[THE VIEW]In the Subscription Era, We Subscribe to Relationship Fatigue

A New Dependency Born of Convenience: Subscription
Subscription Is Not Freedom, but the Maintenance Fee for Our Emotions

We no longer live in an era of purchasing goods, but in an era of subscriptions. Not only music, movies, and books, but even coffee, clothing, and cars have become subjects of subscription. With a single click, you can make a payment, and with another click, you can cancel. At first, it seemed as though the world had become astonishingly simple. However, the phrase "you can leave anytime" actually means it is easy to get trapped.

As we subscribe to more and more services, we find ourselves increasingly entrenched within them. This is why the term "subscription fatigue" has emerged. In the United States, startups have already appeared that handle subscription cancellations on behalf of users, and even these services are operated as yet another form of subscription. Now, paradoxically, you need another subscription just to reduce your subscriptions.

Technology always begins with convenience, but ultimately creates new dependencies. At one time, subscriptions were considered a rational model that reduced the burden of ownership, allowed you to use only what you wanted, and helped save resources. However, today's subscriptions have become more of a habit than a symbol of freedom. This habit grows within the network of relationships designed by platforms. The monthly automatic subscription fee is not just a cost, but a signal of commitment. The problem is that this commitment is more structural than voluntary.

Korea’s subscription culture has internalized this structure in a different way. In the United States, people talk about the fatigue of cancellation, while in Korea, people talk about the fatigue of management. The expressions differ, but ultimately, it is the same fatigue created by convenience.

In Korea, integrated subscription services that aim to reduce such inconveniences are spreading rapidly. With a single payment, you can access various types of content, accumulate points, and manage membership benefits in one place. While consumers have become less inconvenienced, they have also become more tightly bound within a single platform. In the name of convenience, the autonomy of relationships has been reduced.

We no longer choose brands, but ecosystems. And within these ecosystems, the freedom of choice is becoming increasingly superficial.

This change is not merely a matter of business models. Underlying it is a shift in the philosophy of ownership. In the past, ownership marked the boundaries of the individual. Objects were mine, and they served as a means of establishing my identity.

As various subscription services have taken root in everyday life, the "integrated subscription service" that combines them is spreading rapidly. Gemini

However, in the era of subscriptions, the concept of "mine" has become increasingly blurred. Now, we define ourselves not by what we own, but by our connections. Yet those connections are always conditional. Subscriptions maintain relationships, but it is the system that determines when they end. That is why subscriptions feel like emotional contracts, binding convenience with anxiety.

In this sense, the subscription economy is not just a consumer trend, but a mirror that concisely reflects the way modern people exist. We have become beings who must maintain relationships instead of possessing things.

Platforms offer benefits and points to prevent users from leaving, while users find small feelings of achievement and belonging within them. In this way, commitment is transformed into an emotional system designed by corporations. Convenience saves us time, but at the same time, it turns even our emotions into data.

Subscription is no longer just a consumer act, but an emotional maintenance fee. Thus, subscription fatigue is not simply payment fatigue. Amid too many connections, too frequent renewals, and relationships that are too easily forgotten, it has become difficult to distinguish what we truly need from what we do not. Subscription has ushered in an era of relationships following the era of ownership, but it has also created an excess of relationships.

Perhaps we are not subscribing to content, but to stability and reassurance. Each time the monthly payment is renewed, we confirm the signal that "I am still connected." What is needed now is not simply to reduce subscriptions. What is truly needed is the ability to decide for ourselves what to continue. If technology has eased the burden of ownership, we now need the wisdom to choose the direction of our relationships.

In an era where everything is automatically renewed, what matters is not the courage to cut ties, but the act of asking ourselves why we should continue. In the end, what remains in the age of subscription fatigue is not a list of payments, but the ability to discern which relationships are truly meaningful to us.

Son Yunseok, Professor at the University of Notre Dame, USA