They didn't actually cancel HBO, Game of Thrones is almost back on. But if you were carrying a sub to HBO specifically to watch people fuck in plate mail, it's an itch you could almost certainly scratch via these streams.
It's true, though, that a percentage of the traditional television watchings at Chez Krahulique have been absorbed by this service. You never really know what you're going to get, and it's always on the precipice of getting fucking bonkers. People operating digital peepshows where the "payment" for the various "revelations" was a certain level of viewers is, for me, just kinda… huh. Sony has a fairly complex messaging problem here, as they literally have a button on their controller that says "share," and they can't stop this without eroding some measure of their thesis. But "Playroom" exposes them to some incredibly fucked cultural blowback. It's not my brand; I don't care what they're doing if everybody is into it, but, uh… I'm not sure they are? All the time?
There are people here at the office, and maybe at your office, or maybe in your house because it's you, who find the weird reverse surveillance culture thing immensely disturbing for some reason - it just, I don't know. It tickles their neck. There was a point where the gathered throng was watching people who were watching television, and it sent some signal skittering up the nerve trunk inside my spinal column.
I have pretty much always felt exposed, agoraphobic; the only thing I like less than that terror is the thought of being rude for not being more available, which is my job in a nutshell. I'm specifically trying not to be seen most of the time. I feel like when a person looks at me that I'm like one of those models at the doctor's office, all of it is just there to see, even things I can't see myself as a result of my viewing angle. I can't imagine letting someone do it under conditions I had not painstakingly orchestrated.
(CW)TB out.