Press once for yes; press 100 times for no reason
I don’t go in much for conspiracy theories, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know an actual conspiracy when I see one.
Buttons.
We are surrounded by a world where buttons are not connected to anything, but we are led to believe they are. Crosswalk buttons that change the lights whenever they were going to change anyway, my relentless poking always unrewarded. It’s like the crossing walk people said, “here, we’ll give them something to do while they’re waiting.”
Elevator buttons are about the same. I do believe if you push it once, it will summon an elevator. But show me someone who hasn’t pushed it more than once, or come along and pushed again to override the original person’s button pushing with their own belief that the other person somehow did it wrong.
“I already pushed that button,” you think to yourself. “That’s why the little light is on.” Then you glance awkwardly at the person and they shrug as if you can never have too much button pushing.
If you get news alerts to your email, they all come with a tiny, tiny “unsubscribe” button somewhere. It’s usually buried in the fine print, but no matter.
You will get emails from this place until you are dead.
I have pushed more unsubscribe buttons than you would think possible, and I swear I get more emails than ever. If you successfully think you’ve taken care of it, you will get a little note that says, “sorry to see you go!” except they’re not sorry and you’re not going anywhere. It’s like me trying to leave the house not covered in cat hair. I can pretend it’s gone, but a stranger can take one look at me and say, “oh, what is the name of your white cat? And the grey one?” You can run but you can’t hide.
I admitted last week that I can’t work my thermostat, but in a hotel room, the thermostat on the wall is not connected to anything. Try to change the temperature; that little box is just a ploy so you can pretend you’re in charge of something.
You are putting all your faith in something that does not exist. If you removed the thermostat box from the hotel room wall, you would find it’s as decorative as the bad paintings on the wall. Which of course can’t be removed at all lest someone decide they really need to take home a murky rendition of a Monet painting of the St Lawrence
River from that visit when he glanced out his hotel window. He was probably either freezing to death or overheating, being unable to change the temperature, and that’s why the painting looks so bleak. One of his lesser works, copied over and over and sold via hotelart.com.
I was in a hotel room years ago that was desperately, desperately cold. No matter how I mucked with the dated radiator under the window, no matter how many buttons I twirled or how high the fan was pumped up, nothing worked. I called the front desk to report this, and they came up and switched rooms for me.
But then the same thing happened. I was exhausted and just burrowed under the covers and slept. The next morning at checkout I told them both rooms had useless settings and I was sad. They told me they’d disconnected the rads years ago and the thermostat was on the wall, hadn’t I seen it?
The boys gave up years ago telling me to stop pressing a button on my computer more than once. I would deny I had done so, then seconds later two dozen tabs — all the same — would open as I lied.
Doesn’t matter how new the buttons are or how old. It’s a conspiracy.