Recommendations used to be better. There was a sweet spot for a few years where Netflix had everything and I could talk to the rental clerk about what we were watching, and I miss that. But video stores were too pricy to miss
Blockbuster had gotten so monopolistic and predatory by the time Netflix was mailing DVDs that I was thrilled to end my membership with them.
Blockbuster was meh. I missed my local movie rental joint that was next to a Chinese take-out.
Used to be a ritual every other Friday for the spouse and I to order food than walk around the video store well we waited. We used to walk past the weird obscure tapes and come up with fake silly stories about what they were about and look at the goofy covers. Most times we’d rent something unexpectedly good, typically not from the new releases. I never really watch TV sitcoms, so I consumed most of my media this way. The magic was that multi-million dollar media companies didn’t pick what was available on their stream. The selection at the video store was more eclectic and not some sterile selection of just money makers. So I got to see some really good, not so popular, films.
Also they still had VHS when Blockbuster converted DVD and fairly sure they bought all the old VHS tapes from that conversion. DVDs were still fairly new, so I only had a VCR. Yes, I rewound the tapes.
I don’t know if it’s different in the US but in Germany the local movie rental joints were usually split into a family and an adult section. I was always interested in horror and violent movies but to get to them you also had to go through all the really nasty porn movie shelves with the weird old dudes browsing them. I mean I like porn as well but these stores had really disgusting stuff…
That’s weird. In America all the porn stuff was hidden behind a black curtain in a dark room in the back lol.
While your country seems very tense with nudity and alcohol, Germany was very tense with violence and weapons.
Eg there were usually special German versions of video games where blood and gore are removed. E.g. the special forces in Half Life are robots in the German version. The pedestrians in Carmageddon are also robots. I believe BioShock has certain animations removed. Wolfenstein has the Nazi symbols removed and at computer markets they only showed the Christmas edition where you fought against snowmen.
Movies also exist in a German cut where e.g. RoboCop has like 15 minutes removed.
Many movies where also “forbidden” and could not be advertised and I believe only sold if explicitly asked for by a customer.
The whole situation has relaxed lately, I believe shortly after it was easy to obtain international version via the Internet.
I’m glad Germany realized censoring fictional violence is lame
The ex Blockbuster employee in me hates the barcode on here.
It’s a rental so it should start with 33 not 39
It has no copy number either, would likely be 001, 101, or 601.
I have had this EXACT reaction to seeing this meme before.
Getting out of the house in a time before I could drive, get some candy, one of the big hit movies, 2-3 of the old release movies.
Not paying for any of it.(This is the part where being a kid matters)
Actually physically interacting with stuff instead of just flipping on netflix.
We lost something as a species.
I miss being able to physically browse movies and rent video games, but that’s about it.
I go to the library to borrow movies, still fun.
Same, but I check out a lot of video games. It’s the same feel. I know it’s that I miss the pre-9/11 world. I don’t care. The library crowd is funny enough the dispensary crowd and the coffee shop crowd we all just kinda have the same haunts.
Huh, I should ask the dispo if they mind me busking while I sell tamales out front (I could go through a few hundred bucks of tamales real fast. Not like that I’m a shitty salesman I’m just hungry)
If you miss blockbuster, you probably weren’t old enough to pay for it. Or you were super responsible and never had to pay fees.
Also you can still do the video rental store experience but even better where it doesn’t cost anything buy visiting your local library. Most libraries have lots of DVDs for checkout.
I love my library and rent from there occasionally but it’s absolutely not the same experience.
Imagine having the time and energy to drive over to a building, park, mosey on in and wander around looking at what you might want to spend another 3 hours engaging with.
We didn’t have endless-scroll dopamine machines in our pockets so we had to go out in the world and seek it out. Boredom bred creativity. It really was a better time in a lot of ways.
I sure don’t miss using AI for nostalgia slop.
I smell this photo.
The latter for me. I remember thinking as a kid that things would just keep getting better. That the best time to be a kid was always the future. Now I’m glad I was a kid when I was and I wish kids today had it better than they do. I’m sure that’s at least 50% old guy viewpoint but I really think some lines have been crossed that truly make childhood in the 2020s harder than it used to be.
I legit think streaming sites have become worse than video rental places.
It seemed like a big advantage that you could have unlimited number movies on a streaming site while a video rental store had limited shelf space. But it turns you you have to scroll through endless pages of crap to try to find something you actually want to watch.
Also the shops would eventually have any movie you want to watch. With streaming sites many things will never appear there because the corporation that owns the movie owns their own streaming site and will keep it exclusive to them. In the past it wasn’t a thing where you’d have to keep track of which video rental shop had the rights to rent the movie you want to watch.
There was a time when it was just Netflix and pretty much anything would come on there eventually. That killed video rental. But it’s been a long time since you could find everything on one streaming site, and it’s gotten to be more expensive and time consuming to find a good movie to watch, so going to a video rental shop might actually make more sense now. But they’re all gone now.
Luckily there are websites with dubious legality you can find everything on. I’m willing to pay for a streaming site that’s actually convenient, but they don’t exist anymore, just like Blockbuster.
Could you imagine if, idk Paramount or whoever, started releasing exclusively through Blockbuster?
Ironically back when video stores existed, no major distributor would box themselves in like that. The only Blockbuater exclusive movies would be modestly-budgeted things released through one or two smaller studios with ties to Blockbuster itself.
This shit is cutting a little too deep tonight, homies.
I miss video stores, for sure. Blockbuster itself wasn’t great but it was so omnipresent in our lives that it has become shorthand for “video stores” the way Band-Aids are shorthand for adhesive medical strips. Often, when people reminisce about “Blockbuster,” it isn’t really about Blockbuster itself but just the culture of the rental store as it existed back then.
