What You Can't Say No To Owns You

Grand Theft Auto 6's price. Sony dropping their physical disks despite customer outcry. Subscriptions everywhere you turn. The entire concept of "enshittification". Anti-consumer practices everywhere.

I have been discussing this with people online in various places lately. I propose a simple solution: If you don't like the terms of the deal, don't take the deal.

If you don't like your subscription service going up in price, cancel it.

If you don't like that a deal has been spontaneously renegotiated by some large company in their favor, stop paying them.

What shocks me most in these debates aren't the people who dislike the change but are still willing to pay. That can be perfectly valid. A price that rises but you choose deliberately to pay is unfortunate, but sometimes it happens.

What shocks me are the people who literally can not conceive of not buying the product and taking the deal, no matter how bad the deal is.

I can't even parody it here for demonstration purposes. I've gone several levels down in various threads just trying to convey the idea of not taking the deal. Eventually I just keep going out of morbid curiosity about how long someone can fail to grasp the concept of not buying some particular thing.

Addiction is conventionally thought of in terms of drugs, gambling, or sex, but the modern world has developed several more types that we're still grappling with. Idolatry outside of Christian contexts is generally thought of exclusively in terms of worshiping an idol, specifically of some sort of god, other than the true God.

Both things have in common that whatever you can't say no to, owns you. Both of these things are bad because neither of these things are supposed to own you, and bad things are going to come from them owning you.

Both things also share in common that the earlier you fix them, the easier it is to deal with. Evil loves to create situations where the slope goes gently and comfortably down, but the walls rise around you slowly but surely. The earlier you get out of the trap, the easier it is, but the best time to get out of a trap you are already in is now, because it only gets harder as you go.

If you are one of those people who can't so much as cancel a streaming video service, or fail to purchase Grand Theft Auto 6, or anything else like that, you have given up your freedom and surrendered control, to people who are going to abuse that as much as they can get away with.