Recently, friend-of-the-site Kim B. received a rather shocking notification on her phone. There’s really no two ways about it – she was being advised to Netflix and chill:
That is quite the suggestion, particularly to someone in a committed relationship.
It’s also just a very bad notification. Who the hell is sitting around, wondering what to watch, and unable to find anything on their own? Are there actually people who need their phones to direct them, unprompted, with notifications about how they should spend their leisure time?1
Even if such a prompt really is useful enough, to enough people, Netflix should at least put some quotes around the title. After they’ve done that, maybe they can spend a little time writing a blocklist for content that shouldn’t be suggested. Yikes.
When I asked Kim if I could share this, she immediately approved. However, she was sad with how I’d cropped things. As seen above, the phone’s background featuring her delightful dog Eva is not properly visible. Looking again, I realized a larger view would serve us well as a closing. Eva’s seemingly disdainful expression strikes me as a rather perfect response to this ridiculousness:
You said it, dog.
Footnotes:
Years back, I turned off nearly all notifications and badges on my phone, and I highly recommend it. I let texts through, along with emails from VIPs and a tiny number of other things. For everything else, I’ll get to it when I get to it. I strongly encourage everyone to give it a try. It’s a vastly better way to live your life. ↩︎
