Paying Rent on Your Own Files

Published January 31 2026 on MentalNet.xyz

There is a huge difference between paying for a service and paying for a gatekeeper. Somewhere along the way, software companies learned how to blur that line.

When you pay for something like ChatGPT or Discord, you are paying for compute, infrastructure, bandwidth, global distribution, and ongoing maintenance. There is a real operational cost behind the curtain.

But when you pay for Plex, what exactly are you paying for?

You already provide the storage.
You already provide the server.
You already provide the electricity.
You already provide the media.

All Plex really owns is the UI layer and the permission switch.

At that point, you're not paying for a service anymore. You're paying rent to access your own files.

The Plex Moment

This week my Linux Plex server did something interesting. Yesterday it worked. Today it didn't. Same machine. Same media. Same network. Suddenly I'm staring at a “remote streaming” paywall for content that physically lives on hardware I own.

And that's the real red flag — not the subscription itself, but the control inversion.

Once a company inserts itself between you and your own data path, it becomes financially motivated to add friction. That's when software stops being a tool and starts becoming a toll booth.

If your media server needs a cloud account to access files on your own disk, it's no longer your media server.

This is what enshittification looks like in slow motion. First convenience. Then dependency. Then monetization of core functionality.

Primitives Win Because Physics Wins

This is why I prefer primitives.

SMB. Filesystems. Network shares. Local players like VLC or MPV.

These sit lower in the stack. Fewer moving parts. Fewer abstractions. Fewer policy layers. They depend on the operating system — not on a vendor's roadmap.

A primitive pipeline looks like this:

Disk → Network Protocol → Media Player

A platform pipeline looks like this:

Disk → Service Daemon → Runtime Environment → Account Auth → Feature Flags → UI Layer → Player

Every extra box is another failure point. Another update risk. Another business decision waiting to break your workflow.

Lower-level tools survive decades for a reason. They obey physics, not quarterly revenue targets.

Discord Culture and Status Noise

What surprised me wasn't Plex's behavior — it was the reaction from people online.

You mention a real-world breakage and immediately someone jumps in with:

“Old news.”
“I knew this months ago.”
“Everyone already knows.”

This is not technical discussion. This is social signaling.

Announcements and enforcement are not the same thing. Rollouts are staggered. Feature flags exist. Client versions differ. Real systems don't change in unison.

I don't care about being first. I care about what actually breaks on real machines.

Status flexes don't keep systems running.

Why SMB + VLC Offends Platform Thinkers

Telling people “just mount the share and play the file” sounds primitive to app-first users. To them, it feels old-fashioned. Ugly. Manual.

But that's exactly why it works.

No cloud dependency.
No vendor account.
No subscription logic.
No remote enforcement switches.

You own the pipeline end-to-end.

It's not flashy. It's not trendy. It's reliable.

Energy Protection

I've learned something important in all this: you don't need to win arguments to stay sane.

You drop your experience. You share your workflow. You disengage.

If someone wants to turn everything into distro tribal warfare or SaaS apologetics, that's their problem.

Meanwhile I'll be watching a clay penguin yell “NOOT NOOT” through VLC over SMB — offline, paywall-free, and fully under my control.

The Real Difference

This isn't about being anti-SaaS. It's about understanding what you're paying for.

Paying for compute you don't own? Reasonable.
Paying to unlock your own hardware? Absurd.

The more layers software adds between you and your tools, the more important it becomes to remember the fundamentals.

Files. Protocols. Ownership. Control.