It started on an airplane. But then again, don’t all boring stories?
It was a pre-dawn flight, the kind that requires you to arrive at the airport at a time when I used to be getting home from a night out. Your fellow passengers — some still in their pajamas — shuffle quietly through the TSA line, stand silently in line at Starbucks, pull eye masks over their eyes while they wait at the gate.
The flight was a short one — under two hours — and I thought of it as a morning nap. I brought a cozy winter coat and I could use as a blanket, a warm sweater, and a long podcast to talk me to sleep over the drone of the engine.
The sun wouldn’t even begin to think about shining until after we’d taken off, and the plane was small and warm and cozy and dark…and loud.
Blaring from every speaker in the aircraft was the kind of music you only hear on light radio stations in various waiting rooms. The kind of music you know without knowing it. The kind of music that nobody needs to hear at 5:30 AM, certainly not in the 21st century when we all carry our own preferred audio right in our pockets. I put on my noise-canceling headphones, fired up my podcast, and felt the back of my brain itch in the worst way. This was a noise that couldn’t be canceled, that was so loud I couldn’t actually hear the thing I wanted to hear.
As a rule, I don’t ask flight attendants for anything unless they specifically walk up to me and say “what would you like, ma’am?” But nearly everyone who boarded the plane seemed to wince at the sounds disturbing our scheduled nap time, so when she stepped into the aisle to help someone with a bag, I raised my hand and asked if the music could be maybe be turned down a bit?
She told me no, it could not, she had to play the music and she had to play it at this volume, in a tone of voice I recognized as meaning the corporate overlords have indicated that this stupid thing is now a vital part of my role here please do not make this a thing because it is not a thing I can do anything about.
Weeks later, I was at the gas station. I’d dipped my credit card, selected the worst/cheapest gas available, and was about to grab the nozzle when suddenly I was being screamed at. Above the touchscreen where I’d selected credit over debit, a small TV screen played video after video of branded content pushing everything from snacks to new TV shows. There was no mute, no pause, no way to opt out of this “brand experience.” There was nothing to do but get the bare minimum of gas needed for me to return home, and get the hell out of there.
I’m not a particularly quiet person, and I’m not a person who requires a whole lot of quiet: I grew up in a flight path, I live in a busy city with tons of barking dogs and sirens and a strange amount of fireworks all year round. What I don’t like is a company taking my quiet and pretending to give me a service. The music on that flight is unique to that airline (Delta. It’s Delta). And it’s not there because passengers thought to themselves, you know what would make the chaos of boarding a fart tube with increasingly uncomfortable seating even better? Loud music we have no control over! It’s there because a guy in marketing had a synergistic idea and struck a licensing deal with one of his buddies from b-school. Every month, an entire team of people pulls data about “impressions” and sends an invoice and pats each other on the back about “optimizing the customer experience” while anyone with sensory issues tries not to crawl out of their skin.
The TV blaring at the gas pump isn’t there because any customer on this burning Earth said you know what? The three minutes it takes to fill my car with gas is a void waiting to be filled. I hate that I am forced to turn to the computer in my pocket to scroll through an app of my choosing. I want to be served some branded content at the gas pump, and I want it now!
It’s there because somebody looked at their customer data and saw a way to make money that has nothing to do with gas or snacks or scratch-off tickets: your presence. Your quiet. Your brain space. Your ears. Your eyes.
It's not customer-centric. It's consumer-centric, the idea that all of us, at any time, are simply there to gobble up whatever is presented to us, that every “touchpoint” is available and should be filled with something.
I don’t mind advertising. Advertising makes it possible for me to make a podcast that’s free for people to listen to, it’s how TV networks and radio stations have been funded. I mind these seemingly small invasions of time and space, these monetizations of time that should be mine alone: I've already paid for the plane ticket. I’m already pumping the gas. Was that not the cost of admission?
What other bits of our time will be chipped away at it until we are nothing but receptacles for brand optimization. In the end, will we end up paying for the quiet that is rightfully ours?
PS! I found Sarah C. Grace on TikTok, where she shares an immense amount of wisdom about this stuff. Probably because SHE IS GETTING HER PHD IN IT! Her substack,
shared bits and pieces of her dissertation, and it's a great read. (If there are any agents or editors reading this, I smell a book and it's a best-seller.).
On my early morning walks past the neighborhood gas station and quickie mart, the voices shouting their promos from the pumps into the darkness of the empty lot is always unsettling (yes, they are on 24/7, not just when you use the pump.)
Why are there TVs blaring at me in any restaurant that I go to? The gas station TV is particularly annoying. Engaging in a quiet conversation is impossible almost anywhere these days