The Goodwill DVD section, Sonoma and Napa counties
If I have my media history correct, video killed the radio star, then streaming killed the video store. ’Twas a cycle of violence and retribution cinematic in scope with which we’re still reckoning as a culture.
Sometime in the ’90s, Bill Gates observed that “content is king,” presaging the digital commodification of art and its consumption (tellingly, the photo for the WIRED.com article I used to fact-check that quote has disappeared, with only a broken image icon and an alt text tag to suggest it was once there). And thus began the gradual degradation of art and media as not only “content” (a loathsome term) but as infinitely replicable and—significantly—malleable.
The powers that be can’t mess with your CDs, but they can change a lyric on any tune on Spotify at will, and the cloned AI “performance” will be so damn good you’ll ask, “Is it real or is it Memorex Mandela effect?” Consider this: Only when our culture is experienced digitally (and thus controlled by billionaires and their corporations) could an online book retailer, for example, make textual changes to your ebook edition of Orwell’s 1984 at will (which it did), or could your favorite streamer vanish whole swaths of films and series because it no longer wants to pay residuals to the artists who made them.
The remedy? Become a Movie Prepper and own physical media before your favorite flick vaporizes in the digital cloud. Buy a hybrid Blu-ray and DVD player online for under $30 (they’re everywhere, even—gulp—Amazon). Then go to any one of the at least nine Goodwill stores between Sonoma and Napa counties (which is way more of a footprint than Blockbuster ever had!) and buy DVDs for only a few dollars each. Build your own cinematic library and lean in as the credits roll on the End Times.
