In All Uncertain Terms

I don’t have the time to watch nearly as many movies and television shows as I’d like. I suppose that sounds rather silly, as many people wish they didn’t “waste” so much time on the couch, but I typically only watch TV when I’m folding laundry, or once in a while when spending time with my husband, and both times have started to feel a little bit sacred. A benefit of this scarcity of time is that I’m now more picky with what I watch than I used to be. If I start a show and don’t love it after a couple of episodes, I’m less likely to force myself to finish for the sake of completion. Am I missing out on some stories that would have gotten good had I just pushed through one more episode? Maybe, but it’s hard to prioritize them when other shows have me hooked within five minutes. As a result, lately I’ve only consumed movies and shows that I really love.

One thing keeps interrupting my enjoyment of these works of art: ads. Neither I nor my family members off of whose subscriptions I leech are willing to pay for the highest, ad-free tier. It seems almost universal to absolutely despise all ads, but I really don’t. Prior to streaming, television shows were written with natural breaks for commercials. Of course I don’t enjoy being advertised a weight loss drug or Crohn’s disease drug or tardive dyskinesia drug or plaque psoriasis drug. . . but when the breaks are written into the show, it’s not terribly disruptive. I just treat it as an opportunity to go to the bathroom or refill my water. Movies, however, are not made this way. It is incredibly jarring to have what would normally be a smooth transition between scenes cut to an insurance company’s catchy jingle, or a woman looking sad in grayscale until her medication made her start playing frisbee with her dog.

In an effort to save money, I’ve started using the local library more–not just for books, but shows and movies, too. They don’t have everything, especially not newer productions, but if I’m patient, I can usually find something. I didn’t start using DVDs from the library for this reason, but an unexpected benefit is the lack of ads. I recently watched Fleabag, which became an instant favorite. The short, punchy episodes and seasons made me laugh and weep, sometimes seconds apart, and I can’t imagine that they’d have had the same effect, had they been filled with interjections of “Hers can help you find the right GLP-1 for your weight loss journey.”

When I have used streaming services recently, as opposed to DVDs, one ad in particular has cut through the noise of the others to stick out in my mind, and not for good reasons. It’s a Google Pixel 10 advertisement, which has the gimmick of being filmed from a smartphone’s perspective. The actress looks directly into the camera, and the video is narrated in a way one might speak about an intimate relationship. Beginning with, “From the moment we met, we went everywhere together,” the thirty-second commercial follows the relationship between the woman and her phone from obsession to disenchantment to re-infatuation. The phone says, “I thought I was your world, but then you felt I didn’t ‘get’ you anymore.” As the woman glances at a peer’s phone, she is said to be flirting with the idea of something new. She gets a Pixel 10, is shown using its AI features, and is suddenly happy again. The ad ends with the line, “You wanted smarter. I’m still trying to. . . process that.”

I would be tempted to dismiss this as just another case of “Your unhappiness is a result of not having this product” advertising, but I don’t think it’s quite so simple. Something about the writing and filming felt deeply dystopian to me. I could go on and on about our addiction to and reliance on smartphones and the internet, its negative impacts on mental health and social interactions, and say nothing new. We all know. I think the thing that felt most uncomfortable to me was the framing of the relationship between a person and their smartphone as analogous to a friendship or romance. There is some truth there that our corporate overlords are teasing out. We do spend significant time with our phones, perhaps more than our family, friends, or coworkers, often favoring looking at the screen over looking at the faces of our loved ones. In some way, our phones do know us intimately, whether through contacts and calendars or search queries and cookies.

I think my discomfort, or even disgust, comes from the way this truth is presented. For most of us, it’s a sad reality toward which we are nihilistically apathetic, or against which we’re actively fighting. In my own life, this has looked like app timers, app and account deletion, and the hope of eventually not owning a smart phone at all, if I can’t develop the self control to engage with one in a healthy way. For the Google Pixel 10 ad, smartphone addiction is not something to mitigate, but the ideal. It makes sense; the more you’re on your phone, the more you’re being advertised to, and the more money can be made, both by Google and by other companies.

If the “you” in the ad is meant to be the viewer, however, the tone feels disrespectful. We don’t want “smarter” products; we want more control over how we interact with the products. I don’t want an AI assistant who “gets” me. I want the ability to disable the AI assistant, so I stop accidentally engaging it. I want to be able to turn off the “AI summary” at the top of my searches, at the top of YouTube comments, and to disable shorts in the YouTube app. The “smarter” features make me dumber, angrier, and more addicted.

I’ve long been an Apple hater. Though this letter focuses on my gripes with a Google ad, I still much prefer Google products to Apple’s. I recently saw positive reviews of Apple’s new MacBook, praised for its affordability and simplicity. The thing I found most baffling is that it was praised for reinstating the HDMI port. I find it difficult to believe that so many people have remained loyal to Apple despite, for many years, their laptops not having what I consider to be one of the most basic features of a laptop. They were praised for listening to users, and creating a product without all the shiny new “smart” features, that is functional and affordable. “Took you long enough,” was all I could think, but I guess Google needs to catch up now.

I don’t want my phone to be the main character of my life, and I think most people feel the same way. My complaints about smartphones have nothing to do with how little they “get me,” and everything to do with the planned obsolescence, lack of customizability, and intentionally addictive nature. With the recent gravitation toward dumb phones, I don’t believe I’m alone. The Google Pixel 10 ad is titled “Moving On,” and unfortunately for them, I will be trying to move on not to a newer Pixel, but from smart phones all together, or at least their permeating role in my life. I truly hate this ad.

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