Every month, I get charged for things I do not use.
Netflix. Hulu. Amazon Prime.
I’ve been paying for these with the full intention of parking my brain in front of a TV screen and luxuriating in the promise of never having to think again. No monthly fee is too high, I figure, as long as I have complete access to enough mindless entertainment to lull me into a fugue state until the current administration either leaves office or enters prison.
Full confession: I’ve been paying for these streaming services for nearly five years. Long before I lost all hope for the future of democracy, I was looking forward to spending otherwise fruitful hours of my life staring at screens. When I bought a first-generation Smart TV, the guy at Abt promised that it would be so easy to use that even an aging suburban woman like me could figure it out.
Apparently, suckers were born every minute of 1962. I bought the Smart TV.
When they came to set it up, two guys with creative facial hair explained that all I had to do to watch Netflix via my 2013 state-of-the-art TV was turn on my Blu-ray player (with one clicker), switch my TV input source from HDMI I to HDMI II (using a second clicker), and scroll through the on-screen options with a universal remote (using a third, ironically named clicker).
When I expressed my inability to keep the sequence of clicks and clickers straight, the guys insinuated that my use of the word “clickers” meant I was too stupid to operate my Smart TV. That is a paraphrase. They put it more politely. But I got the gist.
I use that Smart TV to watch dumb TV. Because I hold out hope that I might magically intuit how to use the TV’s full capabilities, I continue to pay for all of the streaming services I don’t use.
Last month, I decided enough already. It was time to get a newer, smarter Smart TV. This time, the guy at Abt explained that the old Smart TVs (like the one he sold me five years ago) weren’t really smart, but the new Smart TVs were super intelligent. He started to say that even aging suburban women like me could use it, but I interrupted him.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and I’ve got another, Smarter TV.
The new model came with a fancy remote that the Xfinity guy immediately dissed. “All you need is ours. It’s universal.”
Then he looked at my lousy speakers. “Except for the sound. You’ll need to use a separate remote for that.”
As he connected a new cable box, he explained, “Our X1 Platform is a smart box. Now you can go directly to Netflix.”
Then he looked at me like I was his mother, “You know. Netflix. So you can watch movies.”
“Duh. Streaming is easy,” I said, knowing the chances of my figuring it out were utterly remote.
