The Netflix Instant profile has become one of those curiously 21st-century expressions of our personalities, an extension of both how we want to see ourselves—queuing up thoughtful documentaries about suffering in Africa—and who we really are—ignoring those documentaries in favor of another 19-episode binge of My Cat From Hell. And, as with all aspects of our personality, sometimes there are parts of it that we’d like to remove. Happily, Netflix has now granted users that power. (Deleting stuff from your profile, we mean, not radically altering your personality through a combination of surgical and therapeutic intervention. Netflix does not do that. Yet.)
So, for anyone who has ever offered to log in to their Netflix account to watch a movie with a friend, only to be greeted with awkward silence as “Because You Watched Cheerleader Massacre 2” or “More Like: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic,” pop up on the screen, Netflix now allows you to enter your account and remove the offending items from your viewing activity log. This function is disabled for kid and teen profiles—the better to help parents wage the losing battle to keep their kids away from violence, sex, and whatever the hell Princess Jellyfish is.
The service is also reportedly testing a “privacy mode” that will allow users to watch stuff without it appearing in their activity logs at all, meaning you’ll finally be able to watch Toddlers & Tiaras without worrying about your roommates seeing it and putting you on a federal watch list.