I am not looking forward to the day that medical implants and devices become subscription-based.
Missed too many monthly payments? Your pacemaker gets shut off until your account is no longer delinquent.
Find and watch the 2010 Jude Law movie “repo men”.
This is something that Robots of all movies tried to warn everyone about 20 years ago, specifically with (spoilers for a freakin’ 20-year-old movie that no one cares about) Ratchet killing spare parts in order to push his expensive upgrade packages. That sound familiar to what’s going on IRL right now?
I think there are a lot of things that are behind subscriptions that you do not realize. One example is computer mice.
They use switches that are only rated for a certain number of clicks before they stop working.
I was going through mice about once every 18 months. I decided to learn to soldier and just replace the switches once they broke.
I found that the switched in the $100 Logitech mouse I bought were only rated for 5 or 10 million clicks. The switch they use can be purchased in a 70 million version. Why didn’t they use that from the start?
I ended up repairing 3 mice and have a lot of extra switches sitting in a bit at home.
planned obsolescence ≠ subscription
This seems like a ridiculously loose use of the word subscription.
Would you say you subscribe to 700km worth of fuel in your car, subscribe to light bulbs in your house, subscribe to your pencil that is getting slowly worn down with each use?
Why not?
Because it’s frankly a somewhat ridiculous stretch of the word. That way, anything you purchase more than once in your life would be a subscription (toilet paper, bathroom repairs, even food and water). If anything, it gives more power to toxic subscription services (like how BMW gatekeeps seat heating iirc) by muddying the waters and making their subscriptions seem less outrageous than it is.
Yo wtf
Meanwhile I’m on my second Logitech in 15-20 years.
you can be the mouse fixer of the friend group. trade fixed mice for casseroles and rides to the airport
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Spending money. Thorough a combination of a lot of bad luck and a few bad choices, I’m stuck playing credit card musical chairs to keep enough cash for rent and bills. “Ability to buy groceries/toiletries/medical copays/etc.” is functionally a subscription for me. Few years of rice and beans in my future until I can dig myself out… good thing I like beans I guess
The worst I can imagine (aside from housing…) would be the others in Maslow’s pyramid base: air, water, food, clothing.
- Air would be some straight up cyberpunk shit.
- Water/food would also be horrifying. We currently see meal subscriptions as a luxury, but for those without access to a kitchen and/or with disabilities that prevent them from reliably using one… ah fuck that’s dismal.
- Clothing would be fuckin weird. Because such a ridiculous volume of it exists due to fast fashion, I can’t see this happening on Earth in the near future, thankfully.
out of curiosity, how much total debt are you carrying?
About 2 years’ worth of rent (I live in NYC, to give an idea) in credit cards and a similarly large chunk in student loans
I was someone who paid off my balance in full at the end of every month for about 10 years, then bam, COVID, more fuck shit, rent needing to be paid via credit card several months (even more expensive as they take a usually 5% or more fee), and here we are
Oxygen
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You should watch Spaceballs. Then you wouldn’t be able to brag so proudly about being ignorant.
housing
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Your ISP and Netflix already charge subscriptions, what other “part of the internet” is left to charge for? There’s several subscriptions for social media as well if you count blue checkmarks and the like.
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I see, so you’re talking about ISPs splitting up service into multiple packages like a cable company. I guess multiplying an existing subscription counts as a new subscription 👍
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