The Lovefilm Thing

I was never the Ledger with the insatiable appetite for films.  That was always AT, JMcG and Cheese's thing.  Don't get me wrong, I love movies but my DVD/BluRay collection borders on neglected, the gaming thing and the music thing more than enough for me to be getting on with in Geekville, thanks very much.

Then I joined Lovefilm.

AT will be the first to tell you that I borrowed The Assassination of Jesse James from him about a year ago, kept it for 6 months and never watched it.  Last week it turned up from Lovefilm and within a day it was watched and posted back.

Why?  Why does Lovefilm work but borrowing from a mate not work?

With a mate there's no real pressure to watch, at least not with a normal mate, but with AT there are constant reminders, Post it Notes on your desk, little things written in your diary*, that sort of thing and I'm not one to respond well to nagging.  In fact the more someone goes on about something the less likely I am to do it.  That's just me, the teenage rebel at 37.  But anyway the lending thing doesn't work.  I'm lazy too, getting, you know, off the sofa and putting the BluRay in the PS3 is like a massive effort or something...  So poor old Brad Pitt and the other bloke sat on my bookcase looking at me, AT was nagging and the PS3 was too far away and in the end AT stayed around one night and took it back.

What I do like are rewards.  I like systems too.  I'm probably a bit head mental.  But that means I'm perfect for the Lovefilm set up.  AT suggested I join after he got some pretty little credit card reward things that made it free for three months and I signed up.  Initially faced with every movie ever made I struggled to think of anything I wanted to see.  But then I came up with one with Zombies in that I'd heard was an entertaining and amusing Zombie romp and a day after picking it I came home from work and there it was.  Awesome.  Thanks Lovefilm.  I set up a list of a few films I wanted to see, watched the Zombie flick and sent it back.  Two days later another film arrives.  Hello new film on my doormat!

I rent one, watch it, post it and another one turns up.  It's like a geek dream.  The perfect £9.99 a month system.  In the end I'll forget what came first, me getting a movie in the post or sending one back.

What's happened is that I'm now watching more films.  Obviously.  You probably worked that out for yourself or maybe even noticed that there have been a lot of film reviews on here.  Well it's Lovefilm what did it.  However I'm sort of concious that it's turned diaryofaledger.com (did I mention the new address yet?  I did.... oh ok) into way less of a personal site.  It's all got a bit, 'Ohhhh look at this cool thing I (someone else) found.'  Or, 'Here's how many stars I think THIS should get,' which is great and I totally love that side of it but I'm gonna make an effort to try and do more 'life' posts.  I'll probably start with something about the 5 most annoying things in the Universe.  Or something.

*Some of that stuff about AT nagging (all of it) may have been embellished a bit for the sake of the story.  He is king of the Post It though.