There Are Only Two Industries That Call Their Customers Users…

There are only two industries that call their customers Users: illegal drugs and software. I didn’t come up with that—it’s just sitting there, true and obvious, like a pigeon riding the uptown 1 train as if it paid full fare. And yet, we barely blink. We’ve accepted it. We are Users. Proud, loyal, endlessly refreshing Users.

We wear it lightly—“I’m a power User,” we brag, as if that doesn’t sound like someone who should be pacing an alley with pupils the size of dinner plates. But here’s the thing: we are. We’re hooked, not on powder or pills, but on pings and push alerts. On the little buzz of validation when a heart icon lights up. On the high of one more email answered, one more level cleared, one more update installed that immediately breaks the thing we loved about the old version.

And then we sit there, scratching our heads, wondering where empathy and humanity have gone. As if we didn’t hand them over ourselves—traded them for faster Wi-Fi, cleaner interfaces, and another chance to feel seen through a blue thumbs-up. It’s not that empathy left the room. It’s that we muted it, swiped past it, scrolled away from it. We started treating people like profiles, not souls. Humanity didn’t vanish—it just got buried under notifications.

But the city has a way of reminding you. That one moment when you lock eyes with a stranger on the subway and share the exact same smirk about the guy eating a full rotisserie chicken in his seat. Or when the bodega clerk remembers your name even though you’ve been lost in your phone for weeks. That’s humanity tapping you on the shoulder, whispering: Hey, you still in there?

So maybe being a User doesn’t have to mean being used. Maybe we get to reclaim the word. Use the app, but don’t let it use you. Use the time to reach out instead of sink in. Use the scroll to laugh, to learn, to connect—not to disappear. Because the truth is, life will always offer us ways to dull the edges. Some come in baggies. Some in app stores. Some in relationships we should’ve left six heartbreaks ago. The question isn’t whether we’ll be Users. The question is: what do we choose to use?

And maybe that’s the only Terms & Conditions worth agreeing to—that we log back into each other. That we remember empathy hasn’t gone missing. It’s just waiting for us to look up. To stop scrolling long enough to notice the music of the city, the hum of connection, the clumsy, beautiful orchestra of being human.

That’s the only subscription worth keeping.