Likely Normal

Remember the good old days when Netflix proudly sold us tiered accounts based on how many screens could stream simultaneously? Those beautiful, naive times when the company basically said, “Sure, take your Roku stick to grandma’s! Watch at work! Binge in the backseat on road trips! We don’t care where you are as long as you’re not hogging all the streams at once!” It was the streaming equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet where nobody checked if your “family” actually lived under one roof.

Then came The Great Crackdown—Netflix’s sudden realization that millions of us had been following their rules too well. We weren’t password-sharing with strangers; we were just… using the service we paid for in different locations like they’d explicitly allowed. But suddenly, my account—which happily supported three simultaneous streams for years—was flagged as a “freeloader threat” because my kids dared to log in from their grandparents’ house while I watched at home. According to Netflix’s new math, this wholesome family behavior now required three separate subscriptions, despite never exceeding our three-screen limit.

The whiplash was brutal. One day, we were model customers. The next, we were digital outlaws—our Roku stick treated like contraband at every new IP address. That “Basic with Ads” plan they offered as an “alternative”? Please. I’d rather listen to CSPAN than sit through commercials after years of ad-free bliss.

Now we’re all stuck in this absurd game of “Is This Location Legit?” where Netflix’s algorithms treat household devices like fugitives crossing state lines. The car? Suspicious. Vacation? Criminal behavior. Work login? Believe it or not, straight to jail. Meanwhile, the actual password sharers—the ones running full-blown Netflix redistribution hubs for their entire apartment building—are still out there, laughing while the rest of us get lectures about “primary households” from a company that once mailed DVDs in red envelopes to whatever address we felt like that week. So, Netflix, if you’re reading this, here’s why I cancelled my account.