Everyone I know with an Espresso machine still goes to coffee shops. Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs.
For some reason this does not hold with cinemas. I way prefer the escapism of the cinema to sitting in my house surrounded by my usual ambient domestic Todo list. Sure I have a very good oled, amazing surround sound, but I'd take the cinema every time. But I can't due to kids.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.
I would generally agree with you except for three points: 1) the price of going to the cinema has surged so much that you have to budget for it in a way you didn't before. 2) I can pause a movie at any time and go to the bathroom or get a new drink. The lack of intermission during longer movies at the theater is rough. 3) The behavior of moviegoers continues to decline. In particular, people with untreated ADHD constantly checking their phones is really distracting. A phone screen really pops in a dark movie theater. And when I watch these people check their phones, they aren't doing anything other than habitually dicking around.
I can go to the movie and there is a decent chance people will talk through the movie or will be on their phones, etc. Or I could watch at home and be guaranteed a great experience.
Movie theaters have to upgrade the experience. They need to police patrons like they used to. They need to sell better food and drinks. And they need to get the pricing model under control.
Or cheapen it. We've got two draft house style theaters that are social experiences that show older reels, things from the public domain, and local and independent film. Door policies vary, but until the set feature time, it's just like a pub with an extra big screen in the back.
It's also cheaper to operate without box office staff and doesn't degrade the experience. People could be always be better, but I'd say big theater chains and Hollywood are really what are out of touch.
> Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs.
It's a pretty frequent complaint that drinks at pubs, bars, and restaurants have become extortionately expensive, to the point that a lot of younger people are drinking less for that reason.
I avoid "bars" where the bar tenders only pour beers. I much prefer the higher end places where every drink is hand made in front of you where the quality of the bartender is everything. I recognize the skill and accept that the price of the cocktail will be set accordingly. There are places that make cocktails with the same ice they use for soft drinks from premade cocktails charging the same price. I do not go back to those ever again after I slog down the one drink. Luckily, I'm a freak where I didn't actually start drinking until I was in my 30s so I didn't have to suffer being broke at a bar.
Even outside of pubs and restaurants. Six packs and cases in the grocery store are all hugely inflated. Since I like beer, I got an old freezer and built a kegerator out of it and now buy my beer by the keg. (For now) keg prices are barely reasonable. $10 for a glass of beer at a restaurant?? Fuck right off with that.
I don't drink alcohol or coffee, so I can't really relate to the others.
I will admit to having good experiences going to the theater with friends and/or family, but I don't really enjoy watching a movie with strangers. Nowadays if I want to watch a movie with friends, I will simply invite them over and we'll watch it together.
More power to you if you like going to a theater, I'm not trying to convince you to stop, just that I don't feel the value-add is worth it to me anymore. Decent TVs have gotten so cheap that I just prefer to watch movies at home.
My ideal movie experience is to go during the day towards the end of a run when there's a fair chance the theatre will either be empty or almost empty.
But I haven't even done that for a while.
If it's going to be crowded - no thanks.
Tangentially, because my gf works in opera I've been to some productions, and real theatre - a real stage, with real people, and real stage effects - can have a presence and magic that cinema can't touch.
So I'd much rather spend money on that now. It's physically less comfortable because of the seats, but as an experience it's so much more hands-on, hand-made, and satisfying, and creatively it leaves so much more space for atmosphere and implication.
I live in NYC and go to some form of Broadway production about once a year, primarily because my mom really likes it and so it's something to do when she comes to visit
I don't dislike it, but it's also pretty expensive and it's not something I'm terribly passionate about. I agree that it's a little different though; each production is a little unique, and seeing it in person is a bit more of a visceral experience.
I got one about 1992ish I think. I had a Gameboy before that. And a spectrum before that. To be honest the game boy was a revelation, smooth fun polished games. My spectrum crashed all the time (thanks Alan sugar and your cheaper manufacturering).
Nintendo games had multi person dev teams instead of some poor guy looking at a video of an arcade machine and trying to recreate at on a spectrum.
Though everyone I knew got a snes and street fighter 2 for Xmas one year. I only knew one other nes owner
I can never understand why so many people resort conspiracy theories when the obvious answer is supply and demand. I know well educated people, who do this when they talk about the resential property market. (Including an accountant).
Supply and demand can be caused by a conspiracy. OpenAI secretly bought 40% of the world's RAM on purpose. It's only a conspiracy if Anthropic and Google did something similar, though.
similar, keepass synced with google drive. sure it's on some platform, but if my master file is stolen I feel like it taking ~1s and 128MB per guess it's unfeasible for my file to be cracked.
Did the people you notice becoming less intelligent ever recover? I'm genuinely interested. My biggest regret in life is early years drug use, smoked my first joint at 13. Mdma 18. Cocaine late tewnties. I personally think marijuana might be worse than mdma but not by much. And cocaine is really bad for cardio vascular system, probably physically worst of all of them that I tried.
I think both mdma and marijuana cause anxiety and they mess with short term memory.
There doesn't seem to be a good answer to protecting kids from drugs. Heavily regulated legalisation might help or it might normalise drug use.
As an aside I personally think alcohol in very moderate use isn't really as harmful as other drugs. And is probably a net benefit for many. Even moderate use of illegal drugs seems to have bad affects on people.
Edit: added my thoughts on alcohol and something on cocaine use.
> I think both mdma and marijuana cause anxiety and they mess with short term memory.
OTOH MDMA never caused anxiety (and I had plenty of anxiety issues at the time) or memory issues for me, but of course drug effects are very individual.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.
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