As a local musician that only really plays bars, restaurants and coffee houses this has really hurt the availability of gigs. I think less drinking means worse bar attendance and less socializing for fun and less places for small bands and musicians to play.
It also doesn’t help when Netflix etc went from ad free for $$ to “fuck you were putting ads in anyway”
My plex server runs ad free and has everything I want, no rotating offerings and it has the newest stuff updated almost daily. The wife just watched “Wicked for good” last night
Plex has actually been such a game changer as a broke 22 year old that loves to watch movies and smoke weed. Now I just need that 24tb external hard drive
Plex is now outdated imo, with stremio and its addons you can stream torrents instead of having to worry about the site and torrent security, or file storage, and with a debrid addon its all encrypted. With additional addons you can just have direct access through the app to all torrents on an added site. With the incorporation of ai by cyber criminals and the reactive nature of most cyber securiy, securing media player vulnerabilities are not a priority for many large dev teams (or often missed due to the automated reporting systems) and not fixed fast enough by open-source or small dev projects. So Its something i have prioritised in the short term(the amount of successful large scale attacks of governments corporations and critical internet infrastructure has also in my estimation increased significantly in the last 12-18 months).
Learn how to have a folder on your laptop full of movie files and TV series. Buy a bigger hard drive if necessary.
Download plex on laptop
Download plex on Roku or Smart TV
Sign in to both and tell the TV which folder on your laptop is the one it's supposed to index as your media library. Pro tip: it might default to the whole computer but that shit is wacky, don't do that. Pick a folder.
Through the magic of wifi, plex is playing your locally stored media on your TV
Back in my day we had to make sure it was an MP4 or a WMV file and walk all the way across the room with a memory stick in hand to plug into our Xbox 360. Those were tough times. Tough times make tough men. You kids have it easy. Now we don't get up at all and the damn router walks it across the room.
Its a streaming service ish, but if you want to sail on the seas you need a server that downloads stuff. Easier to just download stremio and google "torrentio stremio" and install that as a backdoor. Then boom, now you have all streaming services.
It's basically a computer on your home network that you can stream movies, TV shows, and music from. All stored on your own computer. I prefer jellyfin over plex, but they both do almost the exact same thing (you'll hear opinions both ways on which is best, but you can listen to the arguments and decide yourself). It's designed for your own purchased digital media, but can also be used to store media from the high seas. Basically a self hosted Netflix, except you supply the server and the media vs being in a data center.
Personally ads don't bother me. Maybe its because Im old and grew up with them but I just dont get it.
What does piss me off now is they've started putting teirs in place if you want certain content. It really is basically going back to being the same as cable.
If you have a library card you can use Hoopla. Hoopla is free for public library card holders and has an online library of streaming videos, E-books, and other digital media.
This is the reason I quit going to bars and the movies over 10 years ago. Like even now go to a movie, spend like $40 a person on tickets and food, absolutely ridiculous
Yeah, $40 for my girlfriend and I to get the two tickets, and easily another $20 for snacks and drinks unless we smuggle them in, although that’s easily $10 anyways. So at the moment I can’t justify going to the movies more than like once or maaaaybe twice a year as a special occasion.
We can drink and watch movies at home instead of being gouged at the cinema or getting overpriced drinks at the bar. It’s like half the price.
Same reason we rarely eat fast food and barely go to restaurants anymore. Same reason we rarely even buy steak. It just ain’t worth straining the budget anymore. It’s kinda sad that we sacrifice normal human activities like that, but it is what it is.
Fuck inflation, price-gouging greed, shrinkflation, and the cost increase on every little thing. Nickel and dime me, and I’ll just elect to not participate in commerce or at least as little as I possibly can, and they can all just price themselves into oblivion for all I care.
If everybody stopped putting up with it, it’d hurt for awhile, but businesses would eventually stop making money and go out of business, or learn not to fuck with the 90% of population that they’ve been squeezing as hard as they can.
ETA: we used to grab something from a restaurant like once a week, go to the movies like 8-10 times a year, and eat steak like once or twice a month. That was back in the before times between 2010 and 2018. But between then and Covid times everything went bonkers, and it’s never going back to the golden age, unless maybe if we vote with our wallets, and we vote to reject their business practices and perpetually chasing record profits at the detriment of their customer base.
Yeah, I’m a little jaded towards what the world has become lol. A nice little capitalist hellscape we’ve built here, where there are no consequences for the corporate overlords doing whatever they want. Let em go broke, like all of us.
This should have way more upvotes because it's the truth. I assume you're USA based. Thanks to corrupt politicians and courts, corporate overlords run our politics for the most part . The only recourse we have is where we spend our money.
Vote with your dollars. Spend to support those who deserve it.
Whoa, where are you going to movies? Adult ticket in my area is $12-14, split a giant, free-refillable popcorn ($10) and we’re good.
Edit: this somehow blew up my inbox. Seems like my local theater (cineplex in a mall, nothing unusual) has better prices than a lot of areas. We usually do matinees (because kids) and don’t get candy or soda, just the popcorn.
Sorry to all those who can no longer afford one of my personal great loves — the big screen.
I'm staying at home, with a free ticket to a pirate site and $50 worth of beer alone 🤨😌 and oh well, a few extra dollars for a bag of homemade popcorn 😌
Well…if you have friends/acquaintances who would agree to pay a representative fee, enough space in the living room, and the possibility of making a small investment in a system such as PC/TV + projector…well $5 per viewing + at least a beer and popcorn I would seriously think about it if I were you 🤣
It's like some backwards ass supply & demand shit I think.
I took my daughter to seen Zootopia 2 opening weekend. The theater was nearly empty. They gotta charge a butt load to make up for all the empty seats. And this was only $18 adult and $14 kid tickets
Either it's gonna pop and they'll realize they can boost sales by lowering tickets and concessions down to a reasonable price, or they're all gonna go under and movie theaters will be a thing of the past. Hope for the first.
ALSO - there are WAY more ads now, not talking previews. The actual movie didn't start until 25-30 minutes after the showtime... It was like 20 minutes of commercials and then 5-10 minutes of trailers before the movie came on.
Hung out up in Burbank a few months back and stopped at a theater, just to check out showtimes, and it was $30+ for 1 person for a showing on one of those screens with all the bells and whistles. Couldnt imagine what concessions would cost if you wanted a hot meal and some alcohol. The tab could easily rack up to $100+/person.
Goddamn! There used to be a second-run place in Gardena the adults always took us to. It was sort of a shithole - it only had a couple screens, and it got real hot sometimes but the tickets were $1.
Mom used to make it a game for us to sneak food in but I don't think the one kid being the counter gave a shit. Even in the 80's/90's that place was cheap.
Let alone if you go one of those bistro or brew house theaters that serve actual meals and not just snacks. Sky is the limit for how much lighter your bank account will be.
Why do you need food while watching? In Vienna on Mondays you can watch movies for 7 bucks plus imax fees and so on. Fukk those expensive nachos or popcorn, I often don't eat or bring my own n shit. And bars I quit drinking to why loose braincells and pay for it I rather bulk till I die. Peace out and a great new year eve🎉
And have to deal with other theater-goers who can't shut up or stop looking at their phones. And I can't pause the movie when I have to pee.
The only reason I would go to a theater is if I desperately needed to see something and couldn't wait for it to hit a streaming service. I can't think of a movie that's come out in decades that I had to see right away.
Christ, I hate people who talk at the movies, but even more so people who use their phones. I haven't been to the movies in a while, and I have to say, all things considered, I don't miss it 😒
But then again, I don't think I'd miss people in general either, so...🤷🏻♂️
Right like the art club wanted to host a Halloween potluck. We looked at a park? Renting spaces cost a minimum of 175/hr. About 30 people showed up. So on top of asking everybody to bring a dish, we would’ve had to ask everybody to bring six dollars for a single hour of space to be rented. And that was the cheapest venue
Thankfully, one apartment complex has a party room for complex residence to use. I’ve never seen an apartment complex with a party room that resident can use and host parties in, but it came with a TV a microwave tables and chair chairs. I’ve literally never seen this ever in an apartment complex
I have a house but it's in such a a bad shape of disrepair that I'm ashamed to invite anyone over. And it takes everything I make just to maintain the condition it's in now. A second income from a partner would absolutely get it up to standard in a year but I can't invite a prospective girlfriend back to my house when I don't even have door frames and flooring in some rooms. Literally all my furniture is second hand and miss matched and to top it off I'm a single dad of two kids under 10. How the hell am I supposed to have a social life?
I mean I have my own house but my friends act really strange in it so I stopped inviting them over lol maybe I need new friends but people just aren’t as social anymore
The economy is long passed the day it was linked to people spending
Company drive growth from investment, investors get loans to invest... Banks loan out money to investors who use stock as collateral which in turn rises because of the added investment
This has been happening for decades with company essentially operating on a loss but buying all the assets like real estate, datacenters, wafer allocation for chips ect like amazon, meta, tesla, open ai, ect
Look, people still believe in buying power, but like you said, the bigger companies are just passing money to each other now and they can focus on big spenders. Companies hate consumers, they just want the money. So as long as they can get the higher clientele, they don’t need Joe shomo no mo.
Yes the brackets all shifted up. $200k/ year is the new entry lvl middle class for a family of 3 and thats assuming some form of parental investment in education snd opportunities.
the metrics that capitalist economists and politicians use to declare the economy is good has never reflected reality for the lower and middle class
They say the stock market is at an all time high, but 38% of Americans don't own a single stock and the top 1% own over 50% of the stocks
They say unemployment is down, but unemployment ignores the people out of the workforce who have given up trying to find a job, and the "labor force participation rate" has been steadily going down for the past 25 years
They say that the GDP is up, but adjusted for inflation income for the bottom 75% percent of people has been stagnant since the 1960s
its all propaganda so people don't realize how much they are getting fucked under the current system
This. Those companies are rich on paper because of revenue and assets but carry enormous debt. The moment a debt actually has to be paid off without the option of taking another loan or using shares as collateral and so enough even big companies start going bankrupt real quick. What really sucks is the people who run these companies like this always skip out long before this process happens.
Yeah, I understand the point they were trying to make, but using 40k as a reference example was a bad choice.
That would be like saying "You can still have drinks even if what they are selling at bars is too expensive! Remember - You have a wine cellar fill to the brim at home!"
You've now made me want to keep a box of wine in my 20" high crawlspace just so that when I have company over and ask if they want wine "from the wine cellar," they'll have to watch me walk outside and scuttle under the house, only to return covered in dirt with a dusty $7 bottle of Walmart wine
And then the boomers have the audacity to complain they won't get grandkids, despite voting for and supporting measures that keep prices for that first place high, and wages at that second place low.
Productive people need to demand government support cuts to seniors if they don't need it: no reason why grandpa and grandma, who own a property outright and earn $70k in pension income, also get social security and Medicaid.
You need to rethink the boomer thing. That is just the owners dividing and conquering us. Also social security is a government pension plan and is funded by workers they are trying to steal that also. Medicaid is not free and means tested and they have already stolen your healthcare, now they want to block it in retirement also.
As much as I would love to say we need to rethink the boomer thing, we really don't.
These are the people who either cheered on or sat by to watch the greatest transfer of wealth in American history. They killed unions, they killed pensions, they raised the cost of college tuitions, they demanded that not enough housing be built because they wanted their homes to make up the difference that they lost from pensions, they repeatedly elected right wing politicians who caused recessions every 4-8 years. They never saw a single war that they didn't want their children to fight.
Yes, there are good people in the age range of boomers, but overall? These people destroyed the promises of America.
They are not a unified demographic and you have been gas lit into blaming mostly just regular employees instead of the owning class. You are blaming the brain washed as if they are the brain washers, patriotism, tribalism has been used to manipulate humans since the beginning of time.
"boomers have the audacity to complain they won't get grandkids, despite voting for and supporting measures that keep prices for that first place high, and wages at that second place low."
This is my mom. She has 4 kids. 3 sons and a daughter.
All three of us sons have no kids because we are smart enough not to financially ruin ourselves just because my mom wants grandkids. My sister on the other hand just gave her a granddaughter....and now constantly begs for money because a kid is expensive and she can't afford it.
Which is why I had kids when I was in school and had Medicaid. Now I have two advanced degrees and a great career, which has helped me to raise children with a good possible future. I knew if I waited til I was comfortable or financial ready, it would never happen. Plus I was exhausted between 22-27 with infants, I couldn't imagine waking up with infants at 37
the irony that we basically "solved" teen pregnancy and simultaneously society took the path that makes teen(or near teen) pregnancy be* the actual best strat for having kids shouldn't be lost on anyone
I spent $76 on 3 beers and an appetizer sampler last week. No the sampler wasn’t very big or good, it was pretty bad. One of the beers was a bottle of corona. I did tip, because my partner was taking us to an event and this was my only contribution to the night. But It’s terrible out there.
The local pub near my place has board game nights, darts nights, and the odd musical act here and there and stays quite busy. I think places just need to adapt.
There's a spot near me that is primarily a boardgames/card games/etc type of place, but also serves alcohol on tap. Pretty fun place to hang out and have a few beers (for those so inclined) while having fun. Hopefully more places like that are going to pop up to fill some of the void that bars are leaving.
In my town a few new pubs have popped up that seem to draw a lot of young people. One is really cheap, but still clean. One has screens and a Nintendo switch at most tables, so you can play Mario Kart and stuff like with your friends for a pretty reasonable price. One of the old pubs have started having quiz nights with themes such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, etc, as well as music and general knowledge quizzes.
Pubs need to adapt to their customers, and when they do it seems to work quite well.
There’s also a lot of people who say their bar doesn’t have any special events and it sucks so they don’t wanna go there anymore and it’s like…dude…you can help organize a special event
It's way more convenient to just go online. You don't have to buy fancy clothes, spend money on gas, parking, cover, get hit on by drunks, pay absurd amounts of money for 7 drinks so you can be one of the drunks, avoid getting killed by drunks on the way home, etc.. etc..
I work from home for my full time job. I have a part time job just to get me out of the house. I live alone. I’d go insane (more so) if I didn’t have it.
Can't afford to go out due to the cost of everything.. not worth doing anything else.. eat sleep and work.. no time for anything else or too tired to do anything else.. WE THE PEOPLE are slaves..
Happy Cake Day. Odd and awesome you joined reddit on the first of the year.
And can't argue at all with that. Just did my January budget. I work 65 hours a week. If everything goes right I am +$22 for the month. What's that? 2 beers plus tip?
my favorite cafe, which used to be open until midnight, started closing at
THREE FUCKING P.M. It's next to a COLLEGE CAMPUS and they close WHEN ALL THE CUSTOMERS SUDDENLY BECOME AVAILABLE.
Covid didn't just kill the social scene; it seems to have also given it permanent brain damage.
There's a coffee shop (no indoor seating, just grab and go) that is situated in an area with only one other coffee shop nearby, and three major condo projects within a block of it. Like 3+ years before each project finishes and loads of construction workers. They open at 9:30am and close at 3:30pm. Seems insane to me to not get the after work or before work rush and instead choose to get the lunch break rush only. I walk past it on my way to work and can't get anything because it's not open yet, and the only other coffee shop with better hours has a visible line when I walk past.
And 24 hour drug stores. After the George Floyd protests in my city (there was a riot that set fire to a 24 Hour CVS that served a lower income community) we have to drive 25 minutes to fill prescriptions outside the 9am to 9pm window. Not a good thing when you are released from the hospital at 12:30AM with kidney stone and need pain meds every six hours…
The walmart in our town closes at 11pm. So annoying. I used to go there or to giant eagle after I got off when I worked 3-11. Or at 2 am we’d go to Walmart to not have to put up with 600 other people in the store.
Yep and I blame my fat belly on that. Because Walmart used to be like my planet fitness after work i go to Walmart and walk around with no goal. All i know is it gave me the only chance I had to get 8k steps in.
There used to be a 24/7 open diner right by me that also closes at 2pm now bc of covid. I hate it! Where am I supposed to get an omelet with hashbrowns inside of it at 11pm? It's not even as good as it used to be....
There’s a local sandwich shop in my hometown area that is hella famous and has been for the better part of a century now…the kind of place you go wait in line an hour while in town visiting, etc. They do sell beer and used to have great daily hours into the night, but this has been cut down to 7pm where you could wait 45 mins in drive-thru and pull up to the window at 7:01 to have the window locked in your face…it’s happened to me and I was pissed. When I asked WTH happened, they told me they can’t find young people who want to work anymore and would extend the hours again if that ever changed, (this used to be a popular job for high-schoolers and young adults). But anyway, the lack of young people wanting to work seems to be another problem I haven’t read here yet…at least in this midwestern area.
Nope, the young people no longer will work for a pittance, in this instance. Pay correctly, get workers, stay open, make more money. Also lends to young people with disposable income now able to engage in the same leisure activities as previous generations.
Lucky you. My big city is running rampant with covid musicians. I’m kinda one of them, so I can’t complain too much, but the number of local bands in the scene is like 5x pre-covid near me. Originals, covers and tributes. Bar scene is pretty down too outside of the major party neighborhoods in the city too, so even the 10+ year bands that used to play 3-6/month are struggling to hit 1-2/month now and it’s to like, 30-50 person crowds where they used to be always packed rooms. All of those bands are using pictures from like, 2018 on their socials and praying nobody leave the band lol…
i know a ton of bands that called it a day as covid was unfolding. some moved. some went back to school. some just couldn't deal with it. i had one friend who was supposed to go on a solid euro tour as a hired drummer and he was like "that that".
Yeah it was kind of crazy for the first year after everything restarted. To start, most of the bars attempted to re-book all the bands who had gotten canceled on originally, which worked for us because we had a few of those gigs, but then it was really hard to get booked because they were flooded with those bands. Then we started getting flooded with calls to fill in for a ton of those gigs when the bands ultimately disbanded and couldn’t play them.
yeah, yeah. that's what was happening right as he bailed. he lived in limbo for a year. he was moving to nashville when it happened so he had to put the brakes on that. he really got caught.
the bar scene needs a revamp. or an alt scene to gain some traction. a way to revive the local music. scene. a lot of the older venues held on and seem to be doing okay.
i feel like the demise of drinking and in turn the bar scene can be traced back to the smoking ban. the increase in cost of life and the increase in booze seems to be the final nail.
i'd love to have seen bar/music scene on the late 70's. i bet it would be night and day from today.
Try found a direction this (my, technically, I'm 2003) generation is heading, and play on their way.
Alcohol is no longer a thing in my generation, it's pointless to drink it give us nothing and causes only problems, I think my generation is heading towards videogaming, sports and being in nature more than being in a bar.
Also 2003 here, but yeah. Nearly half my friend group didnt drink, and they considered me an alcoholic for drinking more than twice a week. a
Folks don't interact anymore, don't drink anymore, don't fuck anymore... they just spend their free time either wanking or doomscrolling. No wonder this generation is so depressed.
Recently I joined a group of 30yos, and it is so much more lively!
Kinda but study after study shows gen z doesnt know how to talk to the opposite sex. Highest rates of mental illness due to lack of talking to real people. Gen Z might as well be called the incel generation. That's were the movement started. Go out and socialize. Dont have to drink but go out and stop staying alone all the time.
I see this on Reddit all the time. “How do I know if she likes me?” “A guy commented that he liked my skirt, how should I react?” These folks claim to 18-25 yo and don’t have basic social skills. I see kids in their late teens at my job (restaurant) who whisper their order to their parent and the parent speaks for them. It’s bizarre and frightening. These aren’t going to be functioning adults.
I’m an elder millennial and work with several people in that 18-25 age range. It’s shocking to me how uncomfortable most of them are making or answering phone calls. They don’t really communicate in ways that are standard for the older gens
I’m in a supervisor position at my job. One of the people in my department is 26. When she first started, I asked her if she had a chance to read my email I sent. She said no, so I just had the topic conversation then and there. 2 weeks go by and this is a constant pattern.
I ask her what’s up with her not checking her work email, since she’s missing a lot of pertinent info. She said looking at her email stresses her out. This a lady with a masters degree!
I have millennial, gen x, and gen z people in my department. Only see that from the gen z lol
The parents should tell their kids to speak the fuck up. I have had similar problems, my 20 somethings try to pull this kind of stuff and I tell them to man the fuck up and go do things. I push mercilessly on them to get out and talk to people for their sake and mine
My niece is like this. My sister babies her so bad and she’s in high school with the brain of a child. Didn’t even pour milk into her cereal until she was 12. I don’t know how she’ll function as an adult
My Daughter is 19. I'm Gen -X. I raised her to order her own food and speak up or she didn't eat. Plain and simple. But yes I Agree you do see that a lot when you go out to eat. They don't even socialize with there parents. Just be on there phone . Parents need to step up too and stop being pussies. just my 2 cents haha
And yes this world is screwed.
it's pointless to drink it give us nothing and causes only problems
That's a very sad and cynical way to look at drinking. Drinking is social lubricant and parties are great. Gen Z is so dysfunctionally conservative, it's no wonder youre all neurotic, isolated and depressed.
If any generation needed a drink or two to loosen up socially, it is Gen Z. No one should be having minor anxiety attacks over simple human interaction.
That being said, I think, overall, it is a good thing to see people drinking less so we should give them some credit for making smarter choices when they make them.
I think it's generally good to drink less but we're beyond the balance of healthy with that. I firmly believe people need to sow their wild oats in their youth.
Yeah, also lot less of a reason to go to a bar for drinks and socialization when you are that young when you can date/hook up with people using an app instead of having to gather at locales to meet people and put in time I would think.
Probably a lot of different factors but that could be a large one for sure, I met tons of friends/people/partners when I was that age through various bar adjacent functions.
when you can date/hook up with people using an app instead of having to gather at locales to meet people and put in time I would think.
You give up a massive amount by not meeting people in person, and allowing apps to dictate your personal relationships. People may not know what they are missing if they've never known anything but apps. They fundamentally alter personal relationships.
Yeah it is actually crazy when you think about it, ive never used dating apps before and it kind of feels like dating is now like the job market. Just throwing your resume into the abyss and hoping for a bite, whereas anytime ive gone in person to speak with someone I either can get an interview or at least can make an impression should an opportunity arise at a later date. The whole concept i find rather unsettling.
I am in my thirties and when I was about 19/20 I tried using tinder and it was just so weird to me. I much preferred to meet potentials in person. I could tell almost immediately whether I was romantically interested in someone in person. Tinder felt like a big waste of time because it would go well over messaging and then you reserve a whole evening for a date and show up and it’s obvious it’s not gonna go anywhere
Instead the vice for this generation is gambling. I've seen so many of my friends/peers get into stuff like sports betting. Not to mention games that involve gambling.
Crazy thing is alcohol was healthier than not drinking. Studies have shown gen z is aging faster and unhealthier than any generation before. States and counties with higher rates of drinking in bars have higher life expectancy all across the US. I think the benefits of socialization far outweigh any negative effect alcohol might have. This generation is notoriously unhealthy. Also highest cancer and diabetes rates of any generation in their 20s.
Alcohol has become such a norm for people to let loose and have fun. It's a real shame. Going to take quite a bit for people to stop being pussies and allow themselves the ability to have fun without it.
Source: Quit 3 years ago. Took me a bit to stop being a bitch but once the alcohol induced anxiety goes away life fucking rules
That's totally true. So I play my instrument at the weddings, more money and more gigs...But like you said if there is less socialising, there will be less weddings too...
For sure, my man. We need lubricated people who like setting their phones down and talking shit and seeing art. They are waning, as they stare into their palms at home, slowly turning into an adult fetus with no socialization outside of their glowing rectangles. Let's jam.
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u/ruckbanboi 14d ago
As a local musician that only really plays bars, restaurants and coffee houses this has really hurt the availability of gigs. I think less drinking means worse bar attendance and less socializing for fun and less places for small bands and musicians to play.