this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
821 points (99.2% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
14499 readers
489 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Imagine that. You not only paid for the refrigerator, but also the electricity and the internet access. And it uses all of that stuff to display ads to you. You're literally paying for every ad it shows you.
That's exactly the thing that turned me off cable. I'm not interested in paying for a service that's going to pipe ads into my home. OTA TV, fine, I'm not paying for that. When I can pay for services that don't show me ads, why would I pay for one that does?
Don't worry, they are gradually taking that option away too.
Then the answer becomes to get those things without paying someone to show you ads.
When the illegal choice becomes the objective best experience, you're just a savvy consumer.
I arrgree
Joke's on you: product placement in movies. The ads are already there.
Jokes on them, I don't recognize half the car emblems they flash at me.
So? If I'm paying for a thing, I'll sooner pay for a thing that doesn't have ads than one that does.
When that fails, there's always the high seas.
You wouldn't download a fridge, would you?
https://fridge0.branchable.com/
I love the DIY crowd, I don't really need most of these sort of things myself (yet), but it's important that they exist, and that people do these things, to prove it can be done and to develop and maintain the knowledge of how it can be done.
In an ideal world, we shouldn't have to be independently reverse engineering and reinventing our own tools and appliances and all this would just have to be done once and then shared to become widespread human knowledge. But instead it is "intellectual property" and commercialized and value engineered into maliciously anti-human exploitation devices. Apparently the world we live in is pretty far from ideal.
I absolutely would! That's pretty kickass
Bookmarking this for the future
If you paid me just 5 bucks a month I'd let them install that fridge in my house.
Yeah, I might accept that.
Actually, I could use a new fridge...
Ok, who wants to pay me a subscription fee to give me a fridge? Get in line, I'll only be accepting applicants today!
That's a good point actually. You can eliminate these ads by taking it off the Wi-Fi.
Why you'd connect it to the internet in the first place is a mystery to me
I have my washer and dryer connected to the internet. I set up an automation that flashes the lights upstairs when a load is done, and turns on the laundry room lights. I suspect there are some fun automation opportunities with this fridge, too. But my washer and dryer don’t have giant touch screens or ads. I’d never buy this fridge.
You don't have to have a smart washer and dryer to do this. If you get a smart outlet that monitors power usage, you can have it notify you when the usage dips. That's how I do it.
Yeah smart devices are far too smart, usually for absolutely no real reason. They're very appealing to people who overthink things (which is often myself, and I admit it). Sometimes we really should make an effort to embrace the dumb. Simplicity has its own elegance, and is often far more reliable.
Are there smart outlets that can handle 240v?
Yes but they're very expensive. But if you just want to monitor you can use something like: this
I mean, yeah. I'm with you 100%
Now who's the patsie