Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs A millennial has gone viral for a rant about streaming services, in which he declared we were all being “gaslit.”Fred Asquith, a comedian from the United Kingdom, told Newsweek that he launched into his tirade after a frustrating moment while he was trying to watch a movie.”After spending half an hour trying to find [which streaming site] a film was, then finally finding the film and settling down, and being served an advert in the middle of the film, at a critical part of the film,” he began thinking, “What has this world come to?”He then picked up his phone and “started ranting about it.”Asquith posted the clip on TikTok, under the username @fredasquith, on February 17. His rant, in which he described streaming as “regular TV but worse,” has racked up more than 100,000 likes and 1.2 million views.”Twenty years ago, we all watched television with adverts,” he said in his video, adding, “And then we got the facility to fast-forward ads” and record live TV.”And then, boom, streaming comes in. We can watch whatever we want whenever we want it—on demand, no ads. Wow!”However, Asquith raged at the camera, things began to change: “Then they all started introducing ads!”
Screenshots from Fred Asquith’s viral TikTok video.
Screenshots from Fred Asquith’s viral TikTok video.
TikTok @fredasquith
Many streaming services—including Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime—that began as ad-free subscriptions have since introduced ad-supported-tiers.In his expletive-ridden rant, Asquith said: “So now we have TV but f****** worse because I can’t fast-forward the ads. In order to change the channel, I have to back to a f****** menu on a smart TV and click on a new thing. And the worst part of it is, we’re paying for it!”Asquith’s fiancée, who was off-screen, weighed in, describing how they regularly put on a film to provide background noise as they fell asleep but were often “abruptly woken up” by an advert in the middle of the movie.”Basically, it just sucks,” Asquith told Newsweek. “It’s actually given us so much choice, and yet all that choice is either interjected [with] ads or costs extra on top of the streaming cost. What’s the point of that?”
Screenshots from Asquith’s viral TikTok video.
Screenshots from Asquith’s viral TikTok video.
TikTok @fredasquith
TikTok users were in ready agreement, with one saying, “Everyone just needs to go back to cable tv until these streaming services remember what they are there for.”Another said her young son loved falling asleep to movies but couldn’t anymore because “the ads wake him back up. And it’s always perfectly timed too. Done. Give me a DVD.”One user took a different approach to streaming, saying they usually canceled “all but one subscription, then binge watch, cancel, re-subscribe to one I cancelled previously, rinse and repeat.”Asquith told Newsweek he “kind of gets” this approach. “But I love watching films. And sometimes you want to watch a film that’s free on one thing but not free on another.”However, his watching habits may be about to change as his fiancée wants them to reconsider some of their subscriptions.”I don’t know if it’s off the back of that video, but it’s definitely got us thinking about it. We subscribe to most things, and we don’t really know why. We don’t often use many of them. I think we’re gonna have a good old think about that one and maybe just bring it down to one.”According to Statista, Netflix had more than 300 million paid subscribers worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024, gaining almost 20 million subscribers compared to the previous quarter. Disney+, which launched in 2019, had 125.3 million worldwide subscribers that quarter.Asquith said he was trying to detach from how people reacted to his online rants, but he added, “It’s always nice when people agree with you.”He continued, “Sometimes you can put a rant out and people don’t agree with you—and that’s bad.”Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some extra details, and they could appear on our website.
