My slight addiction to Netflix

I can't help it. I turn on my computer, open up the browser and by habit, nay by instinct and trained muscle memory alone, I type in the address that will keep me entertained for hours after log-in...Netflix.com.

Even now as I am typing this blog entry I am listening, and occasionally watching, Aaahh!! Real Monsters. Revisiting the blissful days of my childhood when I did not have to worry about things like my pending Russian Lit final tomorrow. I can not be the only person with this problem? Others must find themselves turning to the loving embrace of television/film of past and present, right?

Netflix had an increase of more than 10 percent from last spring in Sandvine's Fall 2011 Global Internet Phenomena Report. Netflix represented 32.7 percent of the overall 60 percent of video streaming online, according to the report. (It can be found here: http://www.sandvine.com/news/pr_detail.asp?ID=340)

With such an increase in usage, despite all of the grumbles and groans about price increases for watch instantly consumers, I must ask myself how many people are just like me, addicted.

Addiction is defined as, "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming to such an extant that its cessation causes severe trauma," according to dictionary.com

By that definition alone, I know that I have a slight problem. I watch Netflix out of habit everyday. I spend most of my time, free or not watching Netflix. I think it plays to my strengths as a hard-core procrastinator.

It can not be denied that Netflix makes for the perfect procrastinator's tool of detraction. When logging on to the system, Netflix organizes new arrivals and more importantly suggestions for you to view. I find myself driving away the responsiblities of work and home by simply trying to decide what I should watch. I scroll through all the catagories until something catches my eye, but soon after one episode finishes I justify watching the next. Soon it is 1 a.m. and I have done nothing useful or productive and my dry, blood-shot eyes are still watching the Bluth family make "huge mistakes" or Anthony Bordain talk at length about food porn.

Usually, I open Netflix to use in the background as a way to break the silence. However, I do eventually drift back into giving the shows I am streaming my full attention. In reality I feel like I have developed a slight addiction to Netflix, to the appeal of having an infinite amount of shows at my fingertips. The temptation is too great.

Netflix seems to me to have the perfect business model: Give them everything at a low price. And for pop culture junkies like me it can be an endless void of options to bring happiness to our TV eyes. My addiction to television has grown into something completely uncontrollable. When I get home I stream Netflix on my computer. I watch Netflix with friends in their homes. The first thing I ask in a conversation about TV is, "Is it on Netflix yet?" While running on the tredmill at the gym I found myself streaming Buffy the Vampire Slayer to my iPhone as a marker for when I had reached an acquitted amount of exercise time.

So all you crazed Netflix consumers, let me know, am I the only one with such an addiction? It may be time that I say no to the watch instatnly idea and move to more productive uses of my internet browsing time, like corgi videos or specialty cake-pop recipes, you know the real important stuff.
-B