The one that will startle the heck out of you is these video advertisements that kick in when you start pumping gas. Or sometimes it's celebrity news. There's no preamble, just the sudden startling noise of the sort of thing you haven't chosen to listen to in years.
Yup, somebody saw that that five minutes of vacantness - I won't say pleasant vacantness since everything and its opposite exists and I suppose some people find pumping gas alone with one's thoughts super-tedious - and said, hey, let's monetize that.
It was once a normal sentiment to say you did not want to die in a hospital surrounded by strangers, beeps, buzzes, flashing lights, and wired up to machines.
That's something that had really ticked me off with my induction hob and cooker, purchased just over 2 years ago. It's all non-existent buttons that beep, a three-note chime when you pick a function, and if you remove the pan from the hob, leave something on an unused hob, or spill a little water on it, BEEP BEEP BEEP *FLASHING LIGHT* BEEP and off it goes with a final, disappointed chime.
I am harangued by inanimate objects. And increasingly, artificially intelligent ones. It can all, quite frankly, get to fuck.
I hadn't consciously realized this, but this post made me make the connection that on the rare instances I go into Walmart or Price Chopper I nearly always turn my hearing aids off. And the billboard ban is something I'm a little conflicted about (less conflicted than you are, I think?). Every time I go to New Hampshire or Massachusetts or Connecticut and come home, I may be imagining it of course, but I think I really do feel my mind and spirit get the equivalent of a hot shower and a massage. Something indescribable but very tangible is cleansed and renewed from the removal of that shit.
"Vermont, where I live, bans billboard advertisements. I have conflicted feelings about this. My libertarian streak disapproves of government meddling in markets, but my nervous system is grateful for the un-polluted views of this beautiful state and its rolling mountains."
I'm a former New Englander and have driven thru Vermont. I wasn't initially aware of the ban on signs on the interstate, but I knew something was different. Give me some credit. When I realized that there were no signs obliterating the view, I knew that Vermont must have a law. Whatever else they've gotten wrong, God bless them for that.
I feel like this excellent and astute essay is the natural follow-up to your essay about the machines telling us what to do.
I find I rarely listen to music in the car now for the reasons you've written about. I can't take any more noise and I crave the nearby woods for beauty and visual and auditory peace (thankfully where I live--southern Oregon is mostly mountains and forest or I'd go crazy). It is almost physically painful to visit south NJ where I grew up.
Went to a dinner gathering on Easter and there was this kid in his early 20s from Mississippi. Smart kid; college grad (Ole Miss); wiry, tall and a bit sunburnt from outdoor work; friendly and polite and kept sirring and ma'aming anyone older than him. I said, "Is that how people still are down there, so polite with the sirs and ma'ams?"
Have you noticed that we’re all forced to listen to those obnoxious gas station ads and vacuous celebrity gossip because states have now all removed that little tab you could flip up to automatically keep the pump going if you need to go into the store? Nope, we all now need to keep our hand on the pump, all in the name of SEEEFTY.
All of this is, so sadly, true. Someone will usually say "you're just old and you don't like change", or they'll trot out a quote from some Greek from 1,000 BC complaining about teenagers, but, like you pointed out, the change today isn't like the gradual change of the past. Sure, some people were up-in-arms about the waltz in the late 1800s, or Elvis in the 1950s, but Johann Strauss and Elvis weren't grunting about beating hos and capping cops. The U.S. and much of the Western world have quickly fallen into an abyss of degradation that is unprecedented, at least in modern history. The constant noise and inescapable video we're subjected to are just a couple of the symptoms. The way things are going, and will likely keep going, makes me glad I'm old and won't be around too much longer. I really don't envy children, or people in their twenties and thirties, who will be living in this dying civilization for another fifty, sixty, or more years. As bad as things are now, the nightmare that's coming is unimaginable, and I'm content that I won't be around to see it.
Thank you Josh for saying/writing out loud the things so many of us observe but don't often discuss publicly. Society is fraying from the loss of what were previously common courtesies routinely extended between people - and the imposition of media on others in public spaces heretofore mostly consumed privately at home. If no one educates the latest generation in such mores and customs - they are lost and not replaced.
If you're clever with cars and appliances, you can often fix the damned beeping with a pair of wire cutters. It's a satisfying feeling when you've defeated some enforced annoying "safety" feature.
Until a few months ago, we were able to mute the self-checkout register. I can't remember exactly when it changed, but someone decided that all the self-checkouts needed to be reprogrammed so you couldn't mute them. My husband and I spend our time telling the machine to shut up while we scan our groceries now.
I really enjoy these pieces, if nothing else because it's a beautiful reminder that I'm not crazy and I'm not alone.
On the beeping and flashing, it's like everything else - if *everything* is a warning, then it all just melds together in a cacophony. When only a dump truck beeps to back up, you notice and you're arguably safer.
I find myself with major anger issues as I get older (I turned 40 last fall) - and it's almost entirely at the sheer selfishness and self-centeredness that pervades the modern world. You feel like you're the only person who is not actively and aggressively an asshole and it's maddening.
I remember when my fellow drivers didn't 1) all follow each other at a distance of less than a car length, 2) use their turn signal as some sort of "fuck you, here I come" rather than as an inquiry ("hey fellow citizen, do you see me? can you let me over?", 3) drivers who were about to miss their freeway exit *gasp* simply did their best to get over safely and if they could not, they realized it was their mistake and would simply get off on the next exit and backtrack.
I remember when going to the store meant faint background music and the din of other in-the-flesh human beings talking to each other - a low rumble of hellos, excuse mes, and could-you-help-me-find-somethings. Now it's just a bunch of zonked out zombies stumbling around, staring at the ever-present cell phone glow a few inches from their faces and absent that, loud conversations on the phone.
I leave for work at 6:30am, and have about an hour commute. I frequently see people talking or texting on their phones, even that early. Who the hell are these people talking to at that hour? Used to be you'd see the one dolled up business man in the fancy export on his "car phone." Now, some mulletheaded mastodon in a jalopy apparently *must* talk to someone at all hours of the day, every day.
If I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud, so be it. I'm never going to see any of this shit as normal. The world is crazy - we're the sane ones who notice.
I think one of the problems is the "growth mindset" that businesses have. It's not seen as good enough for a business to have a sustainable profit margin. To be happy providing a service that is successful in the sense it provides jobs, a necessary service, and isn't going bankrupt. No, line must always go up. But with a lot of businesses there is simply a cap on how many people want/need that service. To tap into more profits they allow advertisers to invade, even when it used to be that the trade off when paying for something was that you didn't have to be advertised to.
Another thing to note is how internet services evolve to continue to cash in on users. I remember when you could use YouTube on your phone with their own and turn the screen off, effectively using it as a streaming service for music. This was back when most videos did not have advertisements and if they did they were "big" channels and long videos, not some rando who uploaded some 80s tunes. But time and time again the company will notice users finding ways to use their platform and then taking that innovation and rebranding it as a "feature" that must now be paid for. Now there is YouTube Music and Premium and ads on everything, so much so they're unwatchable without fifty different ad blockers. I mercilessly block ads on everything. We're constantly bombarded with ads, algorithms, and statistics. It's awful.
You don't get to opt-in anymore either. You only get to say "maybe later", "skip for now", and constantly have to check to see if your feeds are the stuff you actually follow or if the site has defaulted to showing you things you didn't ask for. Even Substack does this with showing "recommended" notes on the homepage and I have to constantly switch it to "following". There is no way as of yet to set that to the default and be able to leave it. The fucking AI shit is on everything, constantly nudging you and recommending things. I never was asked if I'd like these features on my phone, computer, or what not. No shade to anyone who uses them. But I'd like the option to say NO to things again and to only have on my devices the things I use.
Thankfully, my Walmart hasn't implemented little Mx. I Robot asking how many bags I've used. But if they do I'll just lie to the bitch.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer restaurants and bars without any screens. And I avoid these automatic self checkout lines like the next start of an epidemic. The noises and visual stimulation is one thing, but they all operate differently that it is hard to keep up.
In planes I do not use the screen in front of me, but typically bring a good old fashioned book with paper pages to turn by hand.
And yes, in normal life I am as addicted to my phone screen as anybody else. I dream of an off the grid screen free vacation quite frequently.
Yes to THIS!! I made it known to my local grocery store manager that I spend less time inside the store due to the excessive propaganda being drilled through their loudspeakers which used to deliver low volume instrumental music. Now it’s all about flu shots, shingles shots , rsxyz shots, “stop at the pharmacy now& you’ll get a free cookie w your vaccine!!” I reject ALL of the ridiculousness - make it STOPPP.
The one that will startle the heck out of you is these video advertisements that kick in when you start pumping gas. Or sometimes it's celebrity news. There's no preamble, just the sudden startling noise of the sort of thing you haven't chosen to listen to in years.
Yup, somebody saw that that five minutes of vacantness - I won't say pleasant vacantness since everything and its opposite exists and I suppose some people find pumping gas alone with one's thoughts super-tedious - and said, hey, let's monetize that.
It was once a normal sentiment to say you did not want to die in a hospital surrounded by strangers, beeps, buzzes, flashing lights, and wired up to machines.
Now people choose to live this way.
That's something that had really ticked me off with my induction hob and cooker, purchased just over 2 years ago. It's all non-existent buttons that beep, a three-note chime when you pick a function, and if you remove the pan from the hob, leave something on an unused hob, or spill a little water on it, BEEP BEEP BEEP *FLASHING LIGHT* BEEP and off it goes with a final, disappointed chime.
I am harangued by inanimate objects. And increasingly, artificially intelligent ones. It can all, quite frankly, get to fuck.
I hadn't consciously realized this, but this post made me make the connection that on the rare instances I go into Walmart or Price Chopper I nearly always turn my hearing aids off. And the billboard ban is something I'm a little conflicted about (less conflicted than you are, I think?). Every time I go to New Hampshire or Massachusetts or Connecticut and come home, I may be imagining it of course, but I think I really do feel my mind and spirit get the equivalent of a hot shower and a massage. Something indescribable but very tangible is cleansed and renewed from the removal of that shit.
"Vermont, where I live, bans billboard advertisements. I have conflicted feelings about this. My libertarian streak disapproves of government meddling in markets, but my nervous system is grateful for the un-polluted views of this beautiful state and its rolling mountains."
I'm a former New Englander and have driven thru Vermont. I wasn't initially aware of the ban on signs on the interstate, but I knew something was different. Give me some credit. When I realized that there were no signs obliterating the view, I knew that Vermont must have a law. Whatever else they've gotten wrong, God bless them for that.
I feel like this excellent and astute essay is the natural follow-up to your essay about the machines telling us what to do.
I find I rarely listen to music in the car now for the reasons you've written about. I can't take any more noise and I crave the nearby woods for beauty and visual and auditory peace (thankfully where I live--southern Oregon is mostly mountains and forest or I'd go crazy). It is almost physically painful to visit south NJ where I grew up.
Went to a dinner gathering on Easter and there was this kid in his early 20s from Mississippi. Smart kid; college grad (Ole Miss); wiry, tall and a bit sunburnt from outdoor work; friendly and polite and kept sirring and ma'aming anyone older than him. I said, "Is that how people still are down there, so polite with the sirs and ma'ams?"
He said, "Pretty much."
I'd like to visit his home town.
Have you noticed that we’re all forced to listen to those obnoxious gas station ads and vacuous celebrity gossip because states have now all removed that little tab you could flip up to automatically keep the pump going if you need to go into the store? Nope, we all now need to keep our hand on the pump, all in the name of SEEEFTY.
All of this is, so sadly, true. Someone will usually say "you're just old and you don't like change", or they'll trot out a quote from some Greek from 1,000 BC complaining about teenagers, but, like you pointed out, the change today isn't like the gradual change of the past. Sure, some people were up-in-arms about the waltz in the late 1800s, or Elvis in the 1950s, but Johann Strauss and Elvis weren't grunting about beating hos and capping cops. The U.S. and much of the Western world have quickly fallen into an abyss of degradation that is unprecedented, at least in modern history. The constant noise and inescapable video we're subjected to are just a couple of the symptoms. The way things are going, and will likely keep going, makes me glad I'm old and won't be around too much longer. I really don't envy children, or people in their twenties and thirties, who will be living in this dying civilization for another fifty, sixty, or more years. As bad as things are now, the nightmare that's coming is unimaginable, and I'm content that I won't be around to see it.
Thank you Josh for saying/writing out loud the things so many of us observe but don't often discuss publicly. Society is fraying from the loss of what were previously common courtesies routinely extended between people - and the imposition of media on others in public spaces heretofore mostly consumed privately at home. If no one educates the latest generation in such mores and customs - they are lost and not replaced.
If you're clever with cars and appliances, you can often fix the damned beeping with a pair of wire cutters. It's a satisfying feeling when you've defeated some enforced annoying "safety" feature.
Until a few months ago, we were able to mute the self-checkout register. I can't remember exactly when it changed, but someone decided that all the self-checkouts needed to be reprogrammed so you couldn't mute them. My husband and I spend our time telling the machine to shut up while we scan our groceries now.
Josh talking Scruton? I'm in heaven.
I really enjoy these pieces, if nothing else because it's a beautiful reminder that I'm not crazy and I'm not alone.
On the beeping and flashing, it's like everything else - if *everything* is a warning, then it all just melds together in a cacophony. When only a dump truck beeps to back up, you notice and you're arguably safer.
I find myself with major anger issues as I get older (I turned 40 last fall) - and it's almost entirely at the sheer selfishness and self-centeredness that pervades the modern world. You feel like you're the only person who is not actively and aggressively an asshole and it's maddening.
I remember when my fellow drivers didn't 1) all follow each other at a distance of less than a car length, 2) use their turn signal as some sort of "fuck you, here I come" rather than as an inquiry ("hey fellow citizen, do you see me? can you let me over?", 3) drivers who were about to miss their freeway exit *gasp* simply did their best to get over safely and if they could not, they realized it was their mistake and would simply get off on the next exit and backtrack.
I remember when going to the store meant faint background music and the din of other in-the-flesh human beings talking to each other - a low rumble of hellos, excuse mes, and could-you-help-me-find-somethings. Now it's just a bunch of zonked out zombies stumbling around, staring at the ever-present cell phone glow a few inches from their faces and absent that, loud conversations on the phone.
I leave for work at 6:30am, and have about an hour commute. I frequently see people talking or texting on their phones, even that early. Who the hell are these people talking to at that hour? Used to be you'd see the one dolled up business man in the fancy export on his "car phone." Now, some mulletheaded mastodon in a jalopy apparently *must* talk to someone at all hours of the day, every day.
If I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud, so be it. I'm never going to see any of this shit as normal. The world is crazy - we're the sane ones who notice.
I think one of the problems is the "growth mindset" that businesses have. It's not seen as good enough for a business to have a sustainable profit margin. To be happy providing a service that is successful in the sense it provides jobs, a necessary service, and isn't going bankrupt. No, line must always go up. But with a lot of businesses there is simply a cap on how many people want/need that service. To tap into more profits they allow advertisers to invade, even when it used to be that the trade off when paying for something was that you didn't have to be advertised to.
Another thing to note is how internet services evolve to continue to cash in on users. I remember when you could use YouTube on your phone with their own and turn the screen off, effectively using it as a streaming service for music. This was back when most videos did not have advertisements and if they did they were "big" channels and long videos, not some rando who uploaded some 80s tunes. But time and time again the company will notice users finding ways to use their platform and then taking that innovation and rebranding it as a "feature" that must now be paid for. Now there is YouTube Music and Premium and ads on everything, so much so they're unwatchable without fifty different ad blockers. I mercilessly block ads on everything. We're constantly bombarded with ads, algorithms, and statistics. It's awful.
You don't get to opt-in anymore either. You only get to say "maybe later", "skip for now", and constantly have to check to see if your feeds are the stuff you actually follow or if the site has defaulted to showing you things you didn't ask for. Even Substack does this with showing "recommended" notes on the homepage and I have to constantly switch it to "following". There is no way as of yet to set that to the default and be able to leave it. The fucking AI shit is on everything, constantly nudging you and recommending things. I never was asked if I'd like these features on my phone, computer, or what not. No shade to anyone who uses them. But I'd like the option to say NO to things again and to only have on my devices the things I use.
Thankfully, my Walmart hasn't implemented little Mx. I Robot asking how many bags I've used. But if they do I'll just lie to the bitch.
This is one of the reasons why I prefer restaurants and bars without any screens. And I avoid these automatic self checkout lines like the next start of an epidemic. The noises and visual stimulation is one thing, but they all operate differently that it is hard to keep up.
In planes I do not use the screen in front of me, but typically bring a good old fashioned book with paper pages to turn by hand.
And yes, in normal life I am as addicted to my phone screen as anybody else. I dream of an off the grid screen free vacation quite frequently.
Yes to THIS!! I made it known to my local grocery store manager that I spend less time inside the store due to the excessive propaganda being drilled through their loudspeakers which used to deliver low volume instrumental music. Now it’s all about flu shots, shingles shots , rsxyz shots, “stop at the pharmacy now& you’ll get a free cookie w your vaccine!!” I reject ALL of the ridiculousness - make it STOPPP.