Paying more to stay where you are
A Black Mirror episode about a subscription, and why it felt uncomfortably close to my own bills.
Black Mirror’s “Common People” felt uncomfortably familiar.
In the episode, a man is desperately trying to help his seriously ill wife. The only way to keep her alive and functioning normally is a service provided by a private company — and, of course, it comes with a monthly subscription.
At first everything seems fine. He pays, the technology works, and they go on living something close to a normal life. Then the rules start to change.
The company introduces more expensive plans. The cheap subscription gains limitations. Features that used to be included move up a tier.
Eventually he is spending more and more — not to get something better, but simply to keep the quality of life he already had.
That was the part that felt surprisingly familiar. AI tools. Cloud storage. A VPS. Spotify. Streaming services. Productivity apps.
Each subscription feels small on its own. Over time, prices go up, ads appear, token limits shrink, and features move behind higher tiers. At some point you are no longer paying more to get more — you are paying more to stay exactly where you were.