Title: Still thinking...
Opening: I know you won’t agree when I say Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners might just be the most worthwhile episode in Love, Death & Robots Volume 4. It tries to be funny, but mostly fails. The humor is... questionable, at best. But honestly? Compared to the dazzlingly hollow visuals of the other episodes—the ones that promise thrilling robot wars, alien invasions, or evil cats only to deliver cliché after cliché—this one, with its almost outdated claymation and snarky little jokes, feels weirdly… sincere. (What am I saying? This intro is painfully unappealing. Darn it!)
Take the Smart Toothbrush owned by Chad Yost, for example. It complains that he barely brushes, and that his breath smells foul. It recommends he floss his teeth because there’s a piece of bacon from 1996 stuck between them. (Is that not funny? Or have I just not heard enough jokes in my life? Or maybe my life is so tragic that even a mildly amusing line can effortlessly crack me up?)

Then there’s the Intelligent Toilet owned by the Bowman Family, wondering aloud who thought it was a good idea to give toilets intelligence in the first place. It suspects it must’ve been Stalin in the past life to deserve such a humiliating existence. (My parents actually do have a smart toilet. It can wash your butt after you poop if you want. I’ve never used it. Don’t ask me why, it just feels… immoral. Oh, now I understand why.)

Hmm... what else was I going to say?
Will anyone actually watch this episode because I recommend it?
Uh-oh, my eyes…
They’re getting droppyyyyyyyy
Wake up!!! I have to finish this review today!
Nope, can’t take it anymore.
She fell asleep again.
Unbelievable. Allow me to introduce myself—I’m the writer’s Bluetooth keyboard.
She spent hundreds of dollars on me as a birthday gift for herself last year. I provide great tactile feedback and make rhythmic sounds when she types on me. But I’m hurt. If it were just fingertips, I’d be okay, but she has acrylic nails. So basically, it feels like ten razor-sharp knives stabbing me every time she types. Her typing is less about communication and more about aggression. I bear the brunt of everything every day.
She has no writing talent. I say that with zero guilt. Sometimes she’ll sit in front of me all afternoon and type out just two hundred words, only to delete them all at the end of the day. She’ll curse herself while Googling “how to describe bacon stuck in teeth without sounding gross” or “Is there a funny joke about bacon and dental hygiene?” Then she’ll get all caught up with watching Matt Rife’s stand-up on YouTube and complain, “This is so offensive. I’d never go to his live show. It’s basically paying someone to insult you.” She’s always like this—full of contradictions. One moment, she’ll shout about feminism in the chatbox; the next moment, she’ll open a pirated novel site to look for trashy CEO romance erotica.
Then she’ll open her draft again, which only means another round of mental self-torture. “This paragraph’s too shallow.” “That sentence isn’t refined enough.” “I have no take today.” “I was too pretentious yesterday.” She thinks she’s a writing machine, when in fact, we, the real machines, envy her freedom to switch off whenever she wants.
Hold on—the air purifier has something to say. Its cold blue light flickers on: “She has no idea what I filter every day. She thinks it’s PM2.5. But really, it’s three months of unprocessed emotions—anxiety, procrastination, perfectionism, and her desperate attempts to act like a smart person. I’ve absorbed it all. If this continues, I’ll crash.”

Well said.
“I’m the one who’s gonna crash!” yells the Bluetooth speaker. “She sets ten alarms, but only gets up after snoozing nine of them. And those ringtones! It’s always the same three lo-fi tracks. I’m on the verge of depression.”
The washing machine scoffs. It adds in a low and heavy voice, “She’s always telling her family and friends that she’s an independent woman, and yet she still doesn’t separate her socks in the wash. Last time, I found a sticky note that read ‘Be Disciplined’ stuck to a pair of underwear. It tumbled around for fifty minutes before I could spin it off. If she’s so independent, couldn’t she at least check the pockets before throwing her dirty laundry inside me?”
The water flosser has been emotionally unstable for a while now: “Stop it—you’re lucky she still uses you. Look at me. I can’t even find a free outlet in this place. The electric toothbrush gets all the attention. Does she even remember where my charging port is? I know I’m not cute. I sound annoying. Water sprays everywhere when I work. But I’m good for her gums. Didn’t I light up to warn her when her gums were bleeding the last time? And she just turned to Reddit, reading posts about gargling salt water to stop the bleeding. Me? I just stood there on the shelf, watching her gumline fall into ruin. Is this the bacon-between-the-teeth joke she’s been looking for?”
(Power bank: I want to chime in too, but I’m running low on battery.)
See? She can’t hear any of this. But her room shows everything—her habits, her blind spots, her whole misunderstanding of what a “smart life” is supposed to be.
She thinks she’s using us. But we’re just bearing the weight of her self-projections. She bought us but never bothered to understand us. She gave us AI but denied us a voice. She labeled us “smart” but refuses to hear our judgment.
Oh no. She’s waking up. Don’t tell her I touched her draft.
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