the allure of convenience

Over the years, there have been societal fights that I've realized I've lost, and have moved on from, cutting my losses.

For example, plastic-bottled water. I remember how, in the beginning, the idea of packaging and selling water was treated as a joke: why would you pay for something that was available for free? Sure, you might buy it while travelling, especially if your system wasn't used to the local water, but the logic otherwise made no sense. Even worse, the plastic sometimes leaked chemicals, making the point of drinking "cleaner" water (often just filtered tap water, anyhow) even sillier.

But, prepackaged water was convenient: it was resealable, could be chilled easily, and didn't require washing afterwards. These benefits aren't trivial: during a power outage or turbulent storm, having access to portable, potable water is literally life-saving. Yet, importantly, these benefits provide permission for accessing the convenience of bottled water at any time, emergency or not.

There was a time when everyone seemed to have a Nalgene bottle, those large cylindrical hard plastic bottles with screw on tops, and I guess the successor to that is the viral Stanley cup, but the reason for the latter's popularity is less values-based (the resources to make one of these cups is relatively high, and only makes sense if you intend to use it for a long time), and more that it fits into an overconsumption culture exacerbated by social media. Consumers want a Stanley for every occasion, and need ones that match their nails, their outfits, their vehicles.

At first I wrote "cars," but really at this point people drive massive SUVs and trucks, even when they live exclusively in urban settings, and that's another thing I gave up on: fuel economy. Gas prices are a thing people commonly complain about, but what I've found interesting is that the complaints are always directed outwards. We could all be using 10-20% less gas with smaller cars or mundane details like maintaining tire air pressure and driving less erratically, but it is inconvenient.

Vehicles in North America, of course, are not just utilities, and instead through savvy marketing are symbolically tethered to individual freedom. (As a teenager who grew up in the suburbs, I know this deeply.) The person in a giant truck, weaving in and out of downtown traffic, is not someone worried about their fuel economy. Instead, frustration at gas prices boil down to: "I have no choice but to use gas, so I'm upset you control me with your prices, but once I buy that gas, no one will tell me how efficiently or inefficiently I can use it–especially when being in my vehicle makes me feel like I am in control of things."

The response, as everyone knows now, was electric vehicles–at first with the Prius, which was, to be frank, a dorky car. But like the Nalgene to the Stanley, you have the shift to Tesla, which mainstreamed electric vehicles, but also inspired a fervor that has had devastating consequences on society at large, including, paradoxically, the environment through the pursuit of artificial intelligence.

I honestly don't know what to make of this rhythm of convenience and solutions becoming co-opted into consumerist, status-based symbols. Mostly, it reminds me that when you're swimming in this water, you never think of what water is. As an example, when I visited Tokyo, I learned the recycling programs there are far more useful, in part because of the cooperation of citizens: the vinyl labels on plastic bottles are perforated so that they can be recycled separately from the bottles and the caps. At the same time, a recent McDonald's campaign with Pokemon led to massive food waste.

The two parts, convenience and status, can happen within the same thing. Take the craze earlier this year (how was this only March?!) to transform photos into the art style of Studio Ghibli. The ability to do this easily lured people into trying it–despite it contradicting the very ethos of the creators of the art style from the massive environmental waste, theft of art, and dehumanization–coupled with the desire of sharing it on social media for engagement.

In a way, it was more excusable for people who weren't fans of Studio Ghibli to participate, because the messages in the films aren't exactly subtle. It requires an extremely shallow read to, for example, claim to be a fan of Princess Mononoke, and then use genAI tools to recreate scenes intending to improve on the original. Validation is so easily at hand, too convenient, and the costs are out of sight or too distant to be felt.

I don't think my point writing about this is that humans can be self-absorbed. What fascinates me instead is how we can be led down a path fairly easily into a trap that extracts more than we intended. (I've been watching a lot of YouTube clips on carnivorous plants, incidentally.) People taking in the Ghibli AI trend not only created a news cycle for OpenAI, but also willingly fed the model images to train on that it may not have had access to before.

The thing that is most surprising us how much people are willing to pay for convenience. Yes, I mean cost financially, such as when people routinely complain about the fees for using delivery services like DoorDash and UberEats, while not wanting to give up using them. Similarly, people continue to buy ultra-fast fashion, even when they potentially pose physical danger to them. Still, I never imagined they'd happily still use AI chatbots, even when they have nontrivial chances of returning garbage answers (or, you know, drive you into psychosis).

Many of these services started out genuinely useful: Google made finding information easier until its AI overviews spit out ridiculous and misleading replies; Instagram and TikTok provide both entertainment and inspiration, but also allow for rampant consumerism and misinformation; and Grindr helps members (pop-up ad) of the (pop-up ad) queer community (bot sending spam) meet (eventually).

The danger is how they've grown without meaningful accountability: author Karen Hao, of the excellence Empire of AI, talks about how these companies are now empires, exploiting people and the land mostly without consequence. For, instance, returning to delivery services, like DoorDash and UberEats, the issue is that, now, because these services are so ubiquitous, they can squeeze every part of the supply chain–drivers, restaurants, and customers–to a degree that feels unstoppable now.

Perhaps that's the real thread here: convenience is great, such as when I have a dishwasher that saves me effort and time, but once it becomes laden with useless features and predatory pricing models, that convenience has been used against me for no other reason than maximizing profit. Where we draw the line is up to each of us, and unfortunately it's just too easy, too convenient to keep pushing that off.