WAH! WAH! Where's my social networking NetFlix you big meanie!

[tenguzero]

http://www.fastcompany.com/1583922/n...-do-a-redesign

So apparently some sort of firestorm was abrewin' over at netflix recently with updates made to the site. It seems that they changed how some buddy-list-recommendation thing or the other functioned so that it was more out of the way, and this irked the throngs of mush-brained simpletons out there who absolutely can't function worth a damn if they aren't plugged into their hub of like-minded drones. Now, I'm no technology ludite -- I've got a Facebook account that I check every so often (and a MySpace account that I haven't checked in months). I'm fine with the blogs and the fast-food news delivery and the 'whatever-you-want-to-append-to-a-lowercase-letter-i-or-e' devices that have saturated the consumer market. But come on, seriously? Is this what the 21st century brings us? A bunch of kids who can't think outside the box unless they're tethered to the box (and everyone else) 24 hours a day, bitching and threatening boycotts because they can't see what their other equally mush-brained cohorts are messaging and recommending to them? It isn't enough that you can text, IM, wall-post, tweet, email, call, or communicate your recommendation (gasp) face to face with another person? A movie rental site not providing the ability for you to interface with your friends is now some kind of sacrilege worthy of outright hostility? And it's not like you still can't do it -- it might just take another click or two (god forbid.)

Maybe I'm just in a weird spot age-wise where I'm young enough to have grown up with computers (even though my family didn't get one until I was into Junior High, and most of my elementary years featured the lone classroom Apple II setup for Odell Lake and Oregon Trail) and cellphones (even though they didn't really take off until I was out of high school) and programmable VCRs, but not so young that these things were placed into my hands as I popped out of the womb. I mean, I AM old enough to have been a New Kids on the Block fan -- the first time they came around.

Is it too early for me to be bitching about "kids these days"?