It’s Going to Be a Commercial That Ends It All

Instacart Is Going to Make Shopping Suck

I read shit like this and harken back, depressingly, to the first time a gas pump shouted ads at me while I was trapped there.

“wow. suggesting more commercial transactions at me while i’m literally trapped in the middle of doing one. this sucks man”

My next thought was “geez do instacart shoppers even impulse buy when they’re literally there shopping for someone else? the fuck is the audience for this?”

My next next thought was “lol dumbass there’s no way this won’t be shoved out to every fucking shopper regardless”.

Do advertisers really think this will translate to purchases? At a rate commensurate with the absolute hateful aggravation this will cause most shoppers? Am I wrong and a significant percentage of people will actually not mind this intrusive shit?

I’m almost hesitant to put this thought out into the world but where does this end? Will landlords be incentivized by the ad masters to put ad screens into their rental units that can’t be blocked or turned off without penalty?

Is Big Brother from 1984 going to be, not the government, but Google or Meta?

“You will watch our ads. Wherever you are. Even if you’re in the middle of buying something else, we must be allowed to yell at you about buying more. Every second of human life that isn’t spent making or contemplating a purchase is profit lost to us. And we cannot abide that”.

Dreams of Revolution are easy to have, impossibly harder to put into practice. But I can see shit like this leading to it, honestly. We’ll start with smashing these fucking cart tumors. Then maybe we start donkey-kicking the gas pump ad screens out. Maybe some selective murder of the idiots who keep coming up with this shit instead of something, anything actually economically productive.

Prolly not, tho’. Humans can eat a lot of shit before they ever choke on it.