Welcome back to another Question of the Week here at The Confusing Middle!

This week’s question comes, as always, from Gregory Stock’s The Book of Questions. And I’ll be honest — when I landed on this one, I laughed out loud a little, because it manages to be both completely absurd and uncomfortably pointed at the same time. Which, honestly, is my favorite kind of question.

Here it is:

If your car told you in a soothing voice to watch your weight as soon as you started putting on pounds, how long would it take you to disconnect the feature?

Go ahead. Sit with that for a second.

Okay. Let’s talk about it.

First of All, No

I want to start by addressing the premise of this question, because I think it deserves some scrutiny before we even get to the disconnecting part.

A car that talks to you about your weight implies a car that talks to you. Period. And I am going to go ahead and establish upfront that I am not the target market for that vehicle.

I drive a 2009 Toyota Corolla. I don’t say that with any particular embarrassment — it runs, it gets me where I’m going, and it has never once offered me unsolicited lifestyle advice. It doesn’t have satellite radio. It doesn’t have a backup camera. It definitely does not have sensors calibrated to monitor my physical mass and report back to me in a soothing voice about what it has observed. My car’s most advanced feature is probably the cup holder, and I am at peace with that.

The smart home and smart car revolution has, by and large, passed me by, and I have not chased after it. I had an Alexa for a while. Key word: had. She woke me up in the middle of the night one time, answering a question I never asked, in the dark, at full volume, completely unprompted. That was the end of that experiment. I unplugged her the next morning and I have not looked back. So if I’m already the guy who excommunicated his Amazon Echo for one unsolicited outburst at 2 a.m., you can imagine how I’d feel about a car that critiques my body.

The One Exception, Because There Is Always One Exception

I realize I said I don’t want a talking car, and I mean it — with one very specific, very non-negotiable caveat.

KITT.

If I could have KITT — the Knight Industries Two Thousand, the artificially intelligent, turbo-boosted, David Hasselhoff-adjacent Trans Am from Knight Rider — I would take that deal so fast it would make your head spin. No hesitation. No fine print negotiation. Done.

But here’s the thing about KITT: he would never comment on your weight. That’s not what KITT does. KITT is loyal. KITT is focused. KITT is out here scanning for danger, running threat assessments, and occasionally delivering a line with the dry, vaguely condescending wit of a very smart British person despite being, technically, a car. KITT has better things to do than tell you that you’ve been hitting the drive-through a little too frequently lately.

KITT would respect your autonomy. KITT would keep his sensors to himself unless the information was mission-critical. And even then, he’d probably find a more tactful way to bring it up.

So yes. Talking car: no. KITT specifically: absolutely yes. These are not contradictory positions. This is simply a matter of having standards.

To Answer the Actual Question

Approximately zero minutes. Maybe less, if that’s physically possible.

Here’s the thing about this question that I find both funny and kind of interesting: it assumes there’s a window of time in which I might tolerate the feature before eventually disconnecting it. Like maybe I’d let it ride for a few days. Maybe I’d find the soothing voice charming at first, appreciate the gentle nudge, give it a fair shake before ultimately pulling the plug.

No. That is not what would happen. What would happen is I would hear it once, stare at my dashboard in disbelief, and start Googling “how to disable weight monitoring feature [car make and model]” before I even pulled out of the driveway.

And look — I want to be clear about something. This isn’t because I’m in denial. I’ve seen myself in the mirror. I know what I look like. I know how I breathe after climbing a flight of stairs, and I know what that tells me. I am not laboring under any illusions about where I currently stand on the general health and wellness spectrum. The information the car would be providing is not, technically speaking, news.

But there is something deeply different between knowing a thing yourself and having it announced to you by your vehicle.

I already know what I know. I don’t need a dashboard intervention. I don’t need my morning commute to double as a wellness check-in. I don’t need a soothing voice — and can we just pause on the phrase “soothing voice” for a second, because that detail is doing a lot of work in this question — I don’t need a soothing voice to walk me through the implications of my recent life choices while I’m just trying to get to the grocery store. Or, more to the point, while I’m trying to get to the drive-through.

The soothing part almost makes it worse, honestly. A critical voice I can dismiss. A soothing one implies that it’s trying to help, that it has my best interests at heart, that this is coming from a place of care. Which gives me nowhere to direct my annoyance except inward, and that seems like a terrible way to start any car trip.

What This Question Is Really About

I think Gregory Stock isn’t really asking about cars. I think he’s asking about accountability — specifically, whether we want it, how we want it delivered, and from what sources we’re willing to accept it.

And my honest answer is that I’m pretty selective about this. I don’t want unsolicited feedback from my appliances. I don’t want my Fitbit to shame me. I don’t want an app notification telling me I’ve been sedentary for too long in a tone that implies disappointment. Technology offering me judgment dressed up as encouragement is still judgment, and I’d rather not have it piped directly into my personal space through a speaker at eye level.

The accountability I actually respond to is the internal kind. The quiet awareness that catches up with you eventually. Not the kind that speaks up from the dashboard in a voice calibrated to be non-threatening.

Which, when you think about it, is probably why I got rid of Alexa. I don’t have a problem with technology. I have a problem with technology that speaks when not spoken to. The 2009 Toyota Corolla, bless its cup holders, has never done that. It just runs. Quietly. Without comment. Exactly as a car should.

I think we’d all be better off if more things followed its example.

Your Turn

So how about you? Would you keep the feature? Is there a version of this — a different voice, a different delivery, a different level of gentleness — that you’d actually find useful rather than infuriating? Or would you be reaching for that disconnect button just as fast as I would?

And more broadly: how do you feel about technology that nudges you toward better behavior? Is it a welcome assist, or does it feel like surveillance with a wellness branding?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to know where you land on this one — and whether your car has ever made you feel judged.

Until next week — this is Aaron, still at The Confusing Middle, still driving the Corolla, still very much the boss of my own dashboard.

Feature Photo by Jakub Zerdzicki