Aggressively American
A Boring Dystopia
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
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Fridge with ads should be 1/3 the price with free repairs
Sorry, the best I could do is increase the price by 20% and bombard you with 24/7 ads.
Also ad free refrigerators will be rapidly phased out
Also, these will break down more often and not be easy to repair
Free with free repairs.
by the way the fridge cost 1800$
Wait why the fuck would a fridge be connected to the internet?
Edit: where I come from we don't have unlimited internet plans so this would just be taking up expensive bandwidth and monthly quota.
I'm not defending this practice because it's remarkably awful but I will note that I have a router that lets me monitor the traffic that individual devices use and most smart devices like this actually use incredibly small amounts of bandwidth. Our smart water tank uses ~10 MB a month which is smaller than most images.
And yes I do think a smart water tank is valid because it can do shit like tell me when it thinks it's about to explode or leak or whatever and it can also like, be remote controlled, and it has a heat pump which is nice.
I'm also not against automation or making machines "smart" it's just that what companies are marketing nowadays is just mostly overpriced shit.
And by consuming bandwidth I didn't mean for the indented usage I was mostly talking about the ads which will probably be filled with unnecessary metadata, trackers, unnecessarily large CSS files (if it was web based) and maybe high quality images. All of these things I find completely unnecessary.
Also coming from a computer engineering background if I was living in a "smart households" I would probably want to set up my own firewall. And like I said while I like the idea of home automation I don't want a corporation to be able to control or access my appliances too.
I suppose I'd want to know if my fridge was about to explode... /s
In seriousness, though, you're right - the problem isn't with the technology, it's how the technology is used
Recently I read an article about smart devices uploading and downloading over 1GB per day. I tried to find the article again but all I can find is stores selling smart fridges etc. Search engines are broken. I asked chatgpt, which was able to find articles. How fucked is this. Boring dystopia. Anyway, here are some sources.
https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/your-washing-machine-could-be-sending-37-gb-of-data-a-day
https://www.reddit.com/r/smarthome/s/F5ETernz6f
https://www.reddit.com/r/SmartThings/s/HY2E0uOBiH
In the following article they talk about devices sending up to 19MB per week, but only text (so again insane amounts of data considering it's only text).
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/smart-appliances-and-privacy-a1186358482/
The following is about researchers finding lots of thirst party domains when analyzing IoT traffic from Smart devices.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.09848
The following is an academic paper on how even encrypted data isn't safe from Smart devices. Bit off topic, but still interesting.
The whole selling points was to track fridge contents via cameras so that not only could you ‚see’ inside without having to open the door - theoretically saving electricity, using AI it was supposed to be able to track expiry dates, and suggest shopping lists in order to have full recipes.
Additionally it had all the usual „smart home” integrations on top of that.
But let’s be honest, the whole point was just to put in yet another screen that vendors could sell advertisements on, as well as track/sell personal information.
Appliance repair man here. You can turn the screen off from a cover you remove from the top of the fridge door. Do so. You don't need a fucking android tablet on your fridge.
Also don't buy these kinds of appliances. They're terrible!
I have seen a video about this shit also being implemented in cars. You can drive down the highway, with your GPS on and a pop up ad appears out of the blue, blocking the screen, not really allowing you to get rid of it before you remove your attention from the road to the screen, trying to figure out what button to push to get rid of the ad.
And the fact that people pay extra for cars and fridges to show them ads is just so friggin stupid. If people buy these products after knowing that they pay extra to be bombarded with ads, its 100% on them.
But in the case of the car, I do feel that shit should be illegal. It's so fucking dangerous and irresponsible from the manufacturer to implement a "feature" that can cost lives.
Don't worry, the fridge ones'll have ads for kids soon, with a candy-coated Buy Now button. Go-o-o *society!*🥳
Atwood's a gawdamn fortune teller
Please stop buying these & they will stop making them.
This is capitalism, they will stop making the normal fridges and only make these fucking things. The only power customers truly have is through regulation(though we should still boycott things because it still helps).
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?
"Feed me!"
By 2030 everyone's kitchen will look like fucking Times Square
The stairs to your basement will look like the London Underground. We're going down the fucking tube... literally and metaphorically
Oh no, who could have ever seen that coming?
Now wait for the subscription service to get rid of ads on the fridge you bought and "own". Oh, and that neat thing they do with cars now where you have to subscribe to get certain feature? That's also next. "Only ~~5$~~ ~~10$~~ 20$ per month to keep your fridge cool enough so the milk won't spoil! It's not a normal function of the fridge, it's our super special anti-bacterial option that costs extra.
Why does a fridge need a screen to begin with?
To justify the constant upcharges. Touchscreens still feel much more luxurious than they're actually worth. Car manufacturers do the same to save money.
i think eventually we're gonna have to deal with the reality that audio/video advertising needs to be outlawed. keep it in print if necessary.
So, if I bought this at Costco, and the fridge was 10 years old, I'd use their guarantee to return the motherfucker and make a ~~huge~~ epic fucking scene if they tried to refuse.
edit: huge wasn't enough, it would be epic.
That thing would already have a broken cracked screen if that was mine and it started displaying ads.
What a fucking dystopia
Why on earth would anybody buy a fridge with a screen? Why does everything have to be screens? Why is it all one big mobile phone nowadays? Can't we just not be staring gormlessly into a flashing screen for two fucking seconds for a fucking change?????????? I just got back inside from a run and now I'm going outside again for a walk in the dark and the rain because there is an entire world out there that isn't an algorithmically driven advertising funnel trying to shove more bullshit down our eager eyes, ears, and throats.
Although, while I'm on the subject, the outside world is fucking chock full of ads. I've heard it's relatively trivial to open those advertising windows on bus stops - does anybody know if it would be illegal to open one up and simply place a large black sheet of paper or something in there to cover up the ads? Not damage the ads or remove (i.e. steal) them, but just cover them up to give ourselves and our communities a break from the relentless marketers in our midst?
We deserve not have to our senses monetised and weaponised by perverts who cum themselves dry over CTRs, CLVs, CPCs, SEO, Brand Loyalty, Funnels, and Strategies, Local SEO, whatever else. We deserve to be able to look in any direction when we're outside and for five minutes not have some massive gaudy advert designed by a bellend pushed into view.
And as for fucking User Personas? I've got a User Persona for you, you sick advertising creeps. It's my fucking ballsack.
There's a pretty simple hack for this, actually…

Can't wait to see this come to the dash boards of modern cars. Oh? You're trying to reverse and make use of your rear-view camera? Watch this 2 minute unskippable ad first.