Be careful what you wish for. We have always heard the phrase, but fail to understand why.
A break. A break is what we wanted. A break from all the work, piled up assignments, travelling long distances to reach our institutions etc. and we got exactly that. The only difference being, this break being a lot longer than what we expected.
COVID-19 has now, sadly, become a part of our lives. Almost taking over our lives, leaving us with no control over it, this virus outbreak started in 2019 and there is no reliable cure found yet. Its been almost a year with us being stuck at home with our life basically on a break. The concept of work from home was introduced for the safety of the people giving everyone plenty of time to spend at home and do things that they didn’t have to do before. The virus has created a barrier between the people and their jobs, their social life and everything that requires stepping out of the house or being around people. Thanks to the technology available, communication doesn’t remain a problem anymore but keeping ourselves entertained, does. Having an overabundance of time in our hands has resulted in people running out of things to do to keep themselves occupied.
Hangouts turned into video calls, schools turned into online classes, shopping turned into online shopping, and basically everything that aided our social life turned upside down. Gradually, the world moulded itself according to the situation and tried to make the best out of it. People used up the extra time to work on the interests they couldn’t make anything of, before. Apps like Tik Tok were flooded with artists, chefs and all kind of talented professionals. Pubg was another app that kept a huge population from losing their sanity. According to a study on Tik Tok, India has the highest number of users with a total of 119.3mn users, followed by USA with 39.6mn users and then comes Turkey, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan and so on. The answer to which country plays PUBG mobile the most was China, with most of the players for the game in 2017 from there, followed by India, Japan, USA, and Russia. There are many apps similar to these that helped people keep themselves busy all around the world. But that came to a sudden holt as well.
Due to some very recognised reasons, some countries are not in good terms with China and that resulted in the ban of several Chinese apps in many countries, India being one of them, which is supposedly the largest user of their apps. Apps like Tik Tok, Pubg, Shein etc. were banned leaving the users clueless and also ignited minor protests.
In midst of this situation, one app, Netflix continued to prosper regardless of all the health problems, mental state and anti-social life that the people had forced themselves to live. Netflix is an American technology and media services provider and production company. The company’s primary business is its subscription-based streaming service which offers online streaming of a library of films and television series, including those produced in-house. Netflix has remained consistent throughout the pandemic, in providing entertainment to people stuck in their homes. In fact, a number of movies and series were released with a motive of spreading awareness about the situation the world is in. Shooting of movies and series took place under its production, taking all the precautions, providing people around the world, entertainment that they were in dire need of.
Due to the 2020 pandemic, Netflix statistics reveal that the company has recorded an increase of over 16 million subscribers across the world. This has earned it the title of the most used video steaming service of 2020.
An action movie featuring Chris Hemsworth was released amidst the pandemic. Statistics from Netflix for 2020 suggest that the movie has been viewed in more than 90 million households in the first 4 weeks of its release, making it the biggest movie premiere on the platform so far.
The stats clearly show how Netflix has helped the people get away from the daily, boring lifestyle and dive into a world that they want to be in. Netflix has made use of the circumstances of the world and brought to our doorsteps, the much-needed entertainment. So, till the world is healthy and ready to go back to the old normal, we can just sit back and enjoy some Netflix
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Story by Megha Bali |
