Is it because the majority of people in American society are struggling financially and have less real money than their parents or grandparents, and are being nickel and dimed as their entire existence is converted to a subscription mechanic, from rent, to Amazon, to Netflix? Is it because they desperately seek out non-monetized content to spend what little free time they have in peace without losing what little money they have left?
The ad monetized content is mostly garbage though. But it's dangled in front people to attack out lizard brains. The non-ad-monetized content is better.
So before ~2000, living in houses, buying goods, and watching movies was free? Weird, I must have missed all of that, because I sure as hell was paying rent and $5 to rent a movie from Blockbuster. Can you point to where all these free resources were that I missed out on?
Lol as someone who lived quite some time before 2000, we had all kinds of ways of bootlegging. Ear worms would bootleg grateful dead shows, we would tape everything we could off public TV, we'd record radio to tape, we'd trade it. Radio was free and ubiquitous, cable TV didn't come around until the 80s and even then public access TV was much bigger pre HD and Y2k. And of course we simply spent more time together, something which our cultures has wound down quite effectively these last few decades.
Just saying, humanity has always found ways to be entertained for free, and Blockbuster is a short aberration in a long history of human culture. The aggressive monetization going on right now is not the story of history, and it's IMO not sustainable.
Nah...