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Making the Experience

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Clarissa

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Everything keeps getting better and better. In the olden days we had to get into our car, drive to the nearest video store, look through the (usually limited) available inventory, hope to find something we liked (often impossible if you had non-mainstream tastes), wait in line to pay for it, drive home, hope that the videotape wasn’t busted or too worn out or the DVD wasn’t glitchy, and after watching the movie, drive it back to the store to return it within a set number of days or face a fine.

I have zero nostalgia for these stores.

https://x.com/avidseries/status/1952814619564650812?t=T032oqbZUE6Qzxb4v2wWWw&s=19

I have great nostalgia for them. N and I were poor. We rarely could afford to go out. Trips to Blockbuster were our festive outings. I have beautiful memories from that time. It’s one of the most magical times of my life.

You bring yourself into every experience. It’s you who makes it what it is.

12 responses to “Making the Experience”

  1. maitreyi1978 Avatar
    maitreyi1978

    I loved these stores. They were family activities my family could afford. I also found it easier to choose a movie from a limited selection than from the huge amount available now.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. It’s like bookstores. We go at least once a week as a family activity. It’s a lot easier to discover interesting books when you can browse in a physical store, as well.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Exactly this. While online is useful in giving you more options, there is just something about a physical store you can browse through. Be it a bookstore or something like blockbusters.

        • – W

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “loved these stores. They were family activities my family could afford”

      Didn’t watch many things with family…. after we got our first VCR I chose “Paris, Texas”… a European style art film now considered an all time classic.. but it was not received well and my role in choosing films was more or less revoked by acclamation

      Mostly we weren’t together enough or united in taste enough to watch much together.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,Texas(film)

      At the university I sometimes watched video rentals with friends, but my tastes, again, veered wildly between pretentious European movies without much in the way of plot (Claire’s Knee), obscure but historically important movies (Pickup on South Street), low budget horror (She Freak) and the like. I was absolutely giddy about how available all sorts of movies that were names I never thought I’d be able to see had become.

      But I’m very nostalgic about the rise of VHS rentals in the 1980s… they opened up whole new cinematic worlds, it was my first taste of the ‘information revolution’ as Francis Ford Coppola called it and I was all in for it.

      The current enshittified internet is a pale imitation of what it could be (and briefly was). People who think current online movies are better than the past… didn’t experience the past (or experienced only the most normified commodified version of it).

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    We had a wonderful time with Blockbusters. There was always a new or old movie none of us had ever seen. Game-wise, I had an N-64 and their stock of games kept changing up, so I got to try games before deciding to buy them which saved me a lot of money. We would also do family nights, getting a movie and one of their popcorn buckets. It was great.

    When blockbuster closed it was such a shame. Heck I even still have my members card for it even to this day.

    • – W

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Going to Blockbuster was the best! I have many fond memories as a child. We would always go right before a big snow storm and Mom would let us get *3* movies because we were going to be stuck inside. And if we were really lucky we could pick out a treat by the checkout.

    Going as a group of friends while I was a teen/young adult was another experience I remember fondly. It was something we could afford as broke teens and college kids, and if the movie sucked making fun of it together was just as fun as enjoying a good movie.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      People are agreeing to a downgraded life experience because they’ve convinced themselves that screens are always the better option.

      Liked by 1 person

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  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    In addition to the “experience”, I think there’s also a “ritual” component to things like that.

    I’m not a big fan of vinyl records, but I’ve heard repeatedly from fans that there’s a whole process to playing records “properly”. You carefully remove the record from its sleeve, taking care to touch it only on the edges. You wipe all the dust off with a soft cloth that’s always next to the turntable. Then you carefully position it and get the tonearm ready to put on the perfect spot. You may even wipe off the record again before you put it away.

    And all of those fans will tell you that doing that ritual *was part of the fun of listening to music*. The video store example from above is a less-extreme version of that ritual. The move you watched on tape or disc always felt a little more exciting precisely because you had to do a little work for it, instead of just typing a few letters and then hitting the Play button on the screen.

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  5. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    I remember them fondly. I watched so many “I have no idea what this is, so I guess I’ll give it a try” weird foreign films in my 20s, because I had access to someone else’s membership card (check out any three movies at a time or somesuch).

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  6. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Don’t really agree that everything gets better. It absolutely is better to have physical media that you own outright. Ongoing subscriptions or an old movie edited to better appeal to “modern audiences” are awful.

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  7. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I liked looking at the other people and seeing some familiar faces. Getting film choice tips from the employees were also fun interactions.

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  8. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Blockbuster on Friday or Saturday with my wife and kids to pick out a movie was an experience that I recall fondly. Remembrance of things past… (Or in search of lost time, to use the proper translation of Proust’s masterpiece.)

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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