Insiders #180: Repossessed Man: The Digital Age's Silent Invasion

A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything.

- Miller, Repo Man

In 1984, a punk kid and a repo man chased an alien-infested Chevy Malibu across Los Angeles. Today, we're all punks, the algorithms are the repo men, and the alien invasion isn't in the trunk—it's in our pockets, our homes, and our minds. 

While we're busy swiping and streaming, we've failed to notice that the repo men from Alex Cox's cult classic aren't just coming for our cars anymore—they're coming for our very selves.

This isn't the opening of a dystopian novel—it's the logical endpoint of our current trajectory.

I just watched Repo Man (1984) for the first time, and my mind is doing donuts in the parking lot of reality. This cinematic time bomb feels like a prophecy of our digital age dystopia. While I was busy growing up on a diet of Home Alone and Gameboy radiation, Alex Cox was crafting a scathing critique of consumer culture that resonates even more strongly today.

A 2021 study by Pew found that 65% of American adults now believe in aliens. That's more people than probably owned a pair of Zubaz pants in the '90s. And the under-30 crowd? A whopping 76% are believers. Every generation is being converted. Back in '96 only 20% thought flying saucers were anything but Weather Balloons Gone Wild.

But here's the neutron bomb in the trunk of this article: The real alien invasion isn't little green men or glow-in-the-dark extraterrestrials – it's the slow, insidious repossession of our identities, our privacy, and our very humanity by the data-mining repo men of the digital age.

Just as the punks in "Repo Man" thought they were the ultimate outsiders while the repo men accessed the truly alien, we've been distracted by surface-level weirdness while the genuinely foreign entities – algorithms, data harvesters, and digital overlords – have invaded every aspect of our lives. Our growing obsession with UFOs and alien conspiracies is just a smokescreen, hiding the true abduction of our autonomy in plain sight.

The Evolution of Getting Jacked

Back in the "Repo Man" days, repossession was a gritty, hands-on business. The repo men of today don't need slim jims or midnight stealth missions. They're the faceless algorithms, the data miners, the cloud-based repo-bots coming for the only thing you really own anymore-your identity.

In the real world, repossession might happen when a customer is in default of an agreement. But in the digital world, repossession results from the lack of true ownership in the first place. Behind every digital movie purchase or pre-saved album is a lengthy terms of service agreement that states you’re merely licensing a piece of media or software; you’re temporarily accessing identity. In effect, ”ownership” in the digital age is more like long-term rental.

Meanwhile, the customer data that is harvested in return is fully owned (with a ‘worldwide non-exclusive license in perpetuity’), and is used to shape your future behavior. 

Every time you click "I Agree" on those terms of service you’ve never read, you're handing over the pink slip to your digital soul.

Your photos, your email drafts, your incognito browsing, your heartbeat data; all repossessed by the silicon repo men. We're volunteering for this repossession, lining up around the block, begging for the latest tech to invade our lives.

In this brave new world, repossession isn't just about taking your stuff – it's about erasing your very identity, to be replaced with a newer, highly-optimized identity, fit for consumption.

Possession of Being

If a transaction is ‘identity exchange’ (and it is), our possessions are an outflow of our identities. What we buy is who we become. Small essences of who we are (or aspire to be) are found in what we spend our money on.

Ownership creates private identity through self-contained things, thoughts, and experiences. The things we buy imprint the identity of their maker onto us. Our stuff has taken hold of our faculties, controlling how we think about ourselves, act, and make decisions.

Repossession, then, is a stripping of identity.

When our possessions feel disposable or can be taken away, our private identity feels threatened. This isn’t exclusive to digital goods-even "experiences" can become packaged and commodified. Every ‘possession’ is a statement about who you are, but it's also a question: Is this really me, or just what I've been programmed to want?

The question about identity isn’t inherently personal: groups take on identities; ‘scenes’ emerge when small communities form independent identities. The punk scene in Repo Man may believe that their identity is rooted in “sticking it to the man,”-but in reality they are just another cog in the great machine of conformity.

When our identity is rooted in aesthetics, it can be shaped, bought, and sold in quantum-speed advertising auctions where people are lumped into “in-market” behavioral groups.

Not in market? Don’t worry, you will be soon enough. 

We think by adopting the latest "disruptive" aesthetic or jumping on the newest subcultural bandwagon, we're somehow transcending the system. But we've confused aesthetics with identity, mixing up costumes and roles for character.

Disintermediated Repossession

In our world of disintermediated repossession, the alien is no longer contained in a metaphorical car trunk – it's embedded in the very systems that govern our lives. The repo men of today are faceless algorithms and digital protocols:

1. Social Media Algorithms: These invisible judges decide what parts of your curated identity are worthy of being seen, repossessing your digital visibility with each tweak.
2. Credit Score Systems: These number-crunching overlords can repossess not just your possessions, but your very ability to participate in the economy.
3. Digital Mobs: In the court of public opinion, an online community can repossess your reputation in a heartbeat, stripping away your identity and leaving you a pariah.
4. Subscription Service Providers: These gatekeepers can repossess your access to culture and tools that have become part of your identity with a single missed payment.
5. Data Brokers: They trade in the currency of your personal information, repossessing your privacy and selling pieces of your identity to the highest bidder.

This disintermediation of repossession operates at the speed of light, far faster than human cognition.

Our identities, worth, and place in society can be repossessed before we even realize what's happening. The human element – the understanding that behind every repossession is a life, a story, a complex set of circumstances – is lost in the cold calculation of data points and engagement metrics.

The New Frontier of Brand Identity

What's wild is that traditional repossessions in the United States are on the rise, with data from the first half of 2024 showing a 23% increase compared to the same period in the previous year. This surge has even surpassed pre-pandemic levels, marking a 14% rise from the first half of 2019. 

Yet, these numbers don't even begin to capture the new ways in which repossession is happening in our digital lives.

Brands are no longer merely purveyors of products or experiences; they're architects of identity. Every campaign, product launch, and customer interaction serves as an opportunity to imprint their identity onto consumers. But in this era where both consumers and brands find their identities "repossessed" by the very systems they operate within, where can we find hope?

The way forward may be for brands to become the repo men of their own overreach. Where have we taken too much of our customers' attention, time, or money? What illusions have we sold ourselves? If we don't address these questions head-on, consumers will become the repossessors themselves, taking back what's rightfully theirs.

In this brave new world, the challenge for both individuals and brands is to recognize the truly foreign elements reshaping our reality and to reclaim our autonomy in the face of digital dispossession. Only then can we hope to preserve our humanity in an increasingly alien landscape of ones and zeros.

As Miller from "Repo Man" might say, "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." In our case, the more we mindlessly engage with digital tech, the less we understand the truly alien forces shaping our identities. It's time to wake up, question the nature of our digital reality, and take back control of our repossessed selves.