1y ago

My mom wants "free" full movies on Youtube

Some things that make it very annoying to me:

She complains whenever she can't find certain movies
She usually searches using the complete video title in the search bar, it's usually something like: Movie name - Complete Movie - Dubbed - Pirate Site or Uploader - Genre
- She has a list of saved movie/video titles in a .docx file, where she also writes whether she liked the movie or not. Whenever a YT search shows something she thinks she'll be interested, she copies the title to the doc.
- Will usually use that same search on Netflix, or continue typing and adding more despite no search results showing already.
Complains about video/audio quality
Complains when there's no dubbed version
Complains when the "movie" is just a trailer repeating for 1 hour
Seems to willfully ignore my explanations to why searching for and watching full movies on YT sucks (it's pirate content on a platform that doesn't allow piracy)
Ignores some 🏴‍☠️ alternatives I've set up, because "there's nothing interesting there"
"Forgets" anything I teach her about searching and search terms in 5 minutes

To be fair, most of the movies she "wants" to watch aren't available on any streaming services. Feels like I'm dealing with the world's worst pirate.

73 comments

Have you tried turning her off and on again?
- This is definitely troubleshooting tip #1 but in this specific case I will advise against turning your mom on!
  
  Oedipus has entered the chat
  
  Maybe safer to just unplig and plug back in.. I guess
- Try breaking both of your arms, I’ve heard that works.
  
  Oh no, is this phrase going to follow us here from reddit?
  
  God damnit...
- Hahahahaha 🤣🤣🤣, I laughed way more than I should 🤣🤣🤣.

I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but as someone who has an aunt that behaves VERY similar, I can only say that some people do not want solutions - they want to be mad about something and others to agree with them. Finding easy ways to remove the problem instead of being allowed to complain about it is the opposite of what they expect to achieve.
- Not rude at all, and not the first time someone said something along those lines about my mom. I've heard the same from other relatives.
  
  Ironically, you came here instead of asklemmy to complain about your mom.

Not interested in learning
Complains constantly
Wants things for free
Doesn't deserve your help in this area.

Have you tried getting a better mom?
- lol, this is such an capitalistic free market response 😅
  
  Thank you
- OPs mom was recalled he's just too lazy to being her back in
- Funny enough, there's a movie called Trading Mom about that, and it's actually free on YouTube
  https://youtu.be/J-3-jCkROJQ
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/J-3-jCkROJQ
  https://piped.video/J-3-jCkROJQ
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

Have you tried setting up plex and then just putting in her requests?
Sounds frustrating to deal with
- That would also be my go-to solution, except she wants hundreds of movies (in which case Plex also makes sense, but more for her than for OP).
- ~~plex~~
  Jellyfin
- My friend's husband does this; he runs a plex server for their family, parents/in-laws, and a brother I think. As the nephew got older he started sending in his requests, too. He also set up an email address just for movie requests and wrote a script to crawl the email inbox and automatically download the top search result. It ended up requiring very little input on his end.
- Or set up Overseerr so she can request it herself. If you’re on a fast connection you can go from request to it being in Plex in about five minutes if set to auto approve.

So she's like my mom who writes complete question phrases on Google and is pissed off that THE google doesn't know the answer?
- She'll love Google's AI then. Or hate it with a passion. It's sometimes very useful or more dumb then the actual search results.
- Looks like it, my brother from the same yet another mother

You wouldn't download a Mom.
- I downloaded your mom
  
  I would also download this guys mom
  
  You don't have enough bandwidth
  
  Meanwhile I downloaded your dad
  
  You mom downloaded me.

Choosing beggar pirate that's also your mom? Oh brother, I do not envy you

how is this your problem?

I would probably try setting up a custom browser, either chrome or Firefox, whichever she doesn't use already, set up ublock, and set the homepage to a pirate streaming site. I use bflix.gg, which (usually) has subtitles of all languages for most stuff, but if she's not English speaking there might be better options.
Then just tell her that browser is youtube for movies. It should be easy enough for her to use and there's only one step to remember, open the new browser. You could even name the shortcut youtube movies or something.
- Yes! She likes the YouTube UI, make the streaming site a better experience.
- I'm k my l I'll be

Maybe you could set her up a plex library or something like that?

So teach her how to better pirate, don't just plop it in front of her. Leave her an instructional document.
- I've taught her the same things several times over. I'm not joking or using hyperbole. I've had her write down instructions herself about some things, like how to take screenshots and save images (she wrote that down three times, because she threw away the first 2 notebooks) - despite this, she still copies the image from Paint to Word in order to save it.
  
  Is she forgetful in other ways, too? Could be there's an underlying issue.

Feels like I'm dealing with the world's worst pirate.
https://quoters.info/files/quote-pictures/8562-piraty-karibskogo-morya-proklyatie-chernoi-zhemchuzhiny-pirates-of-the-caribbean-the-curse-of-the-black-pearl.jpg
It is normal to get frustrated by technology you don't understand. I know a bit about computers, but smartphones confuse and annoy me. Don't worry too much about it.

I'd buy them a Roku, and show them how the global search works.
Easy answer for anything she searches for. It'll either be free, paid, or not on any of the platforms.

Seems like a good use case for the (very quiet now) !aita@lemmy.world community

I'd suggest !fullmoviesonyoutube@lemm.ee but you seem down on the idea and we don't have many links there yet.
- She doesn't speak english

If you are happy to self host at her place raspberry pi with the combo: radarr, jellyfin and jellyseerr is what you want. I'm pretty sure the overseer app works with jellyseerr otherwise create icons with the shortcut on her PC. It's easier than Netflix in my opinion. But I understand if her problem is right here, right now kind of problem, where she doesn't want to wait for it to show on jellyfin.

It's usually as easy as searching for 1...2...3... :-)

What movies does she want to watch?
- Seems to be whatever she finds on YT. Blockbusters, big budget stuff and whatever is on Netflix never catches her attention. She also prefers watching old (1990 and older) movies.
  
  What language?

Has she tried archive.org already?
- The site is in english, which she doesn't speak. Pretty sure she'd complain about the ugly interface, too.
  I might give it a shot, but without any hopes.

Moms only want one thing: they want anything they can think of to just exist.

Maybe she just enjoys the experience of finding content on YouTube. Kind of like those metal scavengers who go to the beach all day to find a penny or a nickel. Not about the destination it's about the journey. She gets a little adrenaline rush when she finds something nice maybe

Kinoger might be an option?
Feels like a normal streaming site, in German but iirc with language options for the site as well as speech and subtitles.

If your mom is that preoccupied with that nonsense, IDK it seems like a blessing in disguise because she could be distracted with that while you possibly have more freedom? Trying to find a silver lining here.

73 comments