Divided by zero - Consumerism

The general premise

As a man who is into tech, I love studying and learning about sofisticated tech solutions. I love my family and I want the best for them, yet I always had communication constraints with them, and all those marketing agents keep winning with their schemes. It's a two sided war where I have to fight in order to propose what I think is the best for my members, me vs marketing. After all, that's their job, and as a human who consumes, making decisions on what to purchase and what to spend my time on is crucial for my growth, both physically and mentally.

I think by the time I became an adult, I started to consciously divide between my needs and wants. I believe that growing in my environment played a role in this transformation. Once you list the functions of a product and map the right attributes to these, your perspective changes and you start discovering new options. Of course this thinking is not perfect, there will be points in your life where you are restricted by time.

I did not fully read Theodore Kaczynski's work, Although the book is heavily political, I think part of what the book contains aligns itself with my ideas. Before making a purchase, ask yourself: By using this object or service, how dependant will my usage be from any third-party ? Do I really need the object or do I want the object ?

By analysing your decisions, you end up setting a search space instead of staying a prisoner of the monopoly. Let's take a look at a concrete example: When buying a phone, I often target the battery and storage specs, I set a budget and solve a 2 dimensional operational research problem. Because the tech allows for it. I would want a phone that allows me to use my storage, so no Apple products for me. Next comes the right to own/repair cultures into play: Will I end up freely owning my phone and toying with it i.e. Install any OS that I want ? How much can I repair on my own without seeking any third parties ?

Another example that I saddens me often is when I attempted to introduce a Raspberry Pi as a medium that enables them to experience having a Smart TV, without having to own one. My family owned an old Samsung Smart TV, they believed back then that it could connect to the internet and allow them to watch youtube videos, which was true back when the software allowed, until an update hit it in the gears. I proposed the Pi, alas, they chose to buy a new modern TV instead. Raspberry Pis are flexible and there are multitude of guides on how to set them up for such emulation purposes, they enable more control over the device, heck I don't know much about the TV boards and I might start believing that every TV is a shell containing a small computer à la Raspberry Pi.

I hate subscriptions

As we keep moving forward, marketers are doing their best to make it harder for us to keep our dependence, so much so that we took things for granted and normalized all of their schemes. Funnily enough this evolved way past media consumption and made its way to cars. On the topic of media, I like to own my music, I never pay subscriptions to Spotify or any of its similar software apps; funnily enough, not paying for a spotify subscription is beneficial to me: Since I am not subbed, they enforce an arbitrary song after playing the one that I selected; I use freemium Spotify, which is sufficient enough just for music discovery so it's a win-win for everyone!

Licences are also becoming more and more controversial, a recent Sony update made it so that people who purchased movies won't be able to eventually access the said movies as their licences are getting revoked.

The movies and shows industry is having a monopoly-hell where many big providers like Netflix and Disney want to enable exclusivity. In this monologue, the marketing team plays around our patience. This causes yet another issue that I will bring up, which presents itself as a solution on its own: "Backlogs". When a new movies/show gets released, if it coincidentally acts as material for something you have watched in the past, it ends up catching your attention, making you pause what you are currently consuming and get attracted to the new media and adding yet more stacks to your backlog. I am a patient man, I use my backlogs however to stall more time against my emotions and wait for the next chance to watch the show without having to pay for a subscription. This goes true for video games as well!

With all that being said, my experiences translate as well in my computer usage. More often than not, it is usually the all-in one softwares that cost money, be it a video editor or any kind of software. What I usually do is to devise a workflow composed of small free tools that I can combine in order to achieve my wants.

Smelling the quality of a product before release

As I grew up, I developed a sense that allows me to see if a digital product is worth it, especially when it comes down to video games. Their prices are much more costly with some people justifying it as a consequence of inflation, which in my opinion is an idea sold by the people in the industry to normalize the prices. My years of reviewing games and software taught me how to grade a product and give it a price, so much so that it made me much satisfied with my consumption and made it harder for me to get disapointed. Some products are not worth their starting price that's for sure, so what I do against my patience is to create a routine of hobbies and check out my backlog while waiting for the prices to drop. Before getting into a game I attempt to future sight if I can finish it without getting bothered by my adult life and if paying for it will be worth my time and money, I am not gonna pay a high price for something that I can finish in a week.

I could not develope however this same analytic skill for books and movies. Books are more baity than the youtubers online yet at least some authors do offer a small summary on the product's page which is to be appreciated.

What's next ?

This is where I am failing to predict the future, I know for sure that humans are becoming more and more aware of these schemes, and as a counter measure companies are pushing aggressivly. As of the writing of this topic, these greedy people are pushing for what would be called forced arbitration. I know for a fact that service sellers will always attempt to hide or decorate their plots, but for something like this, I find it funny that they are not trying anymore. Our data and its privacy are becoming sacred, I try my best to keep it safe, yet I am failing to sight the far implications of forced arbitration. I know it might push some customers away that's for sure, this will keep me curious for long.

But I am just a human being

My immunity against these schemes is strong, yet not perfect. Being into the DIY culture is something that I recommend to anyone, it teaches you self-dependence and patience. Being a craftsman allowed me not only to save up some money, but to gain confidence that I can achieve goals without having to rely on anyone. It enables you to solve problems differently and passively makes you open to new solutions. Evil marketers are slowly trying to kill this culture by making it harder and harder for us to exercise it. Years ago I would swap the battery of my phone and fix my screen without having to visit an engineer. Now, you have to visit the provider's engineer to fix your phone and still get charged for it, or else you void the warranty.

After all, some called me a frugal man and I highly sympathize with this, yet I can't allow marketing to win. They will keep creating their illusions and I will keep living happily ever after. They also mention that I this lifestyle slows down my exploration, all I can say is that my senses prevent financial disappointments.