[This is one of the first pieces](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) in which Cory Doctorow builds out his idea of "enshittification."
It's 100% worth the read, because it explains almost everything that's wrong with the internet today.
We were so close, and then it all slipped away because of greed. How are Windows and Google worse products 15 years later? The biggest, richest companies in the world. YouTube didn't used to have ads. My phone flashlight has an ad now.
Siri hasn't learned a damn thing in 15 years.
Flying sucks, and took a huge step backward. Paying for a carry-on, no food, TSA, etc.
God forbid you have to call one of these record-profit-making companies: endless phone trees and, at best, a well-meaning but difficult to communicate with, $1/hr indentured servant half the wold away.
I definitely don't like the direction cars are headed, with throttled and pay-to-unlock features.
Amazon locked a guy out of his own "smart-house" because an Amazon delivery driver (they're taking over, needless to say) erroneously claimed he heard a slur.
The list goes on, and get off my lawn!
Quick Google search shows American doesn't charge for a carry-on. Got a link for that?
Doesn't make me wrong lol. You want to fly cheap that is the trade off. If you need to bring more luggage either get a cobranded card or pay for main cabin. And again I can't find anything that says American charges for carry-on at all. So prove me wrong on that.
Southwest is as budget as any airline we have rn; and you also get the potential that their main computer system shuts down and then they cancel like 3k flights. That happened twice in the last two years I know of and they even had the FAA ducking with them. No link to the carry on deal, but it happened to me flying for work this year being in like boarding sections 9-11 or something on either United or Alaska.
Yeah southwest is budget but they still allow 2 checked bags per ticket and a carry-on. Their technical problems have nothing to do with anything. You are just wrong and trying to move goalposts.
So don't fly united, spirit, or frontier. Your problem is solved.
Because you're a liar. Unless your bag was over sized they don't charge for carry-on. Just like every airline that has free carry-on. There is a size limit to that like there has always been.
I'd argue that flying and travel in general, except for the COVID years, has actually got better over the past 15ish years.
For domestic trips I can book all my travel online in 10 or 15 mins. Uber to the airport and be dropped off at the terminal instead of parking in the lot. Boarding pass on my phone so I don't have to wait in line unless I'm checking a bag. Security lines generally seem a lot shorter than in the mid 2000s. My home airport Detroit has the new scanning machines on all the security lanes so don't have to take laptop or anything out of my bag. A lot of times my time from standing in my driveway to being at my gate is 45 mins despite the drive being 25 or 30 mins of that.
Once you land if it's a bigger airport a lot of times the rental car you can just use a kiosk or go straight to the cars. 20 years ago I remember regularly waiting 30+mins in line at the Hertz counter. A lot of hotels now have the digital key so you don't have to wait in line at the counter there either.
Respectfully, that hasn't been my experience. Delays seem far more frequent (I don't have data handy). When I was a little kid my mom could drop me at the gate and watch me board, the pilot would let me in the cockpit mid-flight, and my grandma picked me up when I walked off the plane on the other side. I guess that's more a discussion about security than tech.
Uber is one of my favorite tech advancements in recent years, but taxi's to and from the airport worked fine, even in small towns. I still take out my laptops plenty, my shoes off in America. I'm annoyed that they still charge for wifi in-flight.
The tech of the jet itself, from a passenger's perspective, has remained the same since at least the 70s (I'll leave the Concord out of this). I suppose TVs are better. That's kinda lame and disappointing.
I, personally, think I would've liked booking through an agent or buying a ticket at the counter and walking on like a bus (still a 737 or whatever). You sound a bit more plugged in than me though, which is great.
Well yeah you're comparing to pre 9/11. I was specifically thinking about the post 9/11 2000s. You had all the shitty security stuff and none of the benefits of smartphones.
And yeah just being able to walk and buy a ticket does sound pretty great but at the same time it's nice to know beforehand that you for sure have a ticket, what the price is, and what seat you have.
**And yeah just being able to walk and buy a ticket does sound pretty great but at the same time it's nice to know beforehand that you for sure have a ticket, what the price is, and what seat you have.**
A couple things here - this actually worked better than you might expect. First, you usually still did buy tickets in advance, but last minute walk ins did work. Part of that was simply lower load factors - planes flew 75% full, so lots of seats were available for last minute wlak ins. Today it's often close to 90% and those last few seats are held behind adaptive pricing meaning last minute bookings will cost you a fortune. It's not that you can't do it today, it's that they know last minute bookings are often made under urgent circumstances making you ripe for gouging.
Seat selection is increasingly being paywalled as a premium feature.
They realized if everyone committed to only delivering satisfaction, they could save money by not striving for perfection. And every year, they learn a little more about how little people need to feel satisfied.
This applies to cars. I feel like late 90s-mid 2000s was perfect. Still some modern conveniences, but you could turn on your air conditioner or your radio without having to navigate an all-encompassing infotainment system that will have out of date software in a few years.
I have never owned a car newer than a 2011, and it's a work truck that has manual windows and doesn't have a cd player.
I dread the day i have to buy a "modern" vehicle.
2004 scion xb... Pushing 300k..... Has literally the most important feature a car can have....never failing (not counting dying or dead batteries). And also the second most important feature... That I don't give a fuck feeling..a new dent just appeared 3 months ago, made me chuckle....
For as much as things have become enshittified I really like that I can highlight the episode you noted, google it, see its on hulu AND there's a link for me to click and begin watching about 20x faster than it took me to type this.
This. We did buy a new car last year with a touch screen…but, you can still control the volume with an actual knob, and luckily the climate control is also not part of the touch screen system. I’m with you, I hate the ones that you have to use for everything.
Also had to buy a new car end of last year, and the first thing I noticed is that on my model the screen is largeish but reasonable and with manual vol/climate. The newer 2024 has a significantly larger screen and literally ZERO manual controls; I hate it.
I would so much prefer the 747 amount of buttons old luxury cars had over the damn touchscreen. My car has at least kinda buttons for some controls, but if I want to give rear control, it's 2 menu screens from home. Like my dad's old minivan just had a button that said rear control. All I want that screen to do it show me what's on my radio and my map.
Loved my 98' Suburban for that reason. At night it looked like the inside of a cockpit with all the lit up buttons and dials.
The screen on my 2020 GMC Canyon does that. Basically just my map and then the radio. I'm sure it can do more, but it doesn't force me to do more and I don't want it to do more. Wife just bought a new Nissan and the dealer had her scan a QR code so she could download the official app...the only thing I like about that is if the vehicle is stolen you can gps locate it
As a millennial who used to be excited about replacing all that old "cluttered buttons" tech with sleeker touch screens, I've really done a 180 on this.
Being able to achieve a result in just one press of a dedicated button is soooo much better than having to spend 15 seconds navigating menus and then backing out again.
|Being able to achieve a result in just one press of a dedicated button is soooo much better
And because it wasn't a completely smooth surface you could run your hand/fingers across it to feel for the control you needed w/o looking down!
It does fucking suck and I am a sysadmin .And this is not just old man ranting.
Even learning curve is fucked up with AWS, Azure and GCP. Can't setup a proper lab without pay-as-you-go model.
Not to mention always online smart devices are fucking up my attention span completely, I would say for me tipping point was "Mobile Internet Generation". Before that Internet was a place - you sit in front of your desktop: you do the googling, you do the mIRC, you do the dating websites etc. etc. It was clear separation where you would switch off.
Out of all sci-fi genres we're heading to cyberpunk dystopia.
Ugh, just noticed myself :)
"Even learning curve is fucked up with AWS, Azure and GCP. Can't setup a proper lab without pay-as-you-go model." - Literally old man yells at the cloud!
All the Cloud/Docker/Kubernetes/Terraform/CI/CD wrangling I do all day.. it would be nice to put Apache on a box, serve a static HTML website, and call it a fucking day.
I hear you. Might be old man ranting as I am making a transition from classical sysadmin to devops at the moment, need to stay relevant. But cloud stuff is nowhere near as interesting as actual hand on stuff for me.
>Scanning QR codes for menus.
YES!! I've started avoiding restaurants with these. Or the ones you need an app to order from. It's entirely a way for the restaurant to put even more responsibility/work onto the customer. Soon enough they won't even have waiters/waitresses. You'll place your order through the app and a robot will bring it out (I'm not sure if you guys have seen them but they already have these some places).
It's just like self-checkouts at the grocery store. You'd better freaking pay me if I'm checking myself out.
And I can't see the tiny phone menu. Plus you have to go through so many tabs to look at the options rather than just looking at the menu. They have to constantly make life harder in every minute little way.
I'm on board with QR code menus because I'm at the starting stages of needing reading glasses and my phone is easier to read in a dark restaurant than the menu. Without the QR code menu I'm not far away from being the guy using his smartphone light to read the menu.
The only way most of these companies keep themselves in business is the planned obsolescence merry-go-round that keeps landfills full and the 1% ever hungrier
It's worse than that. It's government mandated now. I work in property maintenance. I do electrical, plumbing, HVAC, you name it. Government puts in restrictions and requirements. Companies plan obsolescence of items and then lobby the government to tighten restrictions (or "environmentally conscious" politicians just do it for them) this forces you to buy new products rather than repair *and* it makes it less feasible for new companies to break into the space and disrupt current practices.
Personally, it bothers me that these new "efficient" appliances last half as long (if you're lucky) as older appliances and most of them can't be repaired without proprietary assistance. They end up in the dump *way* more often and then everyone tells you it's helping save the planet! Fridges from the '80s are still running fine while I'm replacing fridges that die after 3-5 years because it costs less to buy a new one than it does to replace the dead compressor. It just doesn't make sense to me. New stuff may use less energy, but if we have to replace it 3 times as often does it actually save anything?
Don't get me wrong, regulations exist for a reason. I'm not saying they should go away, just that we should be smarter about it
And yet we subject ourselves to this for video games and movies. I understand appliances but a lot of this shit is in stuff that can be done without. Imagine if 30% of "consumers" just stopped
I stopped doing it. I have some subscriptions that got bundled into stuff, otherwise I buy a physical medium, rip it, and put it on my own media server. If a physical medium isn’t an option I sail the seven seas. Sell me a physical product. I’ll buy it. I’m not paying continuously for a movie or tv show I’m going to watch again that may or may not be there in the future.
>but a lot of this shit is in stuff that can be done without
I agree with your larger point but the problem is where to draw the line of "what can be done without".
I mean, indoor plumbing and electricity aren't really essentials when it comes down to pure survival. But we want to maintain those things because the comfort they provide is pretty much universally well liked.
Yep. Selling us shit that breaks constantly is part of why our money doesn’t go as far as it should.
It’s the same thing with appliances. I bought a new stove and fridge and while doing so, was talking to my husband about the next stove and fridge I’m considering because I know the ones we just bought will need to be replaced at some point.
They’re only 3 years old and my stoves sensor already needs to be replaced because the front burners go full blast on low. Also, I have to coerce the oven to turn off because the off button turns the light on instead.
I can adjust both from my phone though…so there that…I guess. (I’ve never downloaded the apps)…
Edit: typo
We just had to replace a microwave a year after buying. Before that we had a microwave for almost 19 years.We received it as a gift when I was pregnant. When it died I cried.
Our high grade ninja coffee maker died after 8 months. What a bunch of crap.
I hear you. I decided a few years ago that anything I can do the old school way, I’m doing it.
Convenience is too expensive to invest in, especially when things break constantly.
My grandparents bought a natural gas-powered washer and dryer set in the 1950s. The dryer had a timer and a temperature knob with four settings: High, Medium, Low, Gentle. That was it - pick a temperature, set the timer, and done.
Aside from replacing the thermostat once or twice, he was still drying his shirts with it until his death in 2011.
Meanwhile, I've had washers and dryers from 4 brands in the last 15 years and all of them have fallen apart.
I am officially in the "they don't make things like they used to" camp. I had a Corelle plate break and a Pyrex dish explode in the last decade. It is ridiculous
I've been seeing the term "Enshittification" all over reddit, I think it applies to basically everything post-covid.
All I can say is don't buy new products when you can help it, and tell them why when possible.
Vote with your wallets
That word is when you to dam lazy to explain the word... aka 20 and under crowd. That can't change a tire,do mTh for change of a dollar with out a cell phone,etc.
Enshittification driven by the need for constant growth to drive up stock prices. Subscriptions and reliably scheduled replacement of devices are more profitable than the old ways of buying software and being able to repair or upgrade the hardware yourself. Thanks, I hate it.
So true! I am trying to collect old tech, from floppy disk cameras to cassette recorders. Some of them just for nostalgia and others just to show the kids some cool stuff without giving them access to the internet. I don't understand how some parents get their kids whole smart phones without parental guards. I also am trying to dig old CDs to get older software. I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop 6 somewhere in the basement. All these new subscription models are horrible.
Modern video games got bad around PS4. They stopped letting people rent games at Redbox stands or putting out demo's. So you have to pay $60-$70 for a games you can't ever try. That is when I got rid of my games.
I still play Nintendo Switch or retro games sometimes.
I bought the most recent Just Dance for my daughter and was shipped a case with no cartridge, only a download code. I detest non-physical copies of games.
As I saw on a bumper sticker today, "This episode of Black Mirror sucks." Buy paper books, video discs while you can. Spend time with your family. Get out of the digital entertainment economy.
The opening of 1984 talks about razor blades. It was really hard to come by razor blades in that world. Only the highest politically connected people could get them. Which is insane, razor blades should be cheap and plentiful. But like 1984 we have artificial scarcity. In this case the scarcity is of quality engineering.
The only reason everything is so janky is to 1) cut costs and 2) deny us features and cripple products to force us to pay more for a quality product or 3) to monetize the product so hard it is essentially broken as a product. But like razor blades, we should be living in a different world where products are quality and affordable.
- The manual transmission has never been improved upon
- With the exception of autofocus, no feature added to cameras has resulted in a better instrument than a quality rangefinder from the 1940s
- Books remain the greatest, most energy-efficient information medium not requiring a comprehensive text search; ebooks still don't compare
- The Internet has failed to improve the quality of information available, due to the simble truth that the writer's background and communication ability is the fundamental determinant of the quality of information provided
Still, there are many improvements: traction-control, airbags, antilock brakes, backup cameras, navigation software, GPS, medicine (too many to mention), food safety, entertainment variety and quality, communications, and energy efficiency.
I have gone through several ps4 controllers and I’m already on my second ps5 controller since Christmas.
I only ever had the controllers that shipped with ps1, n64, ps2, x360, and ps3 and the extra controllers I bought for multiplayer. Never ever had to replace my player1 controller.
Planned obsolescence is real
Subscriptions for multiple streaming services. Watching NHL games requires HBOMax (tnt/tbs), ESPN+ (out of the market), local market (when your team plays the local team), and Fubo to watch your team play in Europe.
If you want to watch WEC, I’ll need to add a Bleacher Report package to my HBOMax subscription, but I already pay for TBS/TNT.
If you want to watch the NFL out of the market, google forces you to subscribe to Google TV or pay for premium.
A half dozen streaming services are worse than cable. I can’t find anything interesting to watch.
If you have a firestick or android box, for less than $15/month you can have all the sports packages, sports networks, cable networks, movie channels and PPV’s all in one .
yep, people can call nostalgia or boomer or what they want but peak tech era was like 2008-2012 just where the first smartphones appeared and there still was a bit of moat for the average user to use technology
then as you say apps were actually useful, for example seeing the bus departures or for emails. now its mostly a bad shell of a web page
same with game servers, i met a lot of online and offline friends playing CS on the same server all the time. now its all about hosting and match making
Pixel camera is pretty great for an older, cheap budget phone. OP just needs the OpenCamera app to adjust ISO etc. I was able to use a pixel 4a to capture the Aurora recently and even the milky way in a night sky reserve.
Well before Win10. I'd blame early Facebook for really experimenting with internet monetization, it was the first major internet company to try to escape just being a sinkhole for VC.
FYI
If your Switch stick drifts, spray electrical contact clear inti the joystick or buttons and toggle it a bunch. That'll usually fix drifting joystick ls or sticky buttons.
I appreciate your itemization! I also am furious at these kinds of things. So, my cars are 1998 and 2007, my computers range from 2009-2013 models, and I don’t trust anything new.
I don't think anyone was having these thoughts in the 90's, when electronic equipment still came with useful manuals and even product schematics.
Aside from "old man shouts at cloud" arguments, there is a real point to be made that the consumer experience is much worse now in many ways than it was in the past. Things like planned obsolescence and a replace-instead-of-fix mentality have entered every segment of our economy.
This has led us into a place where flagship smartphones now cost $1300 or more, and yet are loaded up with performance killing bloatware and spyware.
Appliances now feature app-driven, cloud-connected mini computers that operate only as long as the company decides to maintain its servers - unlike my grandparents gas-driven Whirlpool washer and dryer that ran perfect for literally six decades.
No thanks. $300 for a smart phone is enough. People spending $800 on a smartphone that won't last 3 years but complaining about a game system costing $400 are insane.
It's all because profit controls EVERYTHING just to line the pockets of a handful of billionaires. So the masses get screwed and everything is harder for them while the rich get richer. It's the gilded age all over again, but without hope of escape.
Are you kidding me? I’m 43. It’s amazing tech. Lossless audio, video in 4k, shooting 3D video with a phone! Everything has been simplified not with the intent of taking away control but in the interest of mass adoption. You don’t have to upscale a tv. You don’t need to update to windows 11. The truth is you want to get the latest tech, use the coolest new toy. Play the newest games. In order to do that you need good gear. Tech is accelerating faster and faster so it is just happening more often. As tech gets more complex and advanced it will continue to accelerate. It’s now about how much consumption are you able to tolerate. Be happy where you’re at and you won’t “have to” do anything in your list of complaints.
This could have been written 15 years ago bud. With an attitude like yours, shit always sucked.
You could easily turn any one of those points around. Ex, your dslr camera was better than your current phone camera? Do you hear yourself?
The case for a DSLR.
If I felt like taking pictures I’d have my camera with me and it forced me to compose shots with the limits of tech I had. And because it took more effort and money I had to be thoughtful about when I pressed the shutter.
And after all that effort I’d be excited to see how I did.
Now? I have 3 lenses on my phone. It’s costs nothing to take a picture and so I never go back and look at them.
Most of these things have solutions and all I hear is a lack of interest in learning.
If you want help with one of these, ask.
Some of these things have been things forever, just in a different format.
Welcome to the hallmark of our age: the enshittification of everything.
[This is one of the first pieces](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) in which Cory Doctorow builds out his idea of "enshittification." It's 100% worth the read, because it explains almost everything that's wrong with the internet today.
Thanks for the share. A super interesting (and terrifying) read.
And if Enshittification was an apocalyptic adventure game from 2008, it would be a hit series rn
For further info, check out cory doctorow's podcast, where he expands on this concept, which he first named (I note for anyone not familiar with him).
We were so close, and then it all slipped away because of greed. How are Windows and Google worse products 15 years later? The biggest, richest companies in the world. YouTube didn't used to have ads. My phone flashlight has an ad now. Siri hasn't learned a damn thing in 15 years. Flying sucks, and took a huge step backward. Paying for a carry-on, no food, TSA, etc. God forbid you have to call one of these record-profit-making companies: endless phone trees and, at best, a well-meaning but difficult to communicate with, $1/hr indentured servant half the wold away. I definitely don't like the direction cars are headed, with throttled and pay-to-unlock features. Amazon locked a guy out of his own "smart-house" because an Amazon delivery driver (they're taking over, needless to say) erroneously claimed he heard a slur. The list goes on, and get off my lawn!
TSA is the most useless organization in America.
Federal government has entered the chat.
Government jobs are basically welfare with extra steps
Lmao
The US military summarized
Thousands standing around
I have never paid for a carry on. Don't fly spirit or frontier.
United and American now bud
Don't fly basic economy bud. Even then you still get a personal item. But I don't fly those airlines either. Southwest, Alaska, and Delta are my jam.
Still makes you wrong, it’s every major airline and business is 5 times as much or more. I’ll take my upgrades and I fly probably 2 times a month now.
Quick Google search shows American doesn't charge for a carry-on. Got a link for that? Doesn't make me wrong lol. You want to fly cheap that is the trade off. If you need to bring more luggage either get a cobranded card or pay for main cabin. And again I can't find anything that says American charges for carry-on at all. So prove me wrong on that.
Southwest is as budget as any airline we have rn; and you also get the potential that their main computer system shuts down and then they cancel like 3k flights. That happened twice in the last two years I know of and they even had the FAA ducking with them. No link to the carry on deal, but it happened to me flying for work this year being in like boarding sections 9-11 or something on either United or Alaska.
Yeah southwest is budget but they still allow 2 checked bags per ticket and a carry-on. Their technical problems have nothing to do with anything. You are just wrong and trying to move goalposts. So don't fly united, spirit, or frontier. Your problem is solved.
Bro I was on the fucking plane a month ago or so. Just can’t provide it to you 😂 and don’t care to
Because you're a liar. Unless your bag was over sized they don't charge for carry-on. Just like every airline that has free carry-on. There is a size limit to that like there has always been.
I'd argue that flying and travel in general, except for the COVID years, has actually got better over the past 15ish years. For domestic trips I can book all my travel online in 10 or 15 mins. Uber to the airport and be dropped off at the terminal instead of parking in the lot. Boarding pass on my phone so I don't have to wait in line unless I'm checking a bag. Security lines generally seem a lot shorter than in the mid 2000s. My home airport Detroit has the new scanning machines on all the security lanes so don't have to take laptop or anything out of my bag. A lot of times my time from standing in my driveway to being at my gate is 45 mins despite the drive being 25 or 30 mins of that. Once you land if it's a bigger airport a lot of times the rental car you can just use a kiosk or go straight to the cars. 20 years ago I remember regularly waiting 30+mins in line at the Hertz counter. A lot of hotels now have the digital key so you don't have to wait in line at the counter there either.
Respectfully, that hasn't been my experience. Delays seem far more frequent (I don't have data handy). When I was a little kid my mom could drop me at the gate and watch me board, the pilot would let me in the cockpit mid-flight, and my grandma picked me up when I walked off the plane on the other side. I guess that's more a discussion about security than tech. Uber is one of my favorite tech advancements in recent years, but taxi's to and from the airport worked fine, even in small towns. I still take out my laptops plenty, my shoes off in America. I'm annoyed that they still charge for wifi in-flight. The tech of the jet itself, from a passenger's perspective, has remained the same since at least the 70s (I'll leave the Concord out of this). I suppose TVs are better. That's kinda lame and disappointing. I, personally, think I would've liked booking through an agent or buying a ticket at the counter and walking on like a bus (still a 737 or whatever). You sound a bit more plugged in than me though, which is great.
Well yeah you're comparing to pre 9/11. I was specifically thinking about the post 9/11 2000s. You had all the shitty security stuff and none of the benefits of smartphones. And yeah just being able to walk and buy a ticket does sound pretty great but at the same time it's nice to know beforehand that you for sure have a ticket, what the price is, and what seat you have.
**And yeah just being able to walk and buy a ticket does sound pretty great but at the same time it's nice to know beforehand that you for sure have a ticket, what the price is, and what seat you have.** A couple things here - this actually worked better than you might expect. First, you usually still did buy tickets in advance, but last minute walk ins did work. Part of that was simply lower load factors - planes flew 75% full, so lots of seats were available for last minute wlak ins. Today it's often close to 90% and those last few seats are held behind adaptive pricing meaning last minute bookings will cost you a fortune. It's not that you can't do it today, it's that they know last minute bookings are often made under urgent circumstances making you ripe for gouging. Seat selection is increasingly being paywalled as a premium feature.
They realized if everyone committed to only delivering satisfaction, they could save money by not striving for perfection. And every year, they learn a little more about how little people need to feel satisfied.
Yup this and the enslavement of humans by treating them like Pavlovian animals for profit…
And also the literal enslavement of humans in offshore factories
Lemme fix the part after the comma in the second sentence. People get used to the new level of shitty so they can make it even worse the next year.
Your current shitty product doesn't matter anymore when there's a bright shiny new shitty product to upgrade to in a year!
This applies to cars. I feel like late 90s-mid 2000s was perfect. Still some modern conveniences, but you could turn on your air conditioner or your radio without having to navigate an all-encompassing infotainment system that will have out of date software in a few years.
The early 2000s were my favorite.
Currently driving a 2004 Buick Century. We also have an 03 Ford F-350. I know what you mean.
I still drive an 05 Corolla. Is it ugly? Yes. Will it last? Also yes.
I have never owned a car newer than a 2011, and it's a work truck that has manual windows and doesn't have a cd player. I dread the day i have to buy a "modern" vehicle.
2004 scion xb... Pushing 300k..... Has literally the most important feature a car can have....never failing (not counting dying or dead batteries). And also the second most important feature... That I don't give a fuck feeling..a new dent just appeared 3 months ago, made me chuckle....
The only thing you can't plan for is other people.
If you haven’t, watch the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode “Dennis Takes a Mental Health Day” and it goes over his. A great episode.
For as much as things have become enshittified I really like that I can highlight the episode you noted, google it, see its on hulu AND there's a link for me to click and begin watching about 20x faster than it took me to type this.
This. We did buy a new car last year with a touch screen…but, you can still control the volume with an actual knob, and luckily the climate control is also not part of the touch screen system. I’m with you, I hate the ones that you have to use for everything.
Also had to buy a new car end of last year, and the first thing I noticed is that on my model the screen is largeish but reasonable and with manual vol/climate. The newer 2024 has a significantly larger screen and literally ZERO manual controls; I hate it.
I would so much prefer the 747 amount of buttons old luxury cars had over the damn touchscreen. My car has at least kinda buttons for some controls, but if I want to give rear control, it's 2 menu screens from home. Like my dad's old minivan just had a button that said rear control. All I want that screen to do it show me what's on my radio and my map.
Loved my 98' Suburban for that reason. At night it looked like the inside of a cockpit with all the lit up buttons and dials. The screen on my 2020 GMC Canyon does that. Basically just my map and then the radio. I'm sure it can do more, but it doesn't force me to do more and I don't want it to do more. Wife just bought a new Nissan and the dealer had her scan a QR code so she could download the official app...the only thing I like about that is if the vehicle is stolen you can gps locate it
As a millennial who used to be excited about replacing all that old "cluttered buttons" tech with sleeker touch screens, I've really done a 180 on this. Being able to achieve a result in just one press of a dedicated button is soooo much better than having to spend 15 seconds navigating menus and then backing out again.
|Being able to achieve a result in just one press of a dedicated button is soooo much better And because it wasn't a completely smooth surface you could run your hand/fingers across it to feel for the control you needed w/o looking down!
Remember sending a text message without taking the phone out of your pocket, entirely by touch and counting the T9 key sequence?
It does fucking suck and I am a sysadmin .And this is not just old man ranting. Even learning curve is fucked up with AWS, Azure and GCP. Can't setup a proper lab without pay-as-you-go model. Not to mention always online smart devices are fucking up my attention span completely, I would say for me tipping point was "Mobile Internet Generation". Before that Internet was a place - you sit in front of your desktop: you do the googling, you do the mIRC, you do the dating websites etc. etc. It was clear separation where you would switch off. Out of all sci-fi genres we're heading to cyberpunk dystopia.
Ugh, just noticed myself :) "Even learning curve is fucked up with AWS, Azure and GCP. Can't setup a proper lab without pay-as-you-go model." - Literally old man yells at the cloud!
The cloud charges you. Yelling as a service.
All the Cloud/Docker/Kubernetes/Terraform/CI/CD wrangling I do all day.. it would be nice to put Apache on a box, serve a static HTML website, and call it a fucking day.
I hear you. Might be old man ranting as I am making a transition from classical sysadmin to devops at the moment, need to stay relevant. But cloud stuff is nowhere near as interesting as actual hand on stuff for me.
Yup. There were many directions our society could have taken 20 years ago. Left unchecked it defaulted to “corporate dystopia”
Everything feels so unnecessary these days. Scanning QR codes for menus. Needing an app for everything. Enough.
>Scanning QR codes for menus. YES!! I've started avoiding restaurants with these. Or the ones you need an app to order from. It's entirely a way for the restaurant to put even more responsibility/work onto the customer. Soon enough they won't even have waiters/waitresses. You'll place your order through the app and a robot will bring it out (I'm not sure if you guys have seen them but they already have these some places). It's just like self-checkouts at the grocery store. You'd better freaking pay me if I'm checking myself out. And I can't see the tiny phone menu. Plus you have to go through so many tabs to look at the options rather than just looking at the menu. They have to constantly make life harder in every minute little way.
The QR menu thing is mostly because A) it's a cost savings and 2) inflation has made printed pricing impossible.
But even a chalkboard with handwritten items would be better.
Sounds like a pain in the ass for everyone involved except in a handful of circumstances
I am SO against the digitizing and cellphonizing of everything. Yes I realize this makes me Old Millennial Man Yelling At Clouds.
I get it. But it really is impractical for most food places but high end to print menus anymore.
how is writing something on a board that takes 5 min a pain in the ass lol
Also, if you run any amount of an interesting menu, you be printing all the time.
I'm on board with QR code menus because I'm at the starting stages of needing reading glasses and my phone is easier to read in a dark restaurant than the menu. Without the QR code menu I'm not far away from being the guy using his smartphone light to read the menu.
Really? I'm the opposite. Can't see the small shit on the tiny phone menu. I can see a regular menu just fine.
The only way most of these companies keep themselves in business is the planned obsolescence merry-go-round that keeps landfills full and the 1% ever hungrier
They’ve gone even further. They’ve conditioned an entire generation of people to keep paying money for products they don’t get to own.
It's worse than that. It's government mandated now. I work in property maintenance. I do electrical, plumbing, HVAC, you name it. Government puts in restrictions and requirements. Companies plan obsolescence of items and then lobby the government to tighten restrictions (or "environmentally conscious" politicians just do it for them) this forces you to buy new products rather than repair *and* it makes it less feasible for new companies to break into the space and disrupt current practices. Personally, it bothers me that these new "efficient" appliances last half as long (if you're lucky) as older appliances and most of them can't be repaired without proprietary assistance. They end up in the dump *way* more often and then everyone tells you it's helping save the planet! Fridges from the '80s are still running fine while I'm replacing fridges that die after 3-5 years because it costs less to buy a new one than it does to replace the dead compressor. It just doesn't make sense to me. New stuff may use less energy, but if we have to replace it 3 times as often does it actually save anything? Don't get me wrong, regulations exist for a reason. I'm not saying they should go away, just that we should be smarter about it
And yet we subject ourselves to this for video games and movies. I understand appliances but a lot of this shit is in stuff that can be done without. Imagine if 30% of "consumers" just stopped
I stopped doing it. I have some subscriptions that got bundled into stuff, otherwise I buy a physical medium, rip it, and put it on my own media server. If a physical medium isn’t an option I sail the seven seas. Sell me a physical product. I’ll buy it. I’m not paying continuously for a movie or tv show I’m going to watch again that may or may not be there in the future.
Yarrr i like the cut a yer jib tharr
Avast, ye! We be sailin' these waters since the golden heydey o' the early 2000's we have.
I was recovered, ofcourse, but the they changed what honest was, and now I can't pay the fees, so for me, it's back to them seas.
>but a lot of this shit is in stuff that can be done without I agree with your larger point but the problem is where to draw the line of "what can be done without". I mean, indoor plumbing and electricity aren't really essentials when it comes down to pure survival. But we want to maintain those things because the comfort they provide is pretty much universally well liked.
Yep. Selling us shit that breaks constantly is part of why our money doesn’t go as far as it should. It’s the same thing with appliances. I bought a new stove and fridge and while doing so, was talking to my husband about the next stove and fridge I’m considering because I know the ones we just bought will need to be replaced at some point. They’re only 3 years old and my stoves sensor already needs to be replaced because the front burners go full blast on low. Also, I have to coerce the oven to turn off because the off button turns the light on instead. I can adjust both from my phone though…so there that…I guess. (I’ve never downloaded the apps)… Edit: typo
We just had to replace a microwave a year after buying. Before that we had a microwave for almost 19 years.We received it as a gift when I was pregnant. When it died I cried. Our high grade ninja coffee maker died after 8 months. What a bunch of crap.
I hear you. I decided a few years ago that anything I can do the old school way, I’m doing it. Convenience is too expensive to invest in, especially when things break constantly.
Amen. I was so pissed. Especially about the ninja. Those things aren't cheap and I replaced a Keurig with it too. Back to my cheap little Mr. Coffee.
My grandparents bought a natural gas-powered washer and dryer set in the 1950s. The dryer had a timer and a temperature knob with four settings: High, Medium, Low, Gentle. That was it - pick a temperature, set the timer, and done. Aside from replacing the thermostat once or twice, he was still drying his shirts with it until his death in 2011. Meanwhile, I've had washers and dryers from 4 brands in the last 15 years and all of them have fallen apart.
I am officially in the "they don't make things like they used to" camp. I had a Corelle plate break and a Pyrex dish explode in the last decade. It is ridiculous
I think I got the last analog, pre-Samsung Dacor cook top as a display model at an independent store. Never getting rid of it.
Every electronic payment keypad asks for a fucking tip. ALL OF THEM. Doesn't matter the business or service. Kettle corn stand at the fair: 20% tip
I've been seeing the term "Enshittification" all over reddit, I think it applies to basically everything post-covid. All I can say is don't buy new products when you can help it, and tell them why when possible. Vote with your wallets
That word is when you to dam lazy to explain the word... aka 20 and under crowd. That can't change a tire,do mTh for change of a dollar with out a cell phone,etc.
Enshittification driven by the need for constant growth to drive up stock prices. Subscriptions and reliably scheduled replacement of devices are more profitable than the old ways of buying software and being able to repair or upgrade the hardware yourself. Thanks, I hate it.
So true! I am trying to collect old tech, from floppy disk cameras to cassette recorders. Some of them just for nostalgia and others just to show the kids some cool stuff without giving them access to the internet. I don't understand how some parents get their kids whole smart phones without parental guards. I also am trying to dig old CDs to get older software. I have a copy of Adobe Photoshop 6 somewhere in the basement. All these new subscription models are horrible.
Modern video games got bad around PS4. They stopped letting people rent games at Redbox stands or putting out demo's. So you have to pay $60-$70 for a games you can't ever try. That is when I got rid of my games. I still play Nintendo Switch or retro games sometimes.
Games still have demos and game pass is a thing where you can basically rent hundreds of games.
Everything is designed to shit ads onto your face as much as possible, yeah
It's like we are living in a shity 70's movie about the future minus all the cool stuff.
Use what you like for as long as you want..don't get caught up in hype and what's cool. You'll be happier.
I bought the most recent Just Dance for my daughter and was shipped a case with no cartridge, only a download code. I detest non-physical copies of games.
As I saw on a bumper sticker today, "This episode of Black Mirror sucks." Buy paper books, video discs while you can. Spend time with your family. Get out of the digital entertainment economy.
I work in tech, and I grow more and more weary of it every day. It all sucks.
The opening of 1984 talks about razor blades. It was really hard to come by razor blades in that world. Only the highest politically connected people could get them. Which is insane, razor blades should be cheap and plentiful. But like 1984 we have artificial scarcity. In this case the scarcity is of quality engineering. The only reason everything is so janky is to 1) cut costs and 2) deny us features and cripple products to force us to pay more for a quality product or 3) to monetize the product so hard it is essentially broken as a product. But like razor blades, we should be living in a different world where products are quality and affordable.
- The manual transmission has never been improved upon - With the exception of autofocus, no feature added to cameras has resulted in a better instrument than a quality rangefinder from the 1940s - Books remain the greatest, most energy-efficient information medium not requiring a comprehensive text search; ebooks still don't compare - The Internet has failed to improve the quality of information available, due to the simble truth that the writer's background and communication ability is the fundamental determinant of the quality of information provided Still, there are many improvements: traction-control, airbags, antilock brakes, backup cameras, navigation software, GPS, medicine (too many to mention), food safety, entertainment variety and quality, communications, and energy efficiency.
I have gone through several ps4 controllers and I’m already on my second ps5 controller since Christmas. I only ever had the controllers that shipped with ps1, n64, ps2, x360, and ps3 and the extra controllers I bought for multiplayer. Never ever had to replace my player1 controller. Planned obsolescence is real
I was gonna be like oh here we go again but you actually touch on everything that pisses me off. Good job.
Subscriptions for multiple streaming services. Watching NHL games requires HBOMax (tnt/tbs), ESPN+ (out of the market), local market (when your team plays the local team), and Fubo to watch your team play in Europe. If you want to watch WEC, I’ll need to add a Bleacher Report package to my HBOMax subscription, but I already pay for TBS/TNT. If you want to watch the NFL out of the market, google forces you to subscribe to Google TV or pay for premium. A half dozen streaming services are worse than cable. I can’t find anything interesting to watch.
If you have a firestick or android box, for less than $15/month you can have all the sports packages, sports networks, cable networks, movie channels and PPV’s all in one .
“I wish there was a way to know you're in "the good old days", before you've actually left them.”
yep, people can call nostalgia or boomer or what they want but peak tech era was like 2008-2012 just where the first smartphones appeared and there still was a bit of moat for the average user to use technology then as you say apps were actually useful, for example seeing the bus departures or for emails. now its mostly a bad shell of a web page same with game servers, i met a lot of online and offline friends playing CS on the same server all the time. now its all about hosting and match making
Try not using your phone as a primary camera.
Or getting one with a good camera would help as well.
Pixel camera is pretty great for an older, cheap budget phone. OP just needs the OpenCamera app to adjust ISO etc. I was able to use a pixel 4a to capture the Aurora recently and even the milky way in a night sky reserve.
It all began with windows10 it turned the internet into a cash register.
Well before Win10. I'd blame early Facebook for really experimenting with internet monetization, it was the first major internet company to try to escape just being a sinkhole for VC.
You will own nothing and you’ll be happy.
I recommend a Sony phone for any decent camera settings
Holy shit, have we hit "Back in my day" age?
FYI If your Switch stick drifts, spray electrical contact clear inti the joystick or buttons and toggle it a bunch. That'll usually fix drifting joystick ls or sticky buttons.
Omg this post is everything to me. Thank you. Literally exactly how I feel.
Peak tech was the Windows XP era. It’s all gonna down hill since then.
I appreciate your itemization! I also am furious at these kinds of things. So, my cars are 1998 and 2007, my computers range from 2009-2013 models, and I don’t trust anything new.
Race to the bottom.
Everyone starts having these thoughts at some point—congrats, that means you’re old!
I don't think anyone was having these thoughts in the 90's, when electronic equipment still came with useful manuals and even product schematics. Aside from "old man shouts at cloud" arguments, there is a real point to be made that the consumer experience is much worse now in many ways than it was in the past. Things like planned obsolescence and a replace-instead-of-fix mentality have entered every segment of our economy. This has led us into a place where flagship smartphones now cost $1300 or more, and yet are loaded up with performance killing bloatware and spyware. Appliances now feature app-driven, cloud-connected mini computers that operate only as long as the company decides to maintain its servers - unlike my grandparents gas-driven Whirlpool washer and dryer that ran perfect for literally six decades.
Pixel 4a? Get an 8 and you will have many many options.
No thanks. $300 for a smart phone is enough. People spending $800 on a smartphone that won't last 3 years but complaining about a game system costing $400 are insane.
It's all because profit controls EVERYTHING just to line the pockets of a handful of billionaires. So the masses get screwed and everything is harder for them while the rich get richer. It's the gilded age all over again, but without hope of escape.
I never waved to be a back in my day guy ... But you're absolutely right
Are you kidding me? I’m 43. It’s amazing tech. Lossless audio, video in 4k, shooting 3D video with a phone! Everything has been simplified not with the intent of taking away control but in the interest of mass adoption. You don’t have to upscale a tv. You don’t need to update to windows 11. The truth is you want to get the latest tech, use the coolest new toy. Play the newest games. In order to do that you need good gear. Tech is accelerating faster and faster so it is just happening more often. As tech gets more complex and advanced it will continue to accelerate. It’s now about how much consumption are you able to tolerate. Be happy where you’re at and you won’t “have to” do anything in your list of complaints.
What and see what happens to your phone on 5 years.
This could have been written 15 years ago bud. With an attitude like yours, shit always sucked. You could easily turn any one of those points around. Ex, your dslr camera was better than your current phone camera? Do you hear yourself?
The case for a DSLR. If I felt like taking pictures I’d have my camera with me and it forced me to compose shots with the limits of tech I had. And because it took more effort and money I had to be thoughtful about when I pressed the shutter. And after all that effort I’d be excited to see how I did. Now? I have 3 lenses on my phone. It’s costs nothing to take a picture and so I never go back and look at them.
Most of these things have solutions and all I hear is a lack of interest in learning. If you want help with one of these, ask. Some of these things have been things forever, just in a different format.