Unsubscribe from Everything
If you want to badly harm the streaming industry without going through the mental mind hoops that is spreading propaganda that theaters are better, here's a quick and sure fire way to do so: Cancel all of your subscriptions. Your Netflix subscription? Bin it. Your Crunchyroll subscription? Cancel that. Every subscription that you own? Just say no.
This is one of the more easiest way to harm the streaming industry and get the economy to realize that not only are films still popular, but that streaming is starting to become a stain in how theaters are performing. The more we unsubscribe, the more we can break these pillars until we eventually manage to topple them fully and advocate for more theatrical releases.
In fact, if you're following along with this guide, I'd actually reccomend doing this ASAP, as with we've seen with Disney+ and Discord, there's a high likelihood companies will gain the ability to start prohibiting users from mass-quitting the platform. Make your decision quickly.
If you wish, here's a quick link to cancel your Netflix subscription, and also a quick link to cancel your Crunchyroll subscription as well, which will also delete your accounts, and hopefully disconnect yourself from streaming services and hop on the boat of freedom.
The reason why I list Spotify as the main culprit here is due to controversies pertaining to the US, and ads promoting ICE, which was enough for some people to consider cutting out support for the company, and this backlash was so bad that Spotify had to remove these advertisements later on, however, people will still quote this as their main reason for cutting off support for Spotify. There's also their controversy with allowing AI music featuring dead artists to continue being on the platform, despite the fact disgracing the dead via AI isn't ideal, nor is it very ethical (I'm looking at you, Facebook.), and much like the ICE controversy, the following event was rectified immediately by Spotify, when they received backlash for not dealing with this problem at a timely manner. Regardless of such, you should still be holding a grudge against them, as these are two mistakes that are undeniably the massive hits when it comes to Spotify's reputation.
If you think this is enough for you to quit, then cancel your Spotify Premium. If you want a quick link to do so, here's a link for a guide to cancel your Spotify Premium subscription, and here's a link for a guide to delete your Spotify account right after, should you feel the platform is not right for you.
Sail the Seas, and Become Free
Now that you've taken your step away from these streaming platforms, it's about time to sail the seven seas.
While I can't directly tell you how, and while I do not condone this, your best bet now is to perform some piracy, a theme shared across all of these guides! By doing this, you can, of course, truly own the stuff you want, without some stupid corporation removing your access to watching said content.
The best advice I can tell you without giving away anything that could get me in jail is to use a private browsing window, and also use a VPN, as your ISP will not like what you are doing. Proton VPN is a good start, but there are still better options. I also suggest getting Tor, just in case you feel like you're playing dangerously.
Now, if you DON'T want to commit piracy in terms of films, which, fair enough.. there's also Stremio, a FOSS streaming service that respect users' privacy, supports TV cast as well as ADB-ing straight to the TV itself, and thanks to extensions, you can even add content from other places or your own PC without having to pay any money at all! This is your best bet if you don't wanna go full piracy.
If you want a good replacement to Spotify, and DON'T wanna delete your account, try using Echo, a music player with a clean UI and the ability to sync your Spotify and YT Music playlists to it! Edit: I've been told from Aliucord that Echo's Discord RPC is really unsafe, and that you should use Metrolist instead. A fututre update is coming to fix this.