"It’s Not Being Taken from Us. We Gave It Up."

"The Dissolve published two pieces in two days about the demise of video stores in general and why brick-and-mortar rental shops are still valuable parts of film culture whose demise should be met with sadness and regret. Pieces like that are an important part of the conversation, but in those and others like them, people have also been quick to stress that Blockbuster had just as many cons as pros: it was a corporate, plastic environment that stressed new releases and mainstream titles while downplaying older, foreign, or more obscure releases. In other words, it aimed for the biggest possible chunk of the market, and it made quite a bit of money doing so.
"Yet Blockbuster had been dying for years."

In Salon, Daniel Carlson refuses to mourn the demise of Blockbuster.