It’s almost that time of year again. The leaves are turning, the temperature is dropping and everything is pumpkin-this and pumpkin-that. And soon, small children will be disguised as witches and superheroes to flock the streets and ask for candy from strangers. It’s kind of sketchy when you think about it.
You can read all about it on The Sun website, but basically the tradition of trick-or-treating dates back to 9th century Celtic Britain. On the night of October 31, a Pagan festival known as Samhain was held where people would offer the souls of the dead food and drink hoping to appease them. A few centuries later, poor people would receive “soul cakes” from the rich. In exchange, the poor would pray for the dead relatives of the rich.
These are just a few of the creepy traditions surrounding the common practice of “trick-or-treating” that is prevalent today.
However weird it might seem, Americans have annually stopped what they’re doing at the sound of the doorbell on Halloween since the early 1920s. I imagine some people jumping up from listening to their radio program or prying themselves away from their black-and-white television screen to tend to the excited, costumed children outside.
Today, however, the popular streaming network Netflix has decided that it’s better not to be interrupted by trick-or-treaters on Halloween.
For those without kids, or those who would simply rather stay indoors and watch Netflix, I’m sure you can agree that there’s nothing like watching a good scary movie on the spookiest day of the year. Now, with the unlimited media we can stream right into our living rooms, the options are endless. We are arguably more entranced by our ultra-customized quality entertainment content than ever before.
So, what happens when our little entertainment zone, if you will, gets interrupted by those pesky doorbell-ringers?
That’s right: Netflix designs a DIY “Halloween Doorbell” for the engrossed content-consumer.
Apparently, pause rates—I didn’t even know that was a thing?—sky-rocket on Netflix every Halloween. To remedy this problem, Netflix has created a decoy doorbell you can place over your actual doorbell. Its proximity sensor triggers your Netflix theme song of choice when guests approach, while actually ringing the doorbell sets off screams from the characters of that show. You can download the kit from the Netflix Make It page, but beware: you need quite an extensive list of technology to get it up and running. So much for convenience.
Depending on who you are, this innovation is either the perfect antidote to interrupted streaming or a sad realization of how addicted we are to Netflix.
In any case, fear not this Halloween season. Why? Because Netflix has come to your rescue so that, perish the thought, you don’t have to get up off the couch and answer the door one day a year to give candy to children.