Two weeks ago, I got an email from Netflix saying they would no longer offer my subscription tier (ad-free, $9.99) and would move me to the lowest tier (ads, $6.99). A week earlier, Disney announced they would raise the price of Disney+ and Hulu. I have hit the wall when it comes to streaming services, and I am utterly exhausted.

I get that things cost money. I am not saying all this should be free. However, I have an issue with introducing the ad-supported tiers on these services. They want you to choose the ad-supported tier because it makes them more money than the ad-free plans. That is why they keep raising the prices of ad-free plans. At its lowest, Netflix costs $8 a month to stream as much as you want with no ads. Now, its cheapest plan is $6.99 with ads, and it offers a Premium plan for a whopping $22.99 a month. Even with that huge number, I can bet they made more of the ad-supported than the others.

When all the services started having ads, it was clear that this was the direction of the market. It's free money for them; these services have millions of subscribers, and subscribers will get ads unless they want to pay a ton of money. For years, having ads was an anomaly; now, it is standard practice. One of the initial perks of streaming was that there were no ads. You paid a premium not to have them- it was one of the reasons people got rid of cable. Now, all major services have an ad-supported tier. We have gone back to cable; services are even bundling together further, making it feel like we are just getting cable again.

Here's the thing. I knew this day was coming. One was when I would only subscribe to a service when there was something I wanted to watch just to avoid wasting money on services I rarely use. Depending on how I like its ad-supported service, Netflix will be the first to fall into this category. It is the one I use the least, and when I do, what I watch is so rarely great that I question why I keep showing loyalty to a product that disappoints so regularly. I have put a lot of thought into this, and I won't bore you with the details, but I already know which services will make the cut and which won't.