What did you do over the weekend? Homework, walk around town, sleep in?
I had a fun, relaxing weekend doing all of this, and then some. I had a blast watching movies and TV shows with my friend, who lives way down in Pocatello, via Netflix Party (NP).
NP is a Netflix extension where you and friends can use a link to stream shows simultaneously and talk about it in the chat. Since my friend lives nine hours away, it was a fantastic way for us to watch movies together without needing to move from our own rooms.
We had always wanted to make plans to use NP, and kept telling each other we should figure out how to use it before college started up again, but we didn’t get the chance to.
I wasn’t sure what to expect at first, since all I knew about NP was what my friend told me.
I downloaded NP from Google on my laptop and set about finding a TV series or movie for both of us to watch together.
“Enola Holmes” came out on Netflix the day before I got NP and really caught my attention. The description is “While searching for her missing mother, intrepid teen Enola Holmes uses her sleuthing skills to outsmart big brother Sherlock and help a runaway lord.” I always enjoy a good crime and mystery film because I like figuring out how to solve the case.
After I downloaded NP, I went to Netflix, found the show and then clicked on the red NP icon in the top right corner of my Chrome tab. I clicked the “Start the Party” button, which created a link for me to copy and send to my friend.
Once we were both on Netflix, my friend clicked on the NP icon to officially join the party. We created our chatroom nicknames and chose one of the various fun icon options to represent ourselves. My friend chose the Iron Man icon, and I chose the pizza icon.
Whenever I paused and started the movie, a message in the chat appeared letting us know I did the action and at what time in the film, which I thought was really handy.
We used the chat for a while until it strangely glitched. My icon changed to a different image, a chocolate bar, and my messages sent twice. My friend was sending me messages, but I couldn’t see them, and he couldn’t see mine.
We stopped using the NP chat and spoke to each other via Instagram chat, wondering what had gone wrong. I searched on Google to see if anyone else had experienced this problem to get some answers, but found nothing.
I asked my friend to create a link to the movie we were watching and see if we experienced the same problem. We watched “Enola Holmes” using his NP link and didn’t experience any more weird issues with the chat.
My friend and I enjoyed watching the newly released movie. Even though it was rated PG-13, I felt like it shouldn’t have received that rating. Nonetheless, I had a very relaxing weekend spending time with my roommates and watching the film with my good friend.
Sometimes life can get so busy we can forget to take some time for ourselves and relax. We should take time to be there for others and help them take the load off their shoulders as well, no matter how far apart we are.
Even with the chat issue, I think NP is an effective way to watch movies and TV shows and talk with friends simultaneously. It can help you connect better with your friends virtually even when you are miles apart and on different time zones.
Kim Stager can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @journalismgoals.