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netflix

To think, this icon was nearly synonomous with a bleating goat sound.

Once upon a time in the late '90s, in the prestreaming days of yore, before binge-watching was even a word, a company called Netflix entered the scene, killing brick-and-mortar movie rental stores like Blockbuster with its promise of entertainment delivered to your doorstep in a crisp red envelope.

Whether it was a tried-and-true title or something on the more adventurous side that was selected from the online “queue”—my choice was usually some kind of French arthouse film because I desperately wanted to be cool—the combination of excitement and convenience (at least for that time) was simply unbeatable.

netflix anniversary, first netflix dvdMovie nights are the best nights.Giphy

Nowadays we have access to content of our choosing 24/7 (thanks in part to Netflix) and that inexplicable feeling of getting a new DVD in the mail is mostly a fond, though distant memory.

To celebrate its 25th anniversary (don’t you feel old now?) Netflix posted a bunch of company fun facts, and they did not disappoint.
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Few people in the public eye have been as universally beloved as Bob Ross, especially across multiple generations. The first time my husband and I shared "The Joy of Painting" with our kids, they were almost instantly mesmerized. Just as I had remembered from my own childhood, Ross's calm voice and "happy little trees" commentary as he painted felt almost like a form of therapy.

So naturally, when Netflix announced the release of a new documentary titled "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed," people (me, I am people) freaked out a bit.

With a title like that, how could you not? Bob Ross is up there with Fred Rogers and Steve Irwin in the "pure, wholesome, and untouchable" category, and even just seeing the words "betrayal" and "greed" so close to his name is enough to make a fan plug their ears and yell, "Na na na na, I can't hear youuuuu!"

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Bo Burnham's "Inside" is a painfully accurate reflection of what it feels like to be not young, not old and not well.

I say painful because I turned 30 during the pandemic, and watching Burnham "celebrate" the minute he turned 30 during the pandemic with a meager "Yay" and a song about no longer being the youngest person in the room—it hit hard. Even the bits that didn't resonate with me still provoked a feeling of millennial familiarity, and nailed how easy it is to see the problems with ourselves, yet how complex it is to fix them.


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Okay, Netflix. You may have actually done the impossible and intrigued me enough to want to watch a stupid dating show.

I generally loathe vapid reality shows and roll my eyes at dating series like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Call me old-fashioned, but the idea of gathering a group of conventionally attractive prospects, dating them all at once on camera, and then publicly weeding them out feels super gross to me.

So what makes Netflix's "Sexy Beasts" different? Well, just watch:

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