Updated 7/3/2020

I canceled my Netflix account some years ago because I noticed the video streaming service offer far too many sexually explicit and morally questionable choices. This week I found out Netflix put out a new movie that fetishizes kidnapping and rape. The movie, 365 Days, was released in June and is based on a book by female author, Blanka Lipińska.

A common complaint in the #METOO movement is about blaming the victim, however, our behavior does lend power to those who would use opportunity to their advantage. I’m not talking about dressing or appearing attractive, because it is impossible to be unattractive to anyone who has no control of their lust. I’m talking about behaviors like becoming drunk or chemically intoxicated, so that you no longer have good judgment or control of yourself. If you cannot implicitly trust everyone at a gathering to not take advantage of your incapacitation, then you shouldn’t put yourself in the situation.

Still, the ways we present ourselves does have a lot of effect on who we attract, so the more sexually alluring you make yourself, the more people who are attracted to it will flock and try to take the lure. If presentation had nothing to do with attraction, then no one would bother to present themselves differently, so when presenting ourselves publicly we should make choices that are better at keeping the wrong kind of people away.

If you've done any decent amount of social gathering in person or social media on the Internet, you'd notice that people, especially attractive women who present themselves in sexually alluring ways, have hundreds and thousands of followers or a herd of suitors around them, most of which, I would say, are men hoping to connect with them. But as I said before, it is impossible to not attract people who have little control of their desires even if we do not present ourselves in excessively alluring ways. We can only limit how much undesirable attention we get.

After I first posted this article, someone replied to me saying how much they agreed and said they had cancelled Netflix because they shrugged off incidents where teens copied a suicide from the 13 Reasons Why movie. Netflix didn't think it was their responsibility, which was a similar attitude of no accountability I saw in YouTube content creators I had noted in the #METOO article. The person replying to me also noted how even "kids" content also had too much graphic and sexual content, which I had noticed and still notice in other video streaming services and broadcast television.

These things reminded me of other movies and series offered by Netflix and other outlets that have encouraged impressionable people to do deadly stunts, like laying in the middle of a road (from the movie, The Program, and later "planking" craze) or to run about blindfolded, even driving blindfolded (from the movie, Bird Box, which started the viral Bird Box Challenge), and to imitate suicides, crimes, and other violence.

These popular copycat trends show how people truly do what they see or consider desirable in media - the impressionable copy without thinking and the immoral satisfy dark desires by enacting what they've come to fantasize about. The different variety of movies and entertainment mentioned here also shows we can't get rid of or censor everything that people might imitate. Media, like 365 Days, that crosses the line into clearly unacceptable should obviously be rid of, but what of other content that is not clearly unacceptable?

We can only do what I stated before - teach and model the right morals, depend on God, and limit what is unacceptable. We should not consume or support media that makes bad behavior desirable. And we should stop supporting companies and services, like Netflix, that show more concern for profit than the well-being and betterment of people^[7].

⁷ Zeitchik, Steven. "Does Netflix have a killer problem?". The Washington Post. 2019 Mar. 21. Retreived 2020 Jul. 3.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/21/does-netflix-have-killer-problem>