LAKEWOOD, OH — Speaking from the driver's seat of a pickup whose heated seats he rents for $18 a month, local man Darren Pruitt, 44, told reporters Wednesday that he is "not owned by anybody," a claim immediately disputed by his truck, his television, his thermostat, three streaming services, a data broker he has never heard of and the hat on his head.
"I think for myself. Always have," said Pruitt, reading the sentence off a push notification that had arrived at 6:14 a.m., the time he receives his opinions each day. "Nobody tells Darren Pruitt what to think. I'm not a sheep. I do my own research." Pruitt later clarified that his own research consists of a 41-second video his feed recommended to him 14 times, until he agreed with it.
The red cap Pruitt wore throughout the interview, which reads NOT OWNED in white block letters, arrived as part of a $29.99-a-month apparel box and shipped with an 11-page terms of service. Section 4.2 grants the wearer "a limited, revocable, non-transferable license to wear the Cap upon the Wearer's head," and reserves the manufacturer's right to "discontinue support for the Cap at any time, for any reason, including no reason."
The manufacturer, Liberty Threads LLC, is a subsidiary of a private equity fund that also produces the QUESTION EVERYTHING tote bag carried by Pruitt's next-door neighbor, who is also not owned. Both products ship from the same warehouse, in the same box, on the same day.
Pruitt says he has "bought" 412 movies from a digital storefront. Since California's AB 2426 took effect on Jan. 1, 2025, stores selling to Californians have had to tell buyers when a "purchase" is really a revocable license. Pruitt lives in Ohio, where his movies remain technically licensed and, he said, "spiritually mine." He described the word "license" as "propaganda from the license people."
His subscriptions follow a similar pattern. A CNET survey this summer found the average American now spends $111 a month on subscriptions, up 23 percent from last year. Pruitt spends $340, a figure he called "a choice," although he could not name seven of the services. Among those he could name were the heated seats, remote start, a premium tier of his riding mower's "Mow Assist" software and FreeThink+, an app that sends him one original opinion a day.
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HuckFinn obtained a copy of Pruitt's file from a data broker that assigns him to segments including "Independent Thinker (Inferred)," "Responds To Phrase 'Wake Up'" and "Will Buy Anything Labeled Tactical." Large brokers have claimed to keep thousands of data points on each person. Asked to describe himself in his own words, Pruitt used 11. Nine of them appear in his file word for word. The other two were "um."
"This is called the third-person effect," said Dr. Lena Okafor, a professor of media psychology at the Ohio Valley Institute of Persuasion. "Almost everyone believes advertising works on other people. It is the most successful belief advertising has ever installed." Okafor added that she is personally immune to marketing, then excused herself to finish a checkout that had been sitting in her cart for 14 minutes and was "almost gone."
Pruitt also says he spent most of Tuesday "owning" a stranger in a 300-reply comment thread. The account was later identified as an engagement bot operated by an advertising network, the same network that served Pruitt 46 ads during the argument, three of them for the hat. "So he got owned," Pruitt said. Analysts who reviewed the thread agreed that both participants had been owned, by the same party, which billed for every reply.
Midway through the interview, Pruitt's heated-seat subscription lapsed because of an expired card. As the seat cooled, he said he preferred it that way. "Cold builds character. That's freedom," he said, while the dashboard offered to "Reactivate Warmth: 3 months for the price of 4." BMW abandoned its own $18-a-month heated-seat subscription in 2023 after customers objected. A Brahman Motors spokesperson said the company "learned from that" and now calls the feature "warmth."
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Pruitt's riding mower, which he owns outright, broke in August. The manufacturer, Sod King, told him only an authorized dealer 90 miles away could install a replacement blade, because the blade must be "paired" with the mower's software. The blade cost $31. The pairing cost $49. Farmers won a version of this fight in July, when John Deere settled a federal right-to-repair lawsuit and agreed to give owners and independent shops the same repair tools its dealers get. Sod King has settled with no one. "I could've fixed it myself," Pruitt said. "I just wasn't allowed to, by choice."
His neighbor, Gwen Halvorsen, 47, joined the interview carrying her tote. She said she disagrees with Pruitt "about literally everything." The two then compared phones and found that both their news feeds, both their streaming services and both their smart doorbells are run by the same three companies, which also employ the moderators who flagged their last argument as "high-value engagement."
"See, that's the difference between us," Pruitt said. "She's owned." Halvorsen said the same thing about him, in the same words, at the same time, which a notification on both phones later described as "a great conversation."
At press time, Pruitt had cancelled one subscription in protest, which brought up a retention screen. He accepted a "loyal customer" offer that upgraded him to Premium for $2 more a month, a decision he described as "mine, entirely mine."
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