Amazon Prime...lulling your brain into negligence with promises that it's all OK

[mandy]

Amazon.com, of course, is the first company to market directly to your fingers. Other businesses attempt to engage your intellect, pander to your fears or appeal to your sense of humor. Amazon is doing its best to bypass your brain entirely, and have your shopping duties taken over by the same autonomous process that pulls your hand away when you touch a hot stove burner. Once the company's plans are completed, packages will show up on your doorstep that you have no memory of ordering. But that will be no impediment, because it's your hand that signs for them, after all.

1-Click ordering is just the beginning of this strategy. With Amazon Prime, you pay a large upfront fee in order to have items sent to you at a shipping discount. It's like a sale you have to pay for! I have no idea how Amazon's marketers talked me into that, but I'm guessing they took my hand out for drinks and karaoke, then pulled out the contract after a rousing, slurred rendition of "Proud Mary."

However it happened, they've got me. The program acts directly on the portion of the brain that tends to talk you out of rash purchases, the "cautious callosum." Amazon Prime acts as a stimulant, telling your brain that you have to make purchases because you have to get your money's worth. In some cases it implants elaborate fantasies that you will be able to drive Amazon to its knees with the sheer volume of your purchases, sending the company further into economic dissolution with each free two-day shipment...

full article: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/c...ttext_1128