Some months back, I was taking stock of my finances. I can kind of split this up into three lists. There are the true necessities: rent, car insurance, groceries, medical expenses and household supplies. Then there are the professional necessities: the cost of upkeep my author website and podcast website, software subscriptions, and project contracts. Then there’s the “fun stuff”: largely streaming services, going out to movies, occasionally meeting with friends for brunch or lunch or dinner (but never breakfast–I’m not leaving my apartment before 10 AM!)

Like any other adult, I compared all of these expenses against my monthly salary from my day job and looked at where I could cut corners. Unsurprisingly, I had to cut out some streaming services simply because I wasn’t using it as much as I thought I would be. There might have been one or two shows on each platform that I could only  watch there (legally, I mean.) But once I finished, I would always forget to cancel or opt not to cancel because “well, maybe I’ll find something else to watch.” 

But then I don’t and end up having way too many subscriptions. The question “why the fuck am I paying so much for so many streaming services” can only rear its ugly head so many times before you start to get sick of it.

I remember the first time I heard about home media servers. A friend of mine, Mick, had built his own to hold his family’s photos as well as podcast recordings and auditions. For him, it was mainly a point of storage–making sure he always had access to important memories and information. I think the main reason I hadn’t strongly considered making one myself was because I didn’t actually have a lot I wanted to hold onto. I don’t take a lot of photos, I don’t like to keep auditions past a certain point and if something is really important, I’ll just move it to an external harddrive and delete it off my computer. You can see why it didn’t occur to me to make my own home media server as I didn’t have much use for one.

Until I heard about Plex and their bullshit 3x increase of their Lifetime Pass. That just about burned me up and unleashed my barely contained wrath at the current state of the world.

Everything is so expensive. Subscription costs only go up while platform quality goes down, wages are stagnant, inflation is out of control–no matter how many times I cut corners, I’m always going to be squeezed for an extra dollar every few months like clockwork. Bread is infected with organ-eating parasites and the circus is constantly canceling shows after a single season.

What the hell am I supposed to do? What the hell are any of us supposed to do?

I wish I had a solution. All I have is an answer that is not so much a stake through the heart of these vampiric capitalist overlords as it is a tourniquet to keep them from bleeding me dry. 

Enter: the home media server. 

After reading a blog about ripping DVD’s onto your own personal server for easy streaming access, I reached back out to Mick about his setup and took notes. I did research, comparing storage devices and hard disk drives and asking coworkers for their experiences (I happen to work at a tech company so most of my coworkers have rigged various devices at one point or another.)

After purchasing a storage device, I spoke to my family about what I was attempting and my brother gave me the money I needed for a pair of hefty disk drives. My less tech-savvy friends have been reaching out to me about my process and I’m keeping notes to pass onto them once I’m finished. My other media-loving friends have given me recommendations on old TV shows and movies to add to my server once it's up and running. Everywhere I looked, I found people who were either interested in what I was doing or happy to help as they were also sick of the way these vultures in suits were siphoning away our goodwill to buy a third jet or fifth yacht.

In hindsight, it’s kind of weird. I started this project out of contempt for capitalism, to flip off the powers-that-be and stake a claim over the time, energy and money that they’ve slowly stolen from me.

And yet, this project has helped me reach out and get back in touch with my community of tech weirdos, art-lovers and radicalized working class members in an increasingly hostile world.

I won’t lie, I know the actual solution to these grievances would be at least some form of better consumer protections but until we get there, I’ll keep finding alternative ways to participate in society.