Cleaning up my digital life
There are many services available to track TV series and movies. I tried a few but settled on one this week. Themoviedb.org.
My reason for trying the other services was to have one as a backup and another to test out because it appeared very popular. But going back and forth updating reviews and ratings, it was too much to deal with daily. Trakt changing their website to a horrible slow web experience was the last straw for me to start the process of leaving it.
Not being able to focus on one service never allowed me to learn about the features and limitations. I used them all as basic tracking services. When I decided on TMDB, I learned how to work with the limitations, for example, making a private list of my currently viewing series and leaving a note on the season and episode I was watching when the series season ended.
I use Sofa Time on my iPhone to track locally the episodes I'm on too. I turned off Trakt sync when I deleted my account. I bookmarked TMDB to the homescreen, in turn a progressive web app (PWA) so it is quick to access my account. I also deleted Letterboxd too. I don't want anything limited to a subscription. Trakt even removed CSV export from their free plan leaving only JSON exports.
I exported my data from those sites as a backup but had no CSV files to import into TMDB. I couldn't find an easy process to convert those files either, so I manually made sure I had my history from Trakt in TMDB. I didn't have much in Letterboxd.
My point here is that I had so many online accounts and some for the same thing, that it felt good to delete accounts and not visit those sites again. It does feel similar to using and deleting social networks.