Thinkingdog Publishing

I don’t know how y’all do it . Truly. I am in absolute awe of the people who walk around with their phones chiming, pinging, jingling, and jangling like an overenthusiastic one-man band. It’s like their entire existence is set to the soundtrack of Incoming Notification Symphony No. 5 in B-flat minor. Me? I cannot. I will not. I refuse . The first thing I do when I get a new phone—before setting up email, before adding my contacts, before even connecting to Wi-Fi—is turn off notifications . Every single one of them. If a phone could gasp in horror, I swear mine would. “Oh, you don’t want to be alerted when someone breathes near your social media? You’re sure you don’t need to know immediately when Aunt Carol posts another blurry photo of her cat? You really don’t want to be reminded for the 47th time today that you left an item in your shopping cart?” No, phone. I do not. I want peace. I want quiet. I want my train of thought to pull out of the station without being derailed every...

There I was, innocently scrolling through the internet, looking for absolutely nothing in particular (as one does), when an ad stopped me cold. It wasn’t for a life-changing gadget, nor was it for a questionable "miracle" supplement. No, this was worse. It was an ad for a shampoo subscription. That’s right. Some marketing genius out there thinks I should subscribe to shampoo. Now, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but shampoo is not Netflix. Shampoo is not a magazine. Shampoo is not a service. It is soap for my head. You buy it. You use it. You buy more when you need it. The End. But no. Apparently, that’s not good enough for the corporate overlords. Now, they want us to subscribe to everything. Laundry detergent. Kitty litter. Coffee. Socks. I mean, sure, the socks I understand—those things disappear into the void faster than my motivation to exercise—but shampoo ? The Problem with Subscription Everything Let’s talk about how these so-called "convenience...