I’m convinced there’s a boardroom somewhere where men in vests sit around asking one question: what in this person’s home isn’t selling them something yet? First it was the TV, then the phone, and now my fridge wants to talk about streaming shows. That’s why corporate greed memes are the only news I trust. They’re the receipts, folks, taken by people who just wanted to know what time it was.
Time is money, apparently literally.
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Burglary in progress, after this message.
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Hope, sold separately.
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Free, as in not free.
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Carol just wanted ice.
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Five servings of fruit and content.
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Mirror, mirror, sponsored content.
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Dinner has a countdown now.
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The annoying ads are what keep me up at night, mostly because they’re on the thing that’s supposed to help me sleep. A clock shows a shaver commercial. A gas pump plays a sandwich ad while you’re holding it, and a restroom mirror won’t show you your own face until you’ve watched a trailer, which is the most dystopian sentence I have ever typed.
Dark patterns are just lies with a nicer font. Switch the toggle on to opt out, unless it’s off, in which case you’ve agreed to everything, including a war. The hidden fees might be worse. I once paid a convenience fee to pay a convenience fee, and I didn’t even fight it, because at a certain point you have to respect the hustle.
I think people share these because complaining alone feels crazy and complaining together feels like a movement. Every one of these is somebody pointing at a screen and saying, are you seeing this? And yes, we are all seeing it, mostly because it’s printed on the fruit now, and I can’t even trust an apple to keep quiet anymore.
Somewhere a fridge is listening, and it would love to tell you about a limited-time offer.
30 Capitalism Fails From The Discounted Dystopia Aisle is the natural next stop, and Bad Ads Continue to Be the Most Reliable Proof That Corporate Oversight Is, Structurally, a Polite Fiction makes a very convincing closing argument. Read them now, before somebody puts a paywall on outrage.
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