Streaming Video Drowns Itself By Flooding The Zone

I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like all of sudden, seemingly overnight, everyone owned a VHS machine. Sure, some owned a BetaMax, but VHS was the thing. Video rental shops popped up everywhere and we’d see our neighbors there more frequently than at the grocery store, browsing the titles. There was an old barn at the far end of the town that had sat empty for ages on a narrow, overgrown with honeysuckle corner curve in my small country hometown for ages. In the age before pop-up stores became popular someone popped it open as a video store, creating one of the first congested traffic nightmares that town had ever seen as folks parked along both sides of the shoulderless curve to rent a video. Whether it was the local mom and pop video rental shop or later the BlockBusters, the display racks were bulging with titles. You’d walk in and be overwhelmed with the choices. To a degree that was the point. Flood the zone with more possibilities than anyone could keep track of to…