Fast watching and fast spending
How technology is taking advantage of your subconsciousness
Advances in technology improve our life quickly, so quickly that you don’t have time to think about what you are buying before you buy it. We are all ready to jump on the next bandwagon conducted by the tech companies leading us to the foreign lands of our dreams, or their dreams. The dream of capturing the souls/money of the users faster and more permanently than ever before.
To be able to capture your soul of course, companies need your information. This is nothing new for technology, we are used to the cookies and the constant tracking, and google listening into our conversations to show the right adds that will capture our attention. These creepy threats to our privacy reveal themselves every time we open our devices.
One company that shamelessly uses all your information is Netflix. It feeds every item you have clicked into a machine learning system in the name of giving you better recommendations. They talk about it pretty openly.
Given the enormous diversity in taste and preferences, wouldn’t it be better if we could find the best artwork for each of our members to highlight the aspects of a title that are specifically relevant to them?
Turns out the key to making you watch more is to show you the right images, and to choose the right images, they have to get to know you. More than an issue of privacy, this turns into an issue of profiling. Black people are more likely to see black people on the cover, because any human is more likely to click on an image that relates to them.
This technique keeps you watching content you would not be interested in otherwise. Netflix does not even have to invest in new shows, it can keep showing the same shows to different people by covering it with a new image. The technology targets your subconsciousness by using your brains attraction to familiarity to keep you hooked to its programs.
Pretty much all large companies are searching into ways they can benefit off of users, Amazon especially is interested in shortening the time it takes for you to decide you like a product and for you to buy it.
You see, deciding to buy something is a process controlled by your emotions. The faster the company can get you to checkout, the less time you have to actually think on your purchase. Amazon must have noticed that once a product is added to the cart and subsequently abandoned, the buyer is unlikely to come back for it.
Wanting to save these products from their tragic fate, Amazon patented services like one-click checkout, and more recently they brought in a game changing piece of technology: the dash button.
All you do is buy the button once, and every time you run out of a product, click the button to get more. It makes you forget that you are even actually paying money for it! That must be why Germany is trying to ban these tiny buttons.
I know at least a few people who would not be able to stop themselves from clicking the button even if they had not ran out of anything recently. The temptation would be unstoppable and Amazon knows it. It is a much faster way of making money than waiting for the customer to come around to checkout after filling a cart for days, and let them get a chance to review exactly what they are buying before making a decision.
Tricking customers is obviously bad ethics, however I still think buying products without dealing with a middle man is pretty cool. Faster buying also means less time spent by the user. As technology develops, we just have to be more conscious and aware of the intention behind every service that is being offered to us, and make educated decisions.
Maybe stop roaming through your Netflix recommendations and instead ask your friends or do research about what to watch next. That seems to be the only way to discover new interests since Netflix is fixated on showing you what you already like. Also, google the movie and read a description outside of Netflix. Spend slightly more time choosing what to watch and less time watching things that will waste your time (as opposed to Netflix’s motto).
Same goes for Amazon, make sure you pause and take a breath before you click the button. Be aware of how companies are targeting your impulsive decisions to trick you into spending your money. These techniques have existed long before Amazon or Netflix, and technology is not to blame. It is up to us consumers to make the correct decisions about how we use technology, and question whether it truly exists to make our lives easier.
