There's an interchangeable, overpriced, soulless gas-station chain on nearly every street corner in my town. When I fill up my tank at any one of them, I'm forced to listen to the sound of 9+ pumps puke out celebrity-gossip, advertainment pieces, and PSAs telling me about the coronavirus. You can't mute them anymore. Inside, the shelves are lined with nearly identical selections of overpriced merchandise.

I could be anywhere in the midwest.

I still have have a preference for the station I use, because the staff and I at a couple of the stations recognize each other, and have developed rapports over the course of many 30s smalltalk sessions. It's superficial, but it helps build social trust. We exchange small favors. I forgot my wallet one day, and the guy behind the registered covered for me and told me to pay him back when I could. I've told off a belligerent customer or two in ways they couldn't without being fired. We've discussed the local jobs market, and at points turned each other on to different employment opportunities.

I'd pay higher prices if I knew it got them more money (and got rid of those damn telescreens).

Nevertheless, I wouldn't pay for that kind of interaction directly if I could. I have a couple groups of regular friends. If I wanted social interaction alone, I'd get with them.

It's not really about the interaction itself, it's about having some semblence of place and community in a world that's too big, too standardize, too indifferent, and too increasingly automated to think about you as anything other than an instrumentalizeable commodity, or a function to be optimized.

Every technological step forward like this puts us under increasing surveillance, dedifferentiates the spaces in-which we live, and obviates the labor of large segments of our society while reducing the power of all but a select few.

Hyperbolically, I feel like we're all just a few years from being stuffed in padded rooms with an ad-supported games console and permanently affixed morphine drips to optimize mortality, health, and quality of life metrics.