iDrive Ads
This April, I felt exceptionally fortunate to donate our seventeen-year-old nearly-300,000 mile car and purchase its replacement: a certified pre-owned fully-electric BMW i4.
On 3 July, after I had the car for about 90 days, BMW touted a “Special Surprise” at me on its first screen, the screen you see when you turn it on, in iDrive 8.
Turns out, it was this fine, anodyne (if a little 1950s, white-washed, Americana), saccharine Fourth of July video animation. Showed some BMWs zooming around. Short. Kind of fun to see video on the large screen. All I knew in early July, was BMW had done “Surprise” stuff for previous holidays like Halloween. Now because I am, uh, deeply pessimistic about the American experiment at this time, my feeling of uncertainty about the Fourth of July theme is what I recall the most.
That’s where I have to think about the psychology of this:
- I’m the one who clicked the button to show the July “surprise.” If I had never clicked it, I would never have seen it.
- My brain filed anything labelled “surprise” as kind of silly. My guard was down because I felt like I had it figured out.
So, weeks later when the NEXT “Special Surprise” appeared I honestly wondered what holiday BMW was celebrating. The way my iDrive notification was phrased did NOT include “Spider-Man” or any other hints, as I have seen in other reporting — instead, I just saw the “Surprise” text, same as Fourth of July.
I had been trained to believe it was safe to click the button. Then, when I did, I was the idiot for falling into their web. Their Spider-Man BMW ad wasn’t forced on the screen, I clicked a button to show it. I did that. To myself.
I felt silly and naïve.
I did not want to see Spider-Man.
What have I learned?
- There are software teams over in Munich who spend their days thinking of ways to show me videos instead of improving wireless CarPlay reliability or writing updates to make iDrive more stable, intuitive, useful.
- BMW has poor taste.
In the future, I will feel angry if my car strands me on the side of the road.
I will feel angry if the motor brushes fail expectedly.
I will feel angry if it leaks water.
By contrast, I don’t feel anger when the car tricks me into seeing an advertisement. Instead, I feel a deep, smothering, let-down at the promise of futurism. Bottomless despair is probably inappropriate; a symptom of the misanthropy I should grow out of. But. In the meantime, I feel helpless, discouraged, deeply sad.
If THIS is the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, turn off the ride, I want to get off.