// HYPOTHESIS_LOADED
"It's only $9.99 a month."
This is the most dangerous sentence in the English language. We say it for Netflix. We say it for Spotify. We say it for the meditation app we opened once in 2019. We say it for the gym we never go to.
We don't own things anymore; we rent access to our own lives. This is the "Subscription Economy."
I audited my bank account and found the horror: I was bleeding $240 a month in automatic payments. That’s nearly $3,000 a year.
So I decided to hit the nuclear button. I cancelled everything. All of it. If it billed repeatedly, it had to go.
> THE PAIN OF LEAVING (DARK PATTERNS)
Companies do not want you to leave. They make it purposely difficult. This is called a "Dark Pattern."
- The Gym: I couldn't cancel online. I couldn't cancel by phone. I had to physically drive to the gym and sign a paper form while a muscular man named Chad asked me "why I was giving up on my health." It was humiliating.
- The New York Times: "Please chat with a retention specialist." I waited 45 minutes to talk to a human just to stop paying them.
- Adobe: "You have a contract. The early termination fee is $50." I kept it. They held me hostage.
> THE WITHDRAWAL (WEEK 1)
The silence was deafening.
I got in my car and plugged in my phone. No Spotify. No podcasts (some were behind paywalls). I turned on the FM radio. Commercials. So many commercials. "O-O-O-Oreilly Auto Parts!"
Friday night came. I wanted to watch a movie. I sat on my couch. My TV was a black mirror. No Netflix. No Hulu. No HBO.
I felt... poor. I felt disconnected from culture. "Did you see the new show usually?" No, I didn't. I can't.
> THE DISCOVERY (WEEK 2)
But necessity is the mother of invention. When you take away the convenience, you find the alternatives.
1. The Library (Kanopy): Did you know your library card gives you free access to a streaming service called Kanopy? It has incredible movies. A24 films, documentaries, classics. And it costs $0.
2. Running Outside: The gym has AC, true. But the street is free. I started running in the park. The graphics are better (real trees).
3. Owned Music: I dug up my old hard drive. I found thousands of MP3s from 2008. I listened to whole albums again, not just "chill beats to study to" playlists.
> FINAL_VERDICT
After 30 days, I looked at my bank account. I sat on that extra $240.
I re-subscribed to exactly one thing: Spotify. The ads were simply too soul-crushing.
But the rest? I didn't miss them.
CONCLUSION: We are paying for convenience, not content. We pay because we are lazy. But if you are willing to deal with a little bit of friction, the world is still largely free.