2 hours together. Both somewhere else.

Last week I was the psychologist sitting on the couch ignoring my wife.

Nhu-An was scrolling the news, some random Netflix show autoplayed, and I was secretly checking Instagram.

Nhu-An: "Are we going to watch something or not? Because I could just do some work." 

Ali: "Yeah, I'm just researching some options."

Before kids, our favorite thing was watching a movie then walking home talking about what it meant, like we were in a Linklater film. That version of us feels so far away. Now, by 10pm, the kids are asleep, the kitchen is clean, and we have two hours. I hate it when we spend them alone, together.

Our brains aren't built for this much choice. Like ordering at the Cheesecake Factory, when we have too many choices, the mental effort to make a decision exhausts our willpower. We can stream almost every movie ever made, which means I'm too exhausted to choose. So I surrender to the algorithm.

But the algorithm isn't optimized for connection. It only cares about keeping me on Netflix. Serving content, not cinema. 

Reed Hastings, Netflix's former CEO: "We actually compete with sleep — and we're winning."

Here's why it feels so empty. Dopamine doesn't fire when you get a reward. It fires in the anticipation of one. Remove that gap and the reward disappears with it.

There's a classic Star Trek episode where a civilization hands all decision-making to an ancient AI named Landru. Spock calls it a "soulless society" with the "peace of the factory" and "tranquility of the machine." Kirk frees them, but they immediately go back to worshipping the machine. I think about that a lot at 10pm when my thumb is pulling down to refresh.

A few weeks ago we broke the cycle. We started watching the 2025 Best Picture nominees. Sinners, Hamnet, F1, One Battle After Another, and not once did either of us reach for our phones. After the last one, Nhu-An turned to me at 1am: "I know I'll be exhausted tomorrow, but I'm so happy we did this. I miss watching movies with you."

We pulled a list of the 100 best 21st-century films, crossed off what we'd seen, and named it THE LE MATTU MEGA MOVIE QUEST™. Now when 10pm comes and we're both up for it, we just pick one and go. It's given us our movies, and perhaps our marriage, back.

Every movie ever made in your pocket sounds like freedom. But a recommendation algorithm isn't for you. It's for the company profiting off your insomnia.

Make a list. Pick one. Let Landru lose.