It’s Time To Cancel Our Subscription Tradition As soon as And For All

Society has a subscription problem, and I’m sick of it.

In 2009, Apple debuted the catchy, cultural truth-teller slogan “there’s an app for that.” Nowadays, there’s not only “an app for that,” but also an accompanying recurring fee you must pay to make most of them remotely usable.

Want to watch your favorite sports teams duke it out? Subscription. Want to listen to music? Subscription. Want to track your menstruation? Subscription. Want to unlock your vehicle’s special features? Subscription. Want vitamins delivered to your door? Subscription. Want to online date? Subscription. Want groceries or takeout delivered to your house? Subscription. Want to get those gains at your local gym? Subscription. Want to use that video baby monitor? Subscription. Want to see who is at your front door? Subscription. Want to read your favorite writers’ and authors’ musings? Subscription. Want to chat it up with artificial intelligence? Another subscription. Short on phone space to hold all of your apps and the subscriptions they require? Fret not, for there’s a subscription for cloud storage out there, too.

You get the gist. Regardless of the actual value of the service, the process for all subscriptions remains relatively the same: You pay a fee (one that almost assuredly will increase on a fairly regular basis) to use things deemed “extra” or “benefits.”

Some of these recurring fees are absolutely wasted on luxuries that the average American does not need on a daily basis. It’s also true that many sellers try to zhuzh up their monthly price by dubbing it a privileged tier, even though most of them are basic functions of the service. That’s like asking for a tip for just doing your job.

Take Amazon, for example. An estimated 196 million people pay to use the “prime” version of Jeff Bezos’ online storefront. One of the biggest pulls to paying more is free shipping. The catch, of course, is that anyone spending $35 or more on Amazon items (an easy feat to do with these inflated prices) also gets free and relatively fast shipping without the monthly charge.

Regardless of the means, the end consequences are the same. Not only does your budget take a big hit, but you’re doomed to a deluge of emails from sites you didn’t even know had your information and an even bigger list of logins that you must remember to maintain your access to the sites that you handed your information to. In this day and age, you own nothing because the things you own are useless unless you pay for the membership that activates them.

This method took the world by storm because it is profitable. Yet, consumers are tiring of it.

It’s at this time in the article when readers like you demand I use the power of free will and my fingers to cancel any pesky monthly dues and go on my merry way. But it’s not that easy. Canceling or unsubscribing can be a complicated, multi-step process that easily deters short attention spans from following through. Forgive me if I don’t have the time or energy to stay on hold for hours only to be answered by an AI robot or rando in a foreign call center that tries to convince me to do anything but cancel.

Society’s subscription problem is so bad that budget apps such as Rocket Money advertise services that will cull and cancel unnecessary memberships for you. The irony is that while some of the money-saving services are free, any features beyond “basic budgeting” require — you guessed it — a paid premium subscription.

Another facet of this growing problem, as I hinted above, is that consumer experiences outside of those that come with masquerading as a protected subscription class are bleak and wholly unappetizing.

Committing to a subscription-free grocery shopping experience means navigating aisles crowded with large, employee-manned carts of pick-up and delivery orders for subscribers. After nonsubscriber peasants like you do your best to find what you’re looking for without an employee’s help, you make your way to a hellscape of self-checkouts that are supposedly supervised, but really only glanced at, by a blue-vested teenager staring at her phone.

Of course paying 10 or so dollars a month for personal shopping and grocery delivery looks and sounds better than whatever other-worldly experience the alternative is. And that’s the whole point.

We’re at a stage of technology and consumerism that requires subscriptions to secure the customer service, convenience, and quality products our grandparents got freely not too long ago. It’s an injustice, sure, but a reality nonetheless.

I wish I had all the answers for you here. For those, you have to subscribe as a Federalist Insider. (Just kidding — while our subscribers do get insider benefits, you can still enjoy every article published at The Federalist and receive daily newsletters without a subscription!)

Jokes aside, one option is to complain so frequently and loudly that brands actually fix their chronic customer service and quality control issues. Stop letting a chatbot walk all over you before trying to sell you a subscription that claims to magically fix the subpar service offered to normal customers. It might be futile to demand change, but it’s worth a shot.

Ultimately, to completely conquer and correct this problem, we must unsubscribe en masse. A handful of people backing out of a membership hardly makes a dent when hundreds more clamor to hand over their credit cards. It’s only when a decent-sized crowd commits to leaving recurring fees and any products that require them behind that we might get somewhere. Brave the complications that come with clicking cancel and stop buying pricey products that require a subscription to function. You likely don’t need them, but they need you.

A new cancel culture is coming. Consumerism, bad customer service, and corporations beware!

Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.” Her work has also been featured in JP, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.