The Negative Option

In the 1980s and 1990s, Columbia House could do no wrong—it was a great way to get 12 CDs for a penny. But its business model kind of set the stage for a lot of bad e-commerce.Today in Tedium: No matter how hard you try, disruption comes for you. It might be slow and gradual, or it may be fast and brutal. But eventually, you will find yourself at the end of your line, attempting to hold on to the past with the thinnest of threads. That, friends, is the state Columbia House finds itself in after a solid 71 years of existence. At one point in the 1980s and 1990s, it was a dominant way many people acquired music. But as the music industry left it in the dust, it was forced to switch to distributing movies via the mail, a business that even Netflix gave up three years ago. But now, it said, as a mere whisper caught by a YouTuber about a week ago, that it was shutting down. Today’s Tedium, in an update/complete rewrite of its 2015 piece on the fate of Columbia House, assesses the…