I was in an infuriating back and forth with a website that was charging me $50 a month. I wanted out of a contract that I felt I was tricked into, they refused to release me. After half an hour battling with a chatbot, I finally got a human’s email, but this was somehow worse. I was tipped over the edge when I read an email telling me that I could only leave the contract early by paying them $500 upfront, it began with “Hey Hannah” and ended with this emoji: 😊. When I read it I wanted to throw my laptop against the wall.
Something about a corporation letting me know that they were going to be taking $500 from me against my will, while being faced with a tiny, yellow, smiling face with rosy cheeks, annoyed me to the very core of my being. It felt unnervingly condescending. Almost like they were taunting me.
It’s something I’ve found grating about modern life. I don’t know when the tipping point was, but the world has become rapidly less formal. I think the digital world blurred everything, we don’t have much distinction between company, politician, news organization, institution, and human online. They behave like us on social media, in our inboxes, our comment sections. They co-opt language that young people use, capitalize off of internet trends, desperately try to humanize themselves. Corporations pretend to be your friend when they try to sell you stuff. Banks use emojis. Legacy media copy the format that Tik Tokers and YouTubers created. Politicians post memes, tweet at each other.
But I have to think, who benefits from their humanization? Certainly not us. Wasn’t all of this stuff supposed to be ours? It was created by us. All the memes, the language, the emojis. Why are the some of the most formal institutions acting like they’re down with the kids? Why are multi million or even billion dollar companies pretending to be our friends? Why are they all trying to profit and capitalize off of our moments, off of our humanity?
I’m not your friend. I’m a customer, a viewer, a voter, a constituent. By breaking down these barriers of formality, we’re the only ones that lose, they gain everything. They don’t have to treat us with respect, with reverence and dignity anymore. They can charge us money for a crap product and slap an emoji on the end to try to trick us into thinking we’re just chatting with a fellow human. They can steal content that the internet created, culture and language that we’ve developed with each other, in order to sell us things or make us pay attention to them.
And perhaps the most frustrating thing is that this lack of formality is kind of ruining culture. If we don’t have any distinction between institution and human, how can humans create anything that doesn’t get capitalized off of? They seem to stamp out any genuine moment, any joke, any culture. The second a marketing email went out saying something like, “it’s giving glow up” or “slay your hot girl summer!” the moment was killed, dead in the water. When major news corporations put tiny microphones on the red carpet and asked celebrities what their “red flags” or “icks” were, the joke was ruined, the format ruined.
Most previous cultural movements were born out of the tension between humanity and institutions. A challenge of the status quo. The punks were anti corporations, anti establishment. The hippies took issue with societal norms, materialism. I think if any counterculture would begin today, the institutions would try to co opt it, see it as a viral moment. If the punks got going now, I’d guess fairly soon a haircare brand or safety pin company would try to make an ad out of it. If the hippies were starting today, a politician would probably make a tye dye baseball cap with flowers on it and slap their campaign slogan on top.
This insistence that the institutions are just like us, that they do things differently, they’re a cool parent not a lame parent, means they ruin anything before it can start. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes their marketing tool. Nothing feels underground, nothing feels like it’s ours, nothing is safe.
It gets to a point where it all feels kind of condescending. I would prefer if a customer service agent for a major corporation that was trying to take $500 from me, would treat me with a little respect, actually try to help me. I would prefer if Ads just told me what the product did, spent more money on developing something worthwhile than trying to be my friend and trying to be relevant. I would prefer if the politicians running for government office, who determine our future, would stop trying to impress 13 year olds on X. I would prefer if these institutions never used an emoji in any form of communication.
I’m not your friend, I don’t need to relate to you in this way. I don’t want you to pretend to be me, I want you to respect me.
PS I got out of the contract, by the way. I wore them down. I also told them to stop sending me emojis, I told them it was “deeply unprofessional 😊”
The other day it dawned on me that a majority of paid ads now are done in vlog format where the person is speaking directly into the camera walking around inside their house. I remember when commercials used to be full on productions with actors, sets, props, music, etc. I can't verbally express how invasive it feels other than a Meatcanyon esque image of corporations trying to wear our skins to feed off of us.
"By breaking down these barriers of formality, we’re the only ones that lose, they gain everything. They don’t have to treat us with respect, with reverence and dignity anymore." this is a rallying cry! appreciate this thoughtful perspective — my bank sending an email with emojis almost broke me