The first episode of the newest season of Black Mirror, a sci-fi series that often present concepts of human nature incorporated with technology in a satirical manner, is about a woman who got into an accident and had a brain injury. They were then offered a solution to keep her alive and functioning with a technology they have to subscribe to. The catch? There are higher tiers of subscriptions. Those in lower tiers have ads and have limited features. I really recommend this series particularly this episode.

But it got me thinking of subscriptions in general. These days everything has to be subscribed to. Television, music, software, storage, gaming, and others. My question is, are these subscriptions actually worth it? Are you actually getting your money's worth?

I am here to tell you that companies are actually getting more from you when you subscribe to their services. Why? First of all, for some reasons we humans tend to subscribe to something and then forget about it immediately. How many subscriptions have you forgotten to cancel?

Second, when you are subscribed to something in a certain amount of time you might not really use it as much as you thought you would. You might be too comfortable that the service is just there and easily accessible therefore not really making the most out of it. Like in a gym membership where you pay for the whole month but you only go for a few times.

Third, subscriptions are usually in bundles. There is no real transparency and you are not really getting a real breakdown of the costs. But we pay anyway. Are they actually worth it or we just do not have a choice anymore in a world where everything has to be subscribed to?