When Life Becomes a Subscription Service
In "Common People," Rivermind Technologies offers Amanda (Rashida Jones) a "free" brain surgery to save her life, only to lock her into a $300/month subscription to keep her alive. Sound absurd? Not when you realize we're already paying subscriptions for essentials:
- Need Photoshop? Adobe's $30/month Creative Cloud
- Want to own music? Too bad – Spotify's $12/month or silence
- Even your car's heated seats? BMW tried subscription-only access last year
The episode's horror isn't the sci-fi tech – it's the slow realisation that Amanda and Mike can't own her survival. Every month, they're one missed payment away from death. This mirrors Adobe's alleged "subscription trap," where cancelling Photoshop could cost hundreds in hidden fees. Both scenarios ask: When did basic needs become leased experiences?
The Adobe Blueprint for Corporate Control
Last June, the FTC sued Adobe for burying early termination fees (up to 50% of remaining costs!) and making cancellation a labyrinthine nightmare. Their playbook is straight out of Rivermind's handbook:
For gamers, this isn't abstract. Imagine buying a $70 game, only to learn you need a $15/month subscription to access the final boss. Or when EA CEO literally joked about adding a micro-transaction to reload your gun in an FPS—turning a basic survival mechanic into a pay-to-live scheme.
Why Gamers and Consumers Should Fear the Subscription Future
The shift from ownership to access is accelerating:
- You don't own your games: Xbox Game Pass libraries vanish if you unsubscribe
- You don't own your media: That movie you "buy" on streaming platform, it can be taken away in an instance.
Black Mirror and Adobe expose a chilling truth: subscriptions aren't about convenience – they're about control. When everything is rented, companies decide:
- When to raise prices (Looking at you, Netflix)
- What features to gatekeep (Adobe's AI tools are subscription-only)
- Whether you can leave (Rivermind's cellular dead zones)
Why Everything Doesn't Need a Subscription
Look, I get it. As someone who works on SaaS products, I understand the appeal of recurring revenue and the ability to provide ongoing value through continuous updates and improvements. There are legitimate use cases where subscriptions make sense - cloud services that require ongoing infrastructure costs, software that needs constant security updates, platforms that provide real-time data.
But we've gone completely off the rails. Taco Bell now offers a subscription service for daily tacos. Car washes are pushing memberships with penalties for non-subscribers. Even basic software tools that could easily be one-time purchases are being forced into subscription models purely for revenue extraction.
The problem isn't subscriptions themselves - it's the weaponization of subscriptions to create artificial scarcity and dependency around basic needs and tools. When Adobe removes perpetual licensing options, they're not providing additional value; they're holding existing functionality hostage.
The Human Cost of Commodified Access
"Common People" brilliantly illustrates the human cost of this trend. Amanda and Mike aren't wealthy tech executives - they're ordinary people trying to navigate a system that treats human life as a recurring revenue opportunity. The episode shows how quickly "life-saving" technology becomes a tool for exploitation when basic human needs are turned into subscription services.
The most chilling moment comes when Amanda, under the influence of Rivermind's technology, makes the decision to end her life rather than continue being a burden on their finances. Even in her final moments, she's not fully herself - she's a product of the very system that claimed to save her.
Finding a Better Path Forward
As tech workers, we have a responsibility to push back against this trend. Not everything needs to be a subscription. Not every human need should be commodified. We can build sustainable businesses without trapping users in predatory payment schemes.
The subscription economy is growing nine times faster than traditional retail, but that doesn't mean it's always better for consumers. Sometimes the old model - where you paid once and owned something - was actually the right approach.
"Common People" serves as a stark warning about where we're headed if we don't course-correct. In a world where even staying alive becomes a subscription service, we lose more than just money - we lose our agency, our dignity, and ultimately, our humanity.