Cancel Amazon Prime

Today is Prime Day. Imagine trying to explain that to an alien or to a time traveler from the 20th century. “Amazon turned 20 and on the eve of its birthday, the company introduced Prime Day, a global shopping event,” reads Amazon’s formal telling of the ritual’s 2015 origins. “Our only goal? Offer a volume of deals greater than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members.” The holiday was invented by a corporation in honor of itself, to enrich itself. It has existed for six years and is observed by tens of millions of people worldwide. I hope you are spending it with your loved ones.

Prime Day is a singular and strange artifact, but then again, so is Prime, Amazon’s $119-a-year membership service, which buys subscribers free one-day shipping, plus access to streaming media, discounts at the Amazon subsidiary Whole Foods, and a host of other perks. Prime is Amazon’s greatest and most terrifying invention: a product whose value proposition is to help you buy more products. With 200 million subscribers worldwide, it is the second-most-popular subscription service on Earth, poised to overtake Netflix in the not-so-distant future.

This popularity is both extremely logical and a little perplexing. When you subscribe to Prime, you’re paying to pledge your fealty to a single company’s ecosystem—something that consumers once wanted to avoid. You’re paying to have your every purchase cataloged—also something consumers , at least in theory—so that Amazon can use that information to sell you, and people like you, more goods. You’re paying to become part of a system that is purpose-built to keep you paying, forever, and to keep Amazon growing, forever, like a.”