Farewell Forever to Netflix DVDs

On Friday, Netflix is shutting down its mail-order DVD service. Customers who still receive physical DVDs can hold on to the ones they have. “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you like!” the company wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. I misread this as “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you live!,” a chirpy and morbid send-off, conjuring images of a devoted Luddite breathing his last in a room littered with faded red envelopes and dusty remote controls.

This is not a eulogy for the DVD. I stopped receiving DVDs by mail more than a decade ago with little remorse. Or at least I think I did. I tried recently to access my complete Netflix viewing history only to discover that all DVD data is deleted 10 months after your subscription ends. Now I’m left with just my streaming history, which begins in 2009 with “Party Down,” a show which, for many reasons, feels recent and very much of the streaming era.

If I’m forlorn about anything, it’s the lost data. I can’t remember a single movie I watched on DVD from Netflix. I remember the first rentals my parents brought home to play on our hulking faux-bois VCR (Billy Wilder’s 1960 film “The Apartment,” “A Little Romance,” with Laurence Olivier and a teenage Diane Lane). I remember borrowing the comically gigantic laser disc of “Koyaanisqatsi” in the college library and renting “Say Anything” from Tower Video in the East Village.

These movies, these moments, are the pegs that threads of memory wind around. Who I was, what I did, how I felt at a moment in time. I rented Jim Jarmusch’s “Down by Law” from Kim’s Video, then I went and got steamed eggs at a cafe. I can see the video on the cafe table. I remember the winter coat I had. I wish I could recall the Netflix rentals, summon the memories that accompany them.

For a short time, Netflix had a feature that I loved called “Netflix Friends.” It allowed you to share your queue with friends and to see their star ratings for movies they’d watched. I remember adding ratings and comments to movies I’d seen before the launch of Netflix, so I could recommend them to friends.

Netflix canceled the Friends feature in 2010. I wish I’d kept track of each movie I watched and the ratings I gave them. Why did I give away the information? Why didn’t I save what could be a log of prompts to help spur memories of other eras, an archive of how I spent my time?

At the end of each year, the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh posts a list of everything he watched and read in the previous 12 months. I’ve been envious of this record, but for whatever reason, maybe because my intake seemed so feeble compared to Soderbergh’s, I’ve never kept a list of my own. That changes now. I downloaded my Netflix streaming history and plan to do so for all the streaming platforms that allow it. I’ll log my viewing in a notebook, be my own data collector, the custodian of my own cultural history.

For more

• If you’re a recent Netflix DVD subscriber, you can still access your DVD data. If you have a streaming account, download your viewing history here.

• Letterboxd is sort of a present-day version of Netflix Friends. (But I think you should still keep an analog copy of the stuff you watch!)

• “Why’s it so hard to figure out how many people watch Stranger Things?” This episode of the podcast “Search Engine” looks at the history of streaming and the data that Netflix does and doesn’t reveal.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

• Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was charged with taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including gold bars, to help businessmen and the Egyptian government.

• Autoworkers expanded their strike to include all the spare-parts distribution centers for both General Motors and Stellantis.

• Pay advances and zero-percent loans: Officials in Washington were preparing for the possibility of a government shutdown at the end of next week.

• Nearly 9,000 migrants a day are illegally crossing the southern border, one of the highest rates in months, creating a humanitarian crisis.

• Prosecutors’ request for a gag order on Donald Trump presents a conflict between his free-speech rights and fears that he could — intentionally or not — incite his supporters to violence.

• An influx of athletes and the end of the gender studies program are among the changes at New College in Florida, which Gov. Ron DeSantis had pledged to transform.

CULTURE CALENDAR

📺 “Sex Education” (out now): Since this Netflix show debuted in 2019, depicting British high school students navigating knotty relationships as well as the trials of their own bodies, it has felt unlike anything else on television. With an empathetic eye, it has depicted gender identity, disabled intimacy, and the sometimes uneasy intersection between sexuality and cultural heritage. The new season, its fourth, will be its last.

📺 “Gen V” (Friday): For some more young-people-figuring-it-all-out content, this Prime Video spinoff of the popular satirical superhero series “The Boys” takes place at a college for students with superpowers. The show bears the hallmarks of its parent series: a lot of blood, odd superpowers and the specter of an evil conglomerate that has embedded itself in the U.S. military-industrial complex. — Desiree Ibekwe

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Fudge Brownies

If you like your brownies chewy on the inside, crackling and shiny on top and bittersweet, you can’t do better than classic fudge brownies. Easily mixed in a saucepan, these come together in under an hour from start to finish for near-instant gratification. (For those with that much patience, the payoff is big.) According to the recipe notes, these brownies get even better after they’ve rested overnight. So make them today and try not to eat them until tomorrow. At least not all of them.

REAL ESTATE

The hunt: A classics teacher wants her first home to have some history. Which did she choose? Play our game.

LIVING

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Soup season’s unsung hero

In my family’s kitchen, our greatest cozy-weather MVP is the Dutch oven. We affectionately refer to ours — black-handled and bright yellow — as “The Bumblebee” and use it to cook meals that range from easy weeknight dinners of roasted squash soup to elaborate Sunday feasts. Wirecutter experts have spent hours searing, braising, steaming and sautéing in their quest for the best Dutch oven. Our two favorites are durable enough to handle heavy use, and handsome enough to go right from stovetop to table. Which is important this time of year, when they are likely to be simmering soups, stews and sauces all autumn long. — Brittney Ho

Wirecutter is giving away a Dutch oven — and more favorite cold-weather products — in celebration of Cozy Week. (Terms and conditions apply.)

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

No. 19 Colorado vs. No. 10 Oregon, college football: After posting an abysmal 1-11 record last year, Colorado hired Deion Sanders, the N.F.L. legend with a famed sense of showmanship, to be its head coach. The turnabout has been quick. “Coach Prime,” as Sanders is now known, enticed dozens of players to transfer to Colorado in the off-season, loading the roster with stars. Colorado is now the buzziest team in college football — its game last week broke TV viewership records — and it has the offensive skill to match. But its defense might struggle to keep up today, considering Oregon averages nearly 60 points a game. 3:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC