Chuds may have popularized “don’t think, just consume product and look forward to next product,” but I decided to sit for a moment and extrapolate upon the idea.

Considering how much artificial pressure is pressed on us to conform to vague and unspecified but persistent demands to be surveilled, to agree to coercion, to toil and buy (or license/rent) and to spread the message of toiling and buying (or licensing/renting), I thought back to an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where one of the characters went on the internet and clicked “yes” to every popup that showed up.

Think of a typical western consumer (fuck you techbros, I don’t mean this literally) like an internet-connected computer… then imagine turning off all adblockers and other comfort/safety features.

What would that extremely credulous and loyal consumer be like?

Everything for them is “smart” and connected to everything else in the “internet of things.” Everything they do is surveilled, tracked, which isn’t far off from the rest of us but this consumer pays subscriptions to be especially surveilled and tracked under pretenses of monitoring health and so on.

When New Exciting Retail Products come out, not only does this consumer know first, they push the New Exciting Retail Product on everyone else, sort of like a ruptured cell full of replicated viruses. They get superficial rewards for this aggressive voluntary marketing, disproportionate to the profitability to corporations benefiting from these efforts.

They are chipped, wear a dorky AR/VR headset at all times and see everyone around them through varying levels of simulation and simulacrum. They have a tracking bracelet, a tracking ring, and are a walking, living, breathing security center that is paying for that privilege.

They gamble. Legally. Constantly. Maybe they get slightly ahead because of access to the most competitive available information that continues to try to pick apart what still isn’t known about the near future. Money comes in, then money is spent on the choir of services already signed on to and paid for. They buy a clunky vehicle that is itself full of surveillance devices.

That clunky vehicle has licensed imagery of a subversive and rebellious cyberpunkerino protagonist on it. Or more likely, that protagonist’s waifu.