We have traversed the depths of the commercial jungle, bearing witness to those grand cages built upon "standards" and "relationships." Yet for the vast majority of people, these sweeping games feel distant and abstract. What we experience far more intimately is a war that rages every single day—seemingly small, yet definitive of our very way of life: consumption.
We live in an age enveloped in the abundance of "choice." Supermarket shelves, e-commerce pages, streaming libraries—all present us with a diversity never before seen. We seem to possess infinite freedom to define our identity, our taste, our way of life. We may choose what to wear, what to eat, what to watch, what to use.
Consumption has been packaged as the ultimate path by which modern humanity realizes the "self."
Yet this seemingly blossoming Eden of consumerism is, in truth, a meticulously designed "labyrinth." Every one of its entrances bears the sign of "freedom," but all of its corridors have long been quietly and systematically converged by the labyrinth's architects—the brand giants, retail platforms, and algorithm engineers—channeling us toward the single exit they desire.
Within this labyrinth, you believe you are "choosing," but in truth you are only "recognizing" symbols that were implanted in your mind long ago. You believe you are "exploring," but in reality you are merely sliding along a track laid down by data and capital.
In this chapter, we will venture into the heart of this labyrinth and dismantle its three core mechanisms of control: the "false prosperity" that manufactures an illusion of diversity through the "brand matrix," the "information cocoon" that precisely tames individual preference through "algorithmic recommendation," and the "path dependency trap" by which the "subscription model" converts consumers from one-time transaction partners into perpetual digital assets.
6.1 False Diversity: Why Fifty Kinds of Toothpaste Sit on the Shelf, Yet You Have No Real Choice
Let us begin with the most mundane of scenes: you walk into a large supermarket, intending to buy a tube of toothpaste. You approach the shelves of the oral care aisle, and are immediately struck by what unfolds before you.
An entire wall of shelving displays at least fifty different kinds of toothpaste. The packaging blazes in every color imaginable; the brands are a dazzling array. Some are called "Colgate Total," some "Crest 3D White," some "Yunnan Baiyao," and then there are "Sensodyne," "Blackman," "Lion"... Beneath each brand, countless functional selling points proliferate—"whitening," "cavity protection," "sensitivity relief," "fresh breath," "herbal," "bamboo charcoal."
Faced with such abundance, you experience a sense of "control" peculiar to modern consumer society. You may, according to your own unique, personalized needs, select the one toothpaste best suited to you.
Yet if you have the patience to spend a moment studying the information behind these packages, a startling, counterintuitive truth emerges:
Of these fifty-odd toothpastes that appear to be locked in fierce competition, judging by the typical structure of mature oral-care markets, a substantial share—often more than half—may ultimately belong to a small handful of multinational consumer goods giants: Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble (which owns Crest, Oral-B, and others), and Haleon (the consumer-healthcare business spun off from GlaxoSmithKline, which owns Sensodyne and others).
The ocean of "diversity" before your eyes is, in truth, a carefully staged "illusion." You believe you are choosing among distinct "species," but in reality you are merely selecting among the different "tentacles" of the same colossal beast.
This strategy—manufacturing "false diversity" through a "multi-brand matrix" and "product line extensions"—is the most classic and most powerful weapon consumer giants use to converge the market, annihilate competition, and ultimately strip away your genuine optionality on the shelf.
The "Shelf" as Battlefield: A Zero-Sum Game over Space
To grasp the power of this strategy, we must first recognize that supermarket "shelf space" is an extraordinarily scarce and exclusive strategic resource. It is a "zero-sum game": the total length of shelving is fixed, and for every additional unit of my product placed, one of yours must be removed.
For an emerging, independent toothpaste brand, the greatest challenge it faces is not that its product is inferior to the giants'—it is that it has "no chance to be seen by you."
The giants exploit precisely this fact to wage a "spatial saturation attack."
Building a Brand Matrix to Occupy Different "Ecological Niches"
The giants launch seemingly unrelated independent brands targeting different market segments. Procter & Gamble, in the hygiene and hair care domain, simultaneously owns "Rejoice" (softness), "Head & Shoulders" (dandruff control), "Pantene" (repair), and "Vidal Sassoon" (professional styling).
This matrix functions like a well-trained army. Each brand is a specialized unit, assigned to occupy a particular "mental hilltop." Working in concert, they achieve "gapless coverage" of consumer needs from every dimension.
Endless Product Line Extensions to Fill Every Crevice
Beneath each brand, the giants further deploy dozens of different SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) by making minor adjustments to function, fragrance, packaging, and the like. For example, under the single brand "Colgate," you can find "extra mint," "icy mint," "lime mint," and various other flavors, as well as sizes ranging from "120g" to "family pack."
The primary purpose of these SKUs is not to satisfy consumers' finely differentiated needs, but to serve a far more ruthless strategic goal: to occupy as much physical shelf space as possible.
When Procter & Gamble and Colgate, with their dozens of brands and hundreds of SKUs, carpet-bomb the entire toothpaste shelf, what happens to that fledgling independent brand?
- Physical exclusion: Supermarket purchasing managers, when planning shelf layouts, prioritize the brands that can deliver the greatest sales volume and profit. Armed with formidable financial resources and market standing, the giants can pay supermarkets exorbitant "slotting fees" and "endcap fees," while promising enormous sales figures. This leaves purchasing managers with virtually no reason to take the risk of allocating precious shelf space to an obscure new brand whose sales cannot be guaranteed. From the very beginning, the new brand is physically "elbowed out" of your view.
- Cognitive drowning: Even if the new brand, by some stroke of luck, secures a small display slot in a corner, it will be drowned in the "visual noise" the giants have created. As your eyes and mind sweep across that dazzling array of shelves, they are automatically drawn to the brands you know best, the ones with the highest exposure. You may not even "notice" that the new brand exists.
In the end, you stand before the shelf, seemingly presented with fifty choices—but as your brain makes its rapid decision, its "effective candidate set" may consist of only three or four brands you know best. And those three or four options all lead back to the same one or two capital entities.
Your choice has been pre-converged by a "spatial war" fought where you cannot see it. What you take to be free selection is nothing more than a "ritual of confirmation" conducted within territories the giants have already staked out.
From "Product Competition" to "Distribution Channel Competition"
The essence of the "false diversity" strategy is the subtle relocation of the battleground of competition—from "the quality of products" to "control of distribution channels."
The giants understand that in most mature consumer goods sectors—beverages, snacks, daily chemicals—the products themselves are already highly homogenized. The core ingredients and functions of different toothpaste brands differ only marginally. In such a situation, whoever maximizes control over the "physical touchpoints" that reach consumers (the shelf) wins the final victory.
This strategy applies not only to physical supermarkets, but equally to online e-commerce platforms.
On Taobao or Amazon, search for "phone case," and you will see thousands upon thousands of seemingly distinct shops and products. Yet many of them may belong to just a few "super-sellers" running a "shop matrix." By opening numerous stores with different styles and positioning, they cover different search keywords and user segments, thereby seizing the maximum share of the platform's virtual shelf space—the "search results page."
"False diversity" is an extraordinarily sturdy wall erected from capital and economies of scale. It firmly shuts out those small players who possess genuinely disruptive innovation but lack channel resources.
It reveals to us a fundamental law of consumerist society: the options you can choose are forever only those that possess the capacity to "be seen by you." And in this commercial world dominated by giants, the right to be seen is itself the most expensive of privileges.
6.2 Algorithmic Taming and the Information Cocoon: How Platforms Gradually Tighten the Boundaries of Your Cognition
If "false diversity" imposes an "external convergence" upon your choices in physical space—the shelf—then "algorithmic recommendation" performs an "internal convergence" upon your preferences within the space of your mind.
This is a more sophisticated, more personalized, and far more chilling form of control. It is no longer content to influence you "at the moment you choose"; it is committed to shaping your desires, tastes, and worldview "before the very thought of choosing even arises."
We call this process "algorithmic taming."
The term "taming" is ordinarily used to describe the process by which humans modify plants and animals to meet their own needs. In this process, the species' diversity declines, its wildness is lost, and it ultimately becomes a docile, predictable, and deeply dependent "manufactured species."
Recommendation algorithms are now conducting an operation of the same nature, on a massive scale, upon our "information diet" and "consumption preferences." Their ultimate purpose is to transform every user—from a "wild individual" brimming with uncertainty and broad interests—into a "confined consumer" whose preferences are highly vertical and whose behavior is easily predicted.
From "Search" to "Feeding": The Surrender of Agency
To grasp the power of "algorithmic taming," we must first recognize a fundamental transformation in how the internet distributes information: the shift from "people seek information" (the search era) to "information seeks people" (the recommendation era).
In the search era (epitomized by Google): you were the "active party" in the process of information acquisition. You first had to form a clear need in your mind ("I want to understand the history of artificial intelligence"), then translate it into keywords and enter them into a search box. The search engine, in response to your instruction, provided you with a list of links. Throughout this process, you retained the initiative to define the "agenda."
In the recommendation era (epitomized by TikTok, Jinri Toutiao, Netflix): you have become the "passive party." You no longer need to actively consider what you want to watch. You need only open the app, and the algorithm—like an indefatigable "feeder"—continuously "feeds" you, based on its "portrait" of you, content it believes you will enjoy.
This shift—from "active search" to "passive feeding"—is an enormously consequential "surrender of cognitive power." Almost without realizing it, we have handed over the authority to define our own "focal point of attention" to that faceless "algorithm" composed of code and data.
The Construction of the "Cognitive Funnel"
How does the algorithm gradually tighten the boundaries of your cognition, taming you into a "predictable consumer"? This process typically unfolds in three steps, forming a perfect "cognitive convergence funnel."
Stage One: Exploration and Profiling (the Funnel's Entrance)
When you first begin using a recommendation platform, the algorithm knows nothing about you. It pushes content of all kinds, broad in coverage, and—like a keen hunter—closely observes your every "micro-expression": to which video did you devote a few seconds more? Which image did you like? Which topic did you skip?
Every click, swipe, pause, and comment you make submits a "data confession" about yourself to the algorithm. The algorithm uses this data to rapidly construct a multidimensional "user portrait," tagging your interests: likes basketball, follows food, utterly defenseless before cat videos.
Stage Two: Reinforcement and Focus (the Funnel's Midsection)
Once the algorithm has a preliminary grasp of your preferences, it enters the "reinforcement" phase. It begins to reduce the pushing of content you find "uninteresting," and concentrates more traffic upon the areas in which you have already shown "interest."
If yesterday you watched several videos about "self-driving road trips," then today your feed will present more content on "Sichuan–Tibet Highway guides," "camping gear recommendations," and "rankings of the most beautiful roads."
This process brings you enormous "pleasure." You feel this app "understands me"—it always manages to push things you like. This pleasure is a powerful "positive incentive" that lures you into spending more time on the platform.
And the more time you spend, the more data you supply to the algorithm; the more data it has, the more precise its portrait of you becomes; and the more "focused" the content it pushes to you. This is a perfect "positive feedback loop."
Stage Three: Convergence and Locking (the Funnel's Exit)
When this positive feedback loop has persisted for some time, your "information diet" is drastically "converged." Your homepage becomes a highly homogenized "information echo chamber." What you see is almost entirely content closely aligned with the interests you already hold.
At this stage, "algorithmic taming" is complete. You have been successfully locked within an "information cocoon" of extreme narrowness, tailored for you by the algorithm.
You cannot see what you dislike: the knowledge domains that run contrary to your views, that you have never encountered, are systematically filtered out by the algorithm.
You cannot even conceive of what you do not know: because you never encounter new, heterogeneous information stimuli, your curiosity and desire to explore gradually wither. Your cognitive boundary, once a universe expanding outward, contracts into a self-referential "prison of involution."
From "Information Cocoon" to "Consumption Prison"
Once a person's cognitive boundary has been successfully converged, converging their "consumption behavior" becomes a foregone conclusion.
A user tamed into a "hardcore sci-fi fan" will naturally find his feed populated with "Three-Body Problem" merchandise, cyberpunk-style clothing, and ticket links for the latest science fiction films.
A user tamed into a "refined camping enthusiast" will be endlessly pushed expensive tents, vintage kerosene lamps, and niche outdoor cookware.
The algorithm has become the consumerist age's most efficient "desire machine" and "purchase converter." It is not "satisfying" the needs you already have—it is "creating" and "shaping" your new needs. Through an unrelenting barrage of information, it convinces you that "owning these things is what makes you a 'true' sci-fi fan' or a 'refined' camper."
In the end, the algorithm constructs for you a perfect closed loop running from "cognition" to "interest" and onward to "consumption." Within this loop, every "flutter of the heart" and every "click to order" you experience is nothing more than a precise execution of a pre-programmed "stimulus–response" sequence.
Your personality, your taste, your identity—all are digitized, labeled, and ultimately commodified in this process. You become a consumption unit that is utterly "transparent" and "predictable" to the platform. And a fully predictable system, as we argued in the first volume, is a system whose degree of freedom is zero.
6.3 The Conspiracy of the Subscription Model: Transforming Single Transactions into Indefinite Path Dependency
Above the two refined arts of control—"false diversity" and "algorithmic taming"—the modern commercial world has evolved yet another, more terminal mode of "forced convergence." It is no longer content to influence your single purchase decision; it is committed to thoroughly "assetizing" you as a person.
This mode is the "subscription model."
On the surface, the subscription model appears to be a consumer-friendlier way of doing business. It transforms the "ownership" model of buying an expensive product or service in one lump sum into a model of paying a modest fee monthly or annually in exchange for "access." From software (Office 365, Adobe Creative Cloud) to streaming (Netflix, Spotify) to lifestyle services (Amazon Prime, assorted membership programs), the subscription model seems to offer us a more flexible, more economical choice.
Yet beneath this sugar-coating of "flexibility" and "economy" lies hidden a deep and strategic conspiracy, aimed at constructing "permanent path dependency."
The essence of the subscription model is to transform the relationship between merchant and consumer—from a series of discrete, terminable-at-any-moment "single transactions"—into a continuous "indefinite relationship" that persists forever unless actively broken.
In this transformation, the consumer's identity quietly changes as well. You are no longer a free "customer" who can switch between merchants at will; you become a "subscriber" who is "owned" by a particular platform and stably contributes "recurring revenue."
The "Default Continuation" Principle: Exploiting Human Laziness
The foundation upon which the subscription model's success rests is an extraordinarily simple yet extraordinarily powerful psychological principle: the human preference for "default options," and the inertia against "changing the status quo."
When you subscribe to a service, you typically must bind your credit card and consent to "automatic renewal." This "automatic renewal" is the core "forced convergence" mechanism of the subscription model.
It deftly inverts the traditional model of transaction:
- In the traditional model (single purchase): the default option is "no transaction." Each transaction requires you to actively, consciously make a "purchase" decision.
- In the subscription model: the default option is rewritten as "continued transaction." The continuation of the transaction no longer requires your active consent. On the contrary, it is "terminating the transaction" that now demands your active, conscious act of "canceling the subscription."
This modest rewrite of the "default option" has enormous consequences. Because the very act of "canceling the subscription" is laden with frictions that have been carefully engineered:
- The "cognitive cost" of finding the cancellation entry point: On many platforms, the "cancel subscription" button is deliberately buried deep within layers upon layers of menus; you must expend considerable time and effort to locate it.
- The "decision cost" of facing retention offers: When you click to cancel, the platform often pops up various "retention" appeals—"we'll give you three months at half price"—plunging you back into weighing and hesitation.
- The fear of "loss": Canceling a subscription often means losing the data, history, playlists, or membership tiers stored on that platform. This "loss aversion" toward "sunk assets" we discussed in detail in section 2.2.
It is precisely these "frictions," compounded by humanity's near-universal "procrastination" and "laziness," that lead the overwhelming majority of users—even when their need for a service is no longer urgent—to choose to "maintain the status quo," allowing that monthly or annual fee to be deducted automatically, time and again, almost without their awareness.
The Leap from "Product Value" to "Ecosystem Locking"
If exploiting "laziness" is the beginner's move of the subscription model, then its more advanced move is to render your "cost of leaving" unbearably high by constructing an "ecosystem."
Apple's "whole family bucket" strategy:
- When you own only an iPhone, the cost of migrating from the Apple ecosystem to Android remains relatively manageable. But if you also own an iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch, and AirPods, and have come to rely deeply on services such as iCloud and Apple Music, you are enveloped in an invisible "web of subscription" woven from software and hardware.
- Your photos and files sync seamlessly across all your devices (iCloud).
- Your earphones switch imperceptibly between phone and computer (AirPods).
- Your watch helps unlock your computer (Apple Watch).
- This "seamless experience," jointly constructed by different products and services, is the strongest "moat" of the Apple ecosystem. What you subscribe to is no longer any single service, but an entire "Apple way of life." At this point, if you wish to replace any single link in the chain—say, swapping your iPhone for an Android phone—you face the "collapse of the entire ecosystem." You would lose that magical experience of "everything working seamlessly together." This exorbitant "ecosystem exit cost" permanently "subscribes" the vast majority of deep users within Apple's walled garden.
SaaS software's "data hostage":
- For enterprises, subscription-based SaaS (Software as a Service) software—such as Salesforce (customer relationship management) and Slack (team collaboration)—exerts an even more powerful lock-in effect.
- Once a company has migrated its core customer data, project histories, and team communication records entirely onto a given SaaS platform, it has entrusted its "business memory" and "collaborative nervous system" wholly to that platform.
- In the future, even if better, cheaper alternatives appear, any rational CTO will abandon the idea upon contemplating the enormous technical risk, high cost, and potential business disruption involved in migrating those terabytes of structured historical data, completely and without error, into a new system.
- The company's data becomes a "hostage" held by the SaaS platform. The company is compelled to become that platform's "permanent subscriber."
The subscription model is the ultimate form of "forced convergence" in the commercial world. By overturning the "default option" and exploiting our cognitive inertia, it quietly transforms us from free "purchasers" into bound "taxpayers."
It goes further, constructing powerful "ecosystems" to convert our data, habits, and even our way of life into the "sunk costs" of leaving a platform—thereby successfully upgrading our "single transaction" with the platform into an "infinite game" from which we are almost certain never to exit.
Epilogue
In this chapter, we have walked out of the labyrinth of consumerism. We have seen through the collusion of capital behind the "false diversity" on the shelf, perceived how "algorithmic taming" tightens the boundaries of our cognition, and finally revealed how the "subscription model" locks us permanently within particular ecosystems.
With this, we have completed our entire exploration of "Part Two: The Commercial Jungle." From the tyranny of "standards," to the cage of "relationships," to the labyrinth of "consumption," we have drawn a complete map of how modern commercial giants, by constructing "ecological barriers," impose "forced convergence" upon society as a whole.
On this map, we see how the free optionality of choice is systematically stripped away, step by step, amid technological progress, the expansion of capital, and innovation in business models. We appear to live in an age of unprecedented abundance, yet our behaviors, our thoughts, even our desires, have long since been channeled by those invisible "convergence funnels" toward a handful of predetermined endpoints.
But does recognizing these grand structures of control mean we can only surrender and submit?
The answer is no. Yet before we raise our gaze toward the grand starry sky of great-power rivalry, there remains one micro-battlefield in which each of us stands every day, yet which is all too easily overlooked—the organization. In the forthcoming Part Three, "The Organization Game," we will pull the lens from the macro-ecology down to the individual, to examine how companies use institutions, and how leaders use informational asymmetry, to converge the possibilities of each one of us; and how, in this daily tug-of-war, we may both hold fast to our own freedom and learn to play our own game.