For a long time, I was allowing myself to use the free services of different companies. I was of the view that “Hey, it’s free, what is the worst that could happen?”. I couldn’t have been stupider.
Technology companies are the only ones apart from drug peddlars that refer to their customers as ‘users’. As innocent as this may sound, all tech companies and all companies in general are moving towards offering something to the ‘user’ for free. Why would they do this?
How do they make money if they offer goods and services for free?
What is their intent?
That is the right question. What could their intent possibly be behind offering a $50 worth of coupon for a service? The intent is clear as night and day if you know where to look and keep your eyes open. They want to ‘hook’ you to a product/service. Once you’re hooked, they anticipate that it would be too hard for anyone to break the chains of habit and they would reap the benefits in perpetuity.
I do not blame so much the traditional companies that actually provide some kind of physical goods/services as much as I like to blame the tech that offers little marginal value to all of us. No names need to be taken, they are all the same. They want eyeballs and they attempt to get them using every trick in the book. If they aren’t enough tricks in the book, they go ahead and write a new book. The evil underbelly of these companies is scary to look at.
I take a simple approach towards all these products, I use them sparingly and use them according to my choices. I use them via a computer so that I can control them vs the other way around if I use them on a mobile device.
I log out of the service after I’m done using it, this practice has long been forgotten by people but it is a superb way to get your focus back where it belongs.
I turn my phone into black and white to avoid the charge associated with magical eye popping colours and effects that are played by these attention hungry apps to keep people lured into them for hours together.
I can see people waste away their lives in these virtual worlds. I am sad for them, but I do not wish to patronise anyone. They will be taught a lesson by life when the time comes and it will hit some people too hard because they never spent all that time building up a valuable skillset.