Thatcher Montgomery, Motion Picture Aficianado
Carnegie Mellon junior Phil M. Seeker wanted to watch Quest for Camelot, but was thwarted time and time again in their thirty-minute search.
“I tried Amazon movies first, because I forgot to cancel after my student discount expired, and I figured I might as well get my money’s worth. When I didn’t see it there, I wasn’t too upset. There were still plenty of options at that point.”
Seeker then moved to Netflix, where their parents had an account, but alas, the two-hour treat wasn’t available there, either.
“I just want to watch one movie, you know? It shouldn’t be this hard. But since my two main providers were no good, I moved on to the lesser sources: iTunes, the Hulu account owned by the then-significant-other of my roommate from two years ago, so on. You know the drill. Still, no luck.”
With all the easy options exhausted, it was time to get dirty. Seeker didn’t want to have to resort to it, but Pirate Bay was the next logical step.
“I don’t like using sites like that, because you know what they say: piracy’s bad, and all that. It’s just that I had no choice. And Johnny Depp makes pirating look so attractive. So I went in, doing my best to avoid any viruses or whatever else lurks in the back alleys of the web.”
They eventually found something that looked like their chosen feature film, a 338 kB file titled “Quest4Camelot1080pHD.mov.exe,” but some stupid program called Windows Defender kept blocking the download.
“I got so frustrated I thought about going to a Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, but then I realized that those don’t exist anymore. But then I checked, and the nearest RedBox was only ten minutes away! Score!”
Unfortunately, the RedBox was out of stock of Quest for Camelot, so Seeker ended up watching the Office for the seventh billion time.
“In this day and age, it’s a moral outrage to have to spend more than half an hour looking for a specific movie! Seriously, it’s 2016. Come on, Google or someone. Get on it.”