Growing up I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with the bureaucracy of life - maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t already have to manage an entire ecosystem of shit that I need to care about.
For some of us it has been much longer than fifteen years.
> This watch costs four hundred dollars. It also tells time. > It also tracks my steps, monitors my blood oxygen, measures my sleep quality, logs my workouts, reminds me to breathe, reminds me to stand,
I had quite opposite experince with casio. If I want water proof (like swimming) watches, I would have to buy bulky and super expensive gshock with GPS and tons of useless festures.
$20 chinese smart watch are completely water sealed, tiny and simple to use. I can even remove wrist band, to make them even smaller. Only downside is battery life is only one week.
One way I've found to avoid objects that come alive is to buy the commercial version.
- TVs aimed at commercial hospitality businesses let you avoid a lot of the bloatware and smart features that come bundled with it
- Commercial washer/dryers let you avoid bluetooth and wifi and other junk not needed to wash your clothes. These are available without the coin operated features
Commercial versions of consumer products are usually simpler, more durable, and don't have advertising and smart features.
Dismissing a notification ...... 22%
Intentional use ................ 20%
Checking something that pinged . 18%
Replying to a person ........... 15%
Updating/configuring/fixing .... 12%
Unlocking, forgetting why ...... 8%
Managing a subscription ........ 5%
The real headache is that everything with a network connection needs system administration.
Also, can't you just not give these products the password to your WiFi? Do they make fridges and wash machines that don't work without internet?
> That's a you problem.
> It measures your usage. Tracks your behavior. Gives you a weekly report card. If the numbers are too high?
> You picked it up too much.
> You spent too long.
> You failed your limit.
> Try again next week.
> Try harder.
> Screen Time is a blame shift dressed in a soft font.
> ... What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?
> Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you'll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.
For adults: nothing requires you to use a smartphone. Buy that Casio watch if you want. Use those wired headphones and never pair them again (I do).
EDIT: Some things require a smartphone, not nothing.
Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you. The news isn’t actionable. Stop letting the news task you. Your social feeds aren’t actionable. Stop letting your feeds task you.
(And, yes, I’ll concede that Duo push is valid, because either I initiated that, or I have a problem to solve. Being employed brings some of us joy, after all!)
Notifications are not meant to fill the silences in your life. Your thoughts are. Not all the random drivel that phones opportunistically shovel into our faces.
I don’t really like this post because it rabble-rouses rather than owning up to the major failure of the author up top. Maybe it’ll help someone regardless, but it could have been a lot more direct with no less effectiveness. Missed opportunity, I suppose.
You picked the right way to show each paragraph — what to expand, what to keep short, what to highlight. I couldn't stop scrolling. UR an artist! maybe AI can help style every line of text, but it can't make something feel this good to read.
My devices serve me, not the shareholders of their respective firms.
“It dings all the time!” Yes, exactly, having a buzzer attached to my person at all times ensures I don’t miss appointments and that I leave to things on time.
Your thermostat that bothers you? It would be great if we lived in a world where energy was free, and there were no consequences for using as much energy as you want. That’s not the world we live in. And you probably don’t want to live in a world where the power company decides when you can and can’t turn on your AC. This is the compromise. I’m sorry you’re bothered by it — the consequences of other solutions to this problem are likely much worse.
It’s easy to forget that these things exist, and people buy them, to solve real problems. But writing a whole essay and just eliding that fact strikes me as lazy.
I have a smartwatch, I like it just fine, but I kind of think that smartwatches are actually pretty bad at being a watch. I had a Casio G-Shock for about a decade that I wore nearly every day [1], and I never had to change the battery. My Garmin Instinct Crossover, which is considered to have very good battery life, has to be charged every two weeks, which despite that seeming like a long time, I manage to forget about it every time until the battery is dead.
[1] I have a few fancy wind-up watches I wear to formal occasions.
And don't even get me started on how Samsung on certain models hid the notification categories behind a feature gate with a random OS update.
The article isn't saying they don't do other things, it's just not relevant.
I have notifications on for Uber Eats because I want updates when I order a food delivery. Of course, the app takes this opportunity to randomly (though infrequently) send me ad notifications during the other 98% of the time. Just this past week I've seen notifications for getting my Easter shopping done, and something for "National Burrito Day" which I'm sure is totally a real thing.
Unfortunately, lots of apps are like this. But are they annoying or frequent enough that I will turn off notifications? No, because I'd rather put up with it than have to remember to turn them back on the next time I order something.
Another story from the hn front page today:
ref: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Casio+F-91W+Battery+Replacement...
But it's not true that they are difficult to buy.
For my two examples: Commercial washer/dryer sets available through any appliance dealer. Commercial hospitality TVs and other commercial electronics are available via Grainger.
There’s a comfortable middle-ground to be had between the two options.
Mine is a Timex Ironman :)
That’s the realistic gray area in between the extremes of the argument. I enjoy the analog experience of my 20 year old Nikon the way you like your Casio, but they’re also both luxury items precisely because neither one is inherently important to daily life. They’re fun toys, not real tools.
There are exceptions. Also, curiously, some things require older hardware like faxes and do not accept newer hardware like smartphones.
CASIOF-91W
◀ LIGHTALARM CHRONOGRAPH
AM~~MO8801
88:8808:458829
◀ MODEALARM ON-OFF/24HR ▶
WATER
WR
RESIST
This watch costs twelve dollars. It weighs twenty-one grams. It has an alarm that sounds like a microwave in another room. It has told time the same way since 1989.
It doesn't know my heart rate. It has no opinions about whether I've stood up enough today. It will never need a firmware update.
When the battery dies in seven years, I'll press in a new one with a paperclip.
That will be the entirety of my obligation to it.
2
8:45
Weather
72°
Heart
78 bpm
Next
Stand...
Breathe
Now
Messages, Slack, Mail +4 more
This watch costs four hundred dollars. It also tells time.
It also tracks my steps, monitors my blood oxygen, measures my sleep quality, logs my workouts, reminds me to breathe, reminds me to stand, nudges me to close my rings, alerts me to unusual heart rhythms, pings me with notifications from six apps, and dies every night.
CASIOF-91W
◀ LIGHTALARM CHRONOGRAPH
AM~~MO8801
88:8808:458829
◀ MODEALARM ON-OFF/24HR ▶
WATER
WR
RESIST
Casio F-91W
Asks nothing.
2
8:45
Weather
72°
Heart
78 bpm
Next
Stand...
Breathe
Now
Messages, Slack, Mail +4 more
Apple Watch
Asks constantly.
One of these is a product.
The other is a relationship.
Here is something nobody says plainly:
Sometime in the last twenty years, our possessions came alive.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. One by one, the objects in our lives opened their eyes, found our faces, and began to need us.
Toaster
Lamp
Record Player
Watch
Your thermostat has opinions now. Your television requires a login. Your car updates itself overnight, and sometimes when you start it in the morning, the interface has rearranged itself, as if someone broke in and reorganized your dashboard while you slept.
Your earbuds won't play music until they've updated their firmware. Your refrigerator wants to be on your Wi-Fi.
None of this is broken. This is the product functioning as designed.
1950
Toaster
You push the lever. Toast comes up.Done.
1990
Television
You press power. You change the channel.Done.
2005
Phone
You make a call. You hang up.Done.
2010
Phone
You update it. You charge it. You configure it. You troubleshoot it. You manage it. You maintain it.You are never done.
2015
Thermostat
It learns your schedule. It needs Wi-Fi. It needs an app. It needs an account. It has opinions.You are never done.
2020
Car
It updates overnight. It has a subscription for heated seats. It tracks your location.You are never done.
2024
Everything
Everything needs you.You are never done.
For most of human history, you bought a thing, and it was yours, and it was finished.
3
Update
×
That word is nearly extinct.
Nothing you own is finished. Everything exists in a state of permanent incompletion, permanently needing. Your phone needs updates, needs charging, needs storage cleared, needs passwords rotated.
Your apps need permissions reviewed, terms accepted, preferences re-configured after every update.
Your subscriptions need evaluating, need renewing, need canceling, need justifying to yourself every month when the charge appears. The purchase isn't the end of anything. It's the first day of a relationship you didn't agree to, with no clean way out.
You live in a house full of dependents.
You will pick up your phone eighty, ninety, a hundred times today.
Here is what nobody tells you about those pickups:
Dismissing a notification22%
Intentional use20%
Checking something that pinged18%
Replying to a person15%
Updating, configuring, or fixing12%
Unlocking, forgetting why8%
Managing a subscription5%
Screen time you chose
Screen time your devices chose for you
Most of your screen time isn't leisure. It isn't addiction. It isn't even a choice.
It's maintenance.
Your phone is not a slot machine.
It's a to-do list that writes itself.
I need to say something about Screen Time.
When Apple introduced it in 2018, it was received as a concession: a gesture of corporate responsibility from a company that understood its product might be too compelling. The framing was careful, almost therapeutic. We want to help you understand your relationship with your device.
Here are your numbers. Here’s how often you pick it up. Here’s how your hours break down. Set a limit if you’d like. Take control.
It was, by every surface reading, an act of care.
This is the story your phone tells you about yourself every Sunday.
WEEKLY REPORT
Screen Time
Daily Average
4h 23m
Whose hours? Yours? Or theirs?
M
T
W
T
F
S
S
Pickups
94
+12% from last week
How many were your idea?
Most Used
Messages
Safari
Used - or summoned?
Screen Time gives you a report card. And if the grade is bad, the design makes one thing clear:
That's a you problem.
It measures your usage. Tracks your behavior. Gives you a weekly report card. If the numbers are too high?
You picked it up too much.
You spent too long.
You failed your limit.
Try again next week.
Try harder.
Screen Time is a blame shift dressed in a soft font.
This Week, Your Devices Asked You For
interruptions
decisions
of unpaid labor
How much of this was your idea?
This is the trick, and once you see it, you see it everywhere:
THE INDUSTRY
Creates devices that need constant attention.
Designs services that never finish.
Builds products that generate obligations.
THE DIAGNOSIS
You’re addicted.
You lack self-control.
You need to unplug.
THE TREATMENT
Focus modes. Wellness apps.
Digital detoxes. Screen time limits.
(All of which are more products that need you.)
The wellness framing flatters the industry because it locates the problem inside you.
But what if you're not weak?
What if you're not addicted?
What if you're just tired?
What if the exhaustion everybody feels isn't a moral failure but the completely rational response to being made responsible for an ecosystem of objects that never stop asking?
Nobody in a position of power is saying this. The reason is simple:
You're overwhelmed → Buy a wellness app → App needs an account, sends notifications, requires configuration → You're more overwhelmed → Try a digital detox program → Program has an app → …
They sold you the condition. Now they sell you the treatment. The treatment is another thing that needs you.
Nobody architected this. It accreted — one device, one app, one free trial at a time — into a system no competent engineer would have designed on purpose.
In software, there's a term for what happens when shortcuts and deferred maintenance pile up:
// TECHNICAL DEBT
You have fifteen years of it.
—
The email address from college that 80 services still have on file
—
The cloud storage where five years of photos may or may not still exist
—
The password you reuse because managing unique ones across 100 accounts is a part-time job
—
The smart home device running an app last updated in 2022
—
The subscription you keep meaning to cancel
—
The two-factor codes on a phone you no longer own
—
The Bluetooth device list full of things called “Unknown”
—
The login credentials saved in a browser you switched away from
—
The free trial that became a subscription that became load-bearing infrastructure
You carry all of this below the surface. A low hum of open loops that never become urgent enough to resolve and never fully let go.
Then one day you get a new phone. And things break.
Somewhere around hour two, sitting on your couch, trying to re-pair your earbuds while your watch throws errors and your smart lock has locked you out of your own home, the feeling crystallizes:
I am doing a job.
Not metaphorically. A job with tasks and troubleshooting and problem-solving and no compensation. A job you didn't apply for and can't quit.
And — this is the part worth sitting with — a job that used to belong to someone else. A support team. An IT department. That labor didn't vanish. It was externalized onto you so gradually you didn't think to call it what it was.
I know how this is supposed to end. I'm supposed to tell you to simplify. Audit your subscriptions. Curate your devices. Own less.
I'm not going to do that.
Because that framing is the same trick wearing different clothes.
Be more intentional← still your fault
Practice digital minimalism← still your fault
Set better boundaries← still your fault
The problem was never how many things you own. The problem is that owning means something it never used to. Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you'll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.
What I actually want to say is simpler:
This is not your fault.
The tiredness is not a character flaw. The guilt, the sense that you should be handling all of this better, more gracefully, with less friction, that guilt was manufactured. It was placed inside you by an industry that profits from your participation and a wellness culture that profits from your shame.
Both need you to believe the problem is you.
It isn't.
My Casio is on my wrist right now.
It's telling me it's 8:45. That's all it's telling me. It collected no data while I slept. It has no report to show me. It has no opinions about my health, my habits, or my attention. It is, in this moment, asking absolutely nothing of me.
And that absence, the peace of a thing that does what it does and then shuts up, feels like the most luxurious thing I own.
Not because it's retro. Not because it's minimal.
Because it's done.
It was finished the day it was assembled in 1989 and it will be the same watch tomorrow that it is today. It will never update. Never change its interface. Never ask me to accept new terms.