there was this period during the 2000s when the majority of AOL's revenue was subscription fees from people who didn't realize they weren't using the service
a few decades before that, after the big antitrust breakup allowed people to own telephones, a lot of people still kept paying the rental fees for the phone company's phone... except it wasn't. it was no longer a rental fee, it was described as something super abstract because it was unnecessary.
weird how history rhymes like that sometimes