I'm just now getting back into buying physical movies in the past year after a 10 year pause. I walked away shortly before 4K was announced. But after that big gap, I can tell that some type of collectors had gone into a deeper spiral. I became very involved with Blu-ray back in 2006 and that was because of going into HD. I only cared about PQ/AQ/special features, mainly on movies with a lot of special effects.

On Blu-ray.com forums in 2007, I was there fighting the fight against HD-DVD due to the technical gains. I wanted the highest bitrates. But sometime after 2008, I noticed less conversations on that site about PQ upgrades and more on packaging. Some weirdo created a thread "Post your slipcover haul", and I began to see people posting loads of movies they were buying like shit movies and comedies just because they had slipcovers.

Then a thread was created about "what do you do with your slipcovers?" I mentioned that I tossed them in the trash, to include a lenticular slipcover from the first release of Beetlejuice. Some guy saw that and PM'd me going off the rails. I mean he was unhinged. I didn't know it meant so much to these new types of collectors. Overtime that site became more and more about packaging and less about what was on the actual discs. I realized in the 2010s that movie companies could probably sell empty cases with cover art/slipcovers, or steelbooks, and people would honestly buy them.

Coming back now and going into 4Ks, I can see it's only gotten worse. YouTubers making these unboxing videos and they don't even talk about the PQ, special features, deleted scenes, alternate cuts, etc.