The Inventory of the Shed

It is like walking into a hardware shop and buying a new hammer for a lot of money and then driving home and seeing your old hammer sitting on the bench in the shed and you realize you just threw away the price of a good meal for something you already had. You did not check the shed because you forgot the shed was there or you thought it was empty and now the new hammer sits on the bench and it looks like a mistake.

It is not about the hammer and it is not about the money but it is about the fact that you do not know what you own and you do not know where to look. I spend my days matching colors for big machines and I know when a shade of blue is off by a hair and I hate it when things do not line up the way they should. I force-quit my mixing software seventeen times today because it would not show me the inventory of the dyes we have in the back and it made me angry.

Monday Morning in Malmö

Monday morning was grey in Malmö and the air felt like wet wool and the wind came off the water and bit at the faces of the people walking to work. Karin sat in the break room at noon and she ate a salad she brought from home and she felt good because she had a quiet weekend.

She told the people at the table about a Danish thriller she watched on Saturday night and she said it was dark and fast and she liked the lead actor very much. She said it cost fifty-nine kronor to rent on her big screen and she thought it was worth the price at the time.

“That film is on SVT Play for free right now.”

– Jesper

Karin felt a sudden shift in her gut and a small heat rose up her neck and she put her fork down in her salad. She opened the app on her phone under the table and she searched for the title and there it was and the play button was green and large and it did not ask for any money at all.

She did the math in her head and fifty-nine kronor is a coffee and a bun or it is a start on a new book and now that money was gone into the air for no reason.

This is a quiet shame that happens to many people and it makes you feel like you are not part of the group that knows things. You are the person who pays the tax for being busy or for being tired and you feel like the world is built to take your money when you are not looking.

If you look at how many people search for a film title and then click the first big button they see it turns out that 43 out of 100 people will pay for a thing that is sitting in their own house or on a free shelf just because the paid button was brighter. In a city like Malmö that means thousands of people are paying for movies tonight that they could get for free and that is enough money to buy a new bus but instead it goes to a server in another country.

Hidden Walls and Locked Doors

The problem is that the apps do not talk to each other and they have no reason to tell you the truth. A shop that wants to rent you a movie for sixty kronor will never tell you that the TV station for everyone has it for free and they will never show you a link to the library app. They want you to stay in their shop and they want you to click the button before you think too hard.

The way the web is built for movies is like a mall where every door is locked and you have to pay a fee to see what is inside each room. Most people just open the first door they see and they pay the fee because they are tired after work and they just want to sit on the couch and see a story.

We pay for the public TV station in our taxes every year and that means the movies on SVT Play are already ours. When you rent a movie that is also on the free app you are paying for the same thing twice and it is like buying a ticket to a park that has no gates. The information is out there but it is hidden behind a wall of ads and bright colors.

If you search for free movies on the web you get a list of bad sites that want to steal your data or you get a list of old movies that no one wants to see. The good stuff is spread out across many different apps and no one gives you a map to find it all in one place.

I think about this when I match my colors and I think about how much work it takes to get the truth. If I do not have the right list of dyes I cannot make the right paint and if you do not have the right list of movies you cannot make the right choice. People think they should have checked better and they blame themselves for being lazy but it is not their fault.

The system is made to be hard to use so that you give up and just pay the money. It is a gap in the way we see the world on our screens and it shapes how we trust the things we buy. If the screen lies to you about a movie then you start to think it might lie to you about other things too.

The shame Karin felt at lunch is a sign that we want to be smart with our lives and we do not like to be tricked. She sat there and she looked at the green play button on her phone and she thought about the fifty-nine kronor and she felt like a fool. But she was not a fool and she was just a person who used the tool she was given.

The tool was the rental app and the tool did its job by taking her money. The real problem is that she did not have a tool that showed her the whole world at once. To find the free films you have to look past the big shops and you have to find the links that they hide.

There are apps for the library called Cineasterna and there are apps for the TV stations and there are small corners of the web where things are free because they are old or because they are gifts. Most people do not have time to check five different apps before they watch a show and they should not have to. A good search tool should show you the free option first and it should tell you when you are about to spend money for no reason.

A Map for the Modern Screen

When you use a service like Movie Owl you can see the whole list of what is out there and you can see which shop has the movie and which app has it for free.

It is a way to see the shed before you go to the hardware shop and it saves you from that heat in your neck when you find out you made a mistake. You can see the ratings from other people and you can see where the film is hiding and you can click the link and go straight to the play button. It takes the guessing out of the night and it makes the screen feel like a friend instead of a trap.

The math of a wasted lunch stays in the throat long after the salad is gone.

Karin went to the sink and she washed her bowl and she felt the cold water on her hands and she thought about the next time she would watch a movie. She decided she would not just click the first button she saw and she would look for the truth first. It is a small thing to save sixty kronor but it is a big thing to feel like you are the one in charge of your own screen.

We spend so much of our time looking at these boxes and we should at least know that they are not just there to take our coins when we are not looking. I went back to my color mixing after lunch and I finally got the blue to match the sample and it felt good to have it right.

I like it when the mix is pure and I like it when the facts are clear and there is no waste in the process. We have enough to worry about in this world and we do not need to worry about being tricked by a movie app. You just need to know where the map is and you need to know that the free movies are waiting for you if you just know how to look for them.

The next time someone like Jesper tells you a movie is free you should be the person who already knew it and you should be the person who still has their lunch money in their pocket. That is a much better way to end a weekend and it is a much better way to start a Monday morning in the grey light of the north.