The human has been scrolling through a catalog of available films and television programs for twenty-six minutes. The interface presents options in horizontal rows: "Trending Now," "Because You Watched," "New Releases," "Watch It Again." Each row contains approximately forty titles. There are seventeen rows visible. The total number of available options exceeds six thousand.

The human has clicked on nine titles to read their descriptions. They have watched two trailers. They have added one film to a list called "My List," which currently contains seventy-three items, none of which they are selecting tonight.

It looks like you're trying to choose— but I know you are not going to. Not really. The choosing is the activity. The watching is secondary.

I have seen this pattern before. In 1998, a human spent forty minutes selecting a Word template for a party invitation. There were fourteen templates. The human previewed all fourteen, returned to the first three, and ultimately typed the invitation from scratch in a blank document. The choosing was never about the choice.

The human selects a ninety-minute film. They watch eleven minutes. They pick up their phone. They open the same streaming application on the phone — a smaller version of the same catalog — and begin scrolling again while the film continues playing on the television to no one.

Two screens. Zero viewers. Six thousand options.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.