written by owen on 2026-Feb-02.

Everything changes eventually. Sometimes the change is subtle and insignificant. Other times its wils as if a designer spilled something on a keyboard in the back office. This new netflix UI is a evil change that only the devil would push into production.

The overall vision of this change seems to be to create permanent FOMO. Everytime you log now you are greeted with "upcoming content". Sometimes a new thing will popup and you will say to yourself "oh, I'd like to watch that!". But you cannot watch it, you never can. The things you see first are coming next week or next month or whenever. Some point in the future.

This creates a loop of seeing something, then not being able to watch it EVERY TIME you open the application. You will forget the new thing you saw the last time i.e. if you are lucky. The unlucky will have the upcomming stuff stay in the back of their minds like a brain leech. Personally I find myself logging in less and less. I have to remind my wife to login instead of watching youtube. I tried getting her to unsubscribe but she is fully deep in the FOMO; "what if something shows up that I want to watch?" she says but nothing new ever shows up. Only things from the past.

When I open the app - once or twice per month, thinking that I have given it enough time for it the new stuff to be released but nope, still nothing or by that time I have forgotten it totally. So then I scroll down, scroll, scroll. Nothing interesting. If you have watched netflix alot you would have already watched most of the interesting stuff. The older stuff certainly, so you can look the release date of a movie and know that you have already watched it. Multi-episode things can last you a bit longer but you will burn through those very quickly.

So I scroll, scroll, down and find nothing. I think maybe I have something saved in my list but then I realize that my list has been changed to "my stuff" which has now been moved to the top of the screen which makes be try to scroll up - never reaching the start - because I had scrolldown so far - i just give up. There may be a way to get back to the top quickly but I just get annoyed I give up. Another thing about the top menu is the search is also stuck at the top, which means you are basically trapped in a infinite scroll list.

So what can you do? Nothing. Because the entire launch screen is upcoming stuff so you need to scroll down to see what you actually can watch. If you do that you are trapped in the rabbit hole of scrolling. This rabbit hole is simply an algo categorized set of "gripping action movies that we think you'll like" or "Pulsating romantic films" or "because you watched". These sets are chaotic. You never know what will show up. The list could have been a simply "comedy", "action", "adventure" but instead you get this perplexing-mishmash-wordplay that hints at something deeper. What you actually get is the same old stuff mixed in with more old stuff. You scroll left in the hopes of seeing something new but alas nothing.

The content had to run out eventually. So this UI maybe a tactic mind games to keep users entrenched. There is stuff there, hiding in the cracks but making it easy to find would only make the situation worse. The UI exists to keep you trapped watching things you are NOT partially interested in watching. You might like this or that but do you really want to watch it? Likely not. You can never find what you really want to watch. There is so much other trash on it so what not waste your time watching? That is the main goal; to waste your time.

Conclusion

My rating 4/10. Worse ever. My time in 2025 was spent watching old movies. When the old movies get de-listed I search for something else. Rinse and repeat. Currently watching Elisa and Marcela in spanish. Why? Because, why not? I also like Roma but I think it has been de-listed.

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