[reggieband]

I recall a Twilight Zone movie "Cat's Eye" and a sketch from that including James Woods called "Dying For a Smoke". The premise is a man wants to quit smoking so he goes to a firm called Quitters Inc. where he signs a contract. If they catch him smoking they will escalate the punishments against him. After a few relatively tame punishments for sneaking a cigarette, he gets caught smoking again and so they kidnap his wife and daughter. They force him to watch as the company tortures his family and then they insinuate even worse fates for his family if they catch him smoking again.

The sketch from the mentioned movie is a dark satire. It lampoons the kind of pseudo-logical thinking which simplifies problems by externalizing responsibility for our actions to external entities. Yet it is only when that external entity reflects the consequences of our action back on us that there is a chance we alter our behavior. However, once externalized we lose control of the process and in some sense become a slave to it.

I feel that dystopian sketch is a satire directly aimed at this kind of application.

[mpalmer]

Originally a short story by Stephen King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc.