It’s a wrap for the red envelopes, family. Netflix just announced they are officially shutting down the physical DVD rental game on September 29, 2023. For 25 years, those little red sleeves were holding it down in the mailboxes of millions of regular folks, delivering movie nights without needing a $100-a-month high-speed internet plan. Now, the suits are pulling the plug for good.

The company hopped on Twitter on Tuesday to play it cool, saying it was a "true pleasure and honor" to deliver those movie nights for a quarter-century. But let's keep it 100: this is about the money, plain and simple. When the corporate profits start sliding, the first things they cut are the services that actually serve real people on the ground.

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos put out a blog post trying to put a pretty face on the situation. He called 2023 the "Final Season" of the DVD business, claiming they want to "go out on a high note" before the service gets too hard to maintain. But let’s be real—the physical DVD business has been shrinking because they forced everyone onto their streaming app, and now they’re using that decline as an excuse to shut down the operation completely.

Look at how the numbers dropped on Tuesday. Right after the market closed, Netflix had to report their second-quarter earnings, and they missed their targets. Wall Street doesn't play about their money, and the stock took an immediate hit, dropping by about 6%. When the shares start sliding like that, you know the board of directors is going to start slashing budgets and cutting services to make the balance sheet look good again.

Back in the day, before everybody had smart TVs and unlimited data, those red envelopes were a lifeline. You didn't need to worry about buffering, data caps, or your internet dropping out in the middle of a film. You just waited on the mailman to bring that red envelope through the US Postal Service, and you were good to go. It was a reliable, solid hustle that worked for everybody, no matter what neighborhood you lived in.

But now, the corporate bosses want everybody locked into their digital subscription model where you don't actually own anything and they can raise the prices whenever they feel like it. By killing off the physical media, they're forcing everyone into the digital pipeline, even if your neighborhood doesn't have the broadband infrastructure to support it.

So come September 29th, the mailman won't be dropping off those red envelopes anymore. It's the end of an era for a service that literally built the Netflix brand from scratch. As they chase the digital dollar and try to bounce back from that 6% stock drop, regular folks are left with fewer options and higher bills.

Sources: * U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Netflix Inc. Form 10-Q Quarterly Report for the Period Ended June 30, 2023 * Netflix Investor Relations, Q2 2023 Financial Statements and Shareholder Letter * United States Postal Service, Annual Report on Mail Volume and Delivery Operations, Fiscal Year 2023