When I picked up How to Resist Amazon and Why in my hometown bookstore, I expected something quick, something to justify my discomfort with Amazon, and some quick facts to pull out in conversation. I got that, for sure. It’s a really fantastic primer for understanding the current state of unethical decisions Amazon has made, as well as who has been resisting and how they have resisted.
It’s loaded with too many glum-facts (is that the opposite of fun-facts?) to completely list here, some of which come to mind: the AI camera system flagging drivers for looking at their mirrors before changing lanes because they’re “distracted”, Amazon’s company chat app banning words like “Union”,”Freedom”, and “Ethics”, and, possibly most absurd, the fact that Amazon holds a patent for a machine for warehouses with a human-shaped cage on top for the driver. Author Danny Caine practically points out that, despite the device not being in use, Amazon clearly thought it important enough to pay a team to design it and file for a patent.
So I expected to leave the book with some things like that in my back pocket, even if I didn’t anticipate exactly what those would be. What I didn’t expect was the book to have such a measurable change in my life. It’s a good reminder that, especially in the case of Amazon, a big company’s main interest is making more money. Amazon, Google, Meta, they aren’t interested in making your life better unless it makes them more money.
I experience a fair bit of anxiety, and I’ve had to learn that it’s my body’s way of telling me to take action on something. I’ve worked to spot it better in my body, and think about what I can do to relieve the feeling. Anxiety is a message my body is sending to my brain, telling it that something needs to change. It’s a powerful call to action.
Unfortunately, when companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta value capital above the wellbeing of people, inducing anxiety is a go-to method of making money. Making money is nothing more than convincing someone to give you money, for a good or service. Anxiety is an intense feeling that pushes people to take action on the thing that caused the anxiety. Ergo, incite anxiety in enough people, and you can direct their action in a way that’s profitable for you.
In this vein, after reading How to Resist Amazon and Why, I took stock of my devices and apps. I got rid of things like Reddit with endless scrolls, and swapped Google Chrome out with DuckDuckGo. It’s not as optimized, for sure, and there aren’t any suggestions. It’s a browser where you need to know where you want to go when you open it. But, it also gives you much more control over data storing and doesn’t give Google more data to throw ads in your face.
My screen time went way down. From about 3-4 hours a day to 1 hour in the first week. It’s bounced back a bit, but hovers between 1-2 hours now. I used to have neck pain when I worked out shoulders in the gym, which has gone away. Imagine how much you crane your neck down at your phone in a day. I can read 50 pages of a book in a sitting now, where before I would get to 20 or 30 on a good day before needing to unlock my phone. It’s helped me to be more present, be where my feet are, and feel less anxious in my day to day.
We have limited attention. We live for a finite time, each day has a finite number of hours, within which we have a finite number of thoughts. There is always a trade off to our decisions, what we choose to focus on is also a choice of what not to focus on. The gift that How to Resist Amazon and Why has given me is helping me choose not to focus on the easy, distracting dopamine hits, and to give myself time and energy to focus on the things I care about more.