A little over 20 years ago I became editor-in-chief of The Bulletin magazine, blithely unaware my appointment was akin to being promoted to orchestral conductor on the Titanic moments before it hit the iceberg.

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My naivety didn't last long. The magazine's first financial report I scanned read like a gruesome autopsy finding. The readership database resembled a newspaper obituary section. It was a safe bet many of our loyal readers had shakily signed their first subscriptions with a fountain pen. On a steam locomotive.

A marketing executive sensed my alarm and offered some advice that sounded less like a publishing strategy and more like a TV ad for steak knives. "Offer new readers a free watch if they subscribe for three years," he said. "Get 'em for that long and you have 'em for life."

It sounded faintly sinister. But he was right. Three years was the magic number. That monthly credit card charge gradually became forgotten amid all those other expenses of daily existence like mortgages, council rates, health insurance and power bills.

You had 'em for life.

Or, in the case of The Bulletin, the few years they had left.

These days marketing has elevated the recurring subscription to a calculated science. We no longer purchase but subscribe to endless television streaming services, phone providers, music platforms, cloud storage companies, software upgrades, food delivery businesses and gaming and puzzle apps.

Subscriptions are the wallpaper of modern life, a booming economy based entirely on human psychology. The seduction process is painless at the beginning. A seven-day free trial! First month just $1! Cancel anytime! If a $1200 annual fee sounds prohibitive, $20 a week feels much more reasonable.

Then the costs mount. One recent study found Australians spend more than $100 a month on "zombie" services they no longer use. More than a third admit their subscription spend is "over budget" while close to 80 per cent feel stressed about incessantly recurring costs.

Good luck trying to get rid of them. Companies love recurring payments because they generate regular income and provide personal data they can monetise. Entire businesses are now devoted to "customer retention".

Which is why the simple act of cancelling subscriptions feels closer to conducting a hostage negotiation.

Researchers like those at the consumer rights website Deceptive Patterns have identified techniques they have dubbed "roach motel" practices, named after a disposable cardboard insect trap marketed in the US in the 1980s that used bait and a sticky interior to lure insects inside with no chance of escape.

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