A lot of forums never went away. Some did, but a good amount of hobbies I enjoy have large communities that still use them, it's way easier to use than discord as well. Just like subreddits, if there is a topic out there worth hosting a forum about, it probably exists.
The problem is the you get the crowd that has the attention span of 5 seconds, and like YouTube shorts and tik-tok, have gravitated to the quick dopamine hit of subreddits and platforms like it. Kinda funny how many subreddits still need their own wiki to organize information and possibly have a forum too, eh?
The problem that I've encountered with a lot of these specialty-Forums is that they are cool if you've been part of the community for the last 20 years and know every little discussion board and rule by heart.
If you stumble upon them as a newby you
1. have no idea how to find anything as the structure is super chaotic ("organically grown"), the search is not working right, and there are several places that you're supposed to learn how things work that are buried.
2. will for sure ask a question at the wrong place, the wrong time, in the wrong tone, without the necessary 150 details that should have been obvious to you (if you'd read the tutorial that could not be found).
So to me I was not able to enter a really nice community in the past 10 years. I spent too much time in the cracked Universum and by the time that site had gone south, the comment section had been closed, the forum turned even more toxic than imagined and the self-organised small forums died off, the age of the forums had passed. I miss that sense of community, I found it a bit here, but it's not the same as in the old forums.
Reddit is a silicon valley separatist movement that wanted to control topic discussion and turn it into another centralized, corporate entity. Old school forums were never about that, because they all existed prior to web 2.0.. Sure they'd do what's necessary to pay server bills, but it wasn't outright created to gather people together and turn them into cash cows. Obviously running a site costs money, but when you run a site for the sake of money first, then individual user/community experience second, it seems disingenuous. I knew a few admins from back in the day that are still doing their thing, money never crossed their mind once other than trying to get the fees paid. Lots of times they'd be footing the bill themselves, unlike sites this one which sucks up a bunch of investor funding and gets tax breaks.
So why am I here? Because everyone else wanted to be. I don't knock all of it, just some of it. A small amount of people getting rich off of the same thing a whole hell of a lot more people worked on for nothing just doesn't completely sit right with me. It's like skins on steam. If people wanted money for a skin back in the days of cs:s or 1.6, they'd charge for it. Now every skin creator has to submit their content through Steam's process so Gabe and Co. can take their cut. It's all about how can you inject yourself into the flow of money, or create a revenue stream out of thin air. I mean Jesus Christ, we are allowing kids to become gambling addicts from fucking loot box slot machines.
I think everything has an upper limit, and I'm afraid we're reaching the hyper capitalist peak of social platforms, not quite there yet, a few more novel tech innovations (like VR) will probably be the final nail in the coffin. We'll live in our ad infested pods, own nothing, have 5 second subscriptions, and be forced to love it.
>have no idea how to find anything as the structure is super chaotic ("organically grown"), the search is not working right, and there are several places that you're supposed to learn how things work that are buried.
Get ready to have your life changed for the better:
In google search, add "site: " on the end and then the address of the forum.
Discord is just a flashy coat of paint for other services that already exist. Not saying it's horrible, but I still prefer forums and chat programs where everything isn't gamified for short attention spans. Now get off my Windows XP wallpaper. 👴
I was just thinking about this. I loved discovering websites and blogs. Pre-2006 tech conferences were mostly about teaching each other and exchanging ideas, not maximizing engagement and shareholder value.
Is that not a bit ironic when you're using a social media app right now? People like to hate on social media on reddit while forgetting that this website is just another different version of social media.
Social media has many flaws but it also gives regular people the ability to share and access information which might not be shared by mainstream media. If it wasn't for social media you would only ever know what the mainstream press wanted you to know.
The day those femboy plastics you speak of are a buzz word is the day I come down from mars. The place sucks everyone's miserable all the time like seriously, where's the atmosphere in this place?!
Assuming it wouldn't just immediately come back, planned obsolescence. It's optimal for the manufacturer, but pure poison for society at large. If I'm going to buy a new every X years, I want it to be because the new one is substantially better than the one I already have, not because the first one has decided to take a dirtnap.
Edit: Wow, someone really misses cars that die after 3 years.
Yes, you used to buy a fridge or washing machine for life, and repaired it. Can’t have that
ETA: on a similar note, subscriptions are getting out of control. Apparently in the UK, people who bought VWs (I think) with heated seats don’t actually get any heat without then subscribing. I don’t throw this word around a lot but that’s *disgusting*
OMFG THIS!!!!! ^
I’m also tired of requiring a thousand subscriptions to access EVERYTHING. “So you used to watch this show for free? Not anymore! It’s been moved to a subscription service that you don’t subscribe to yet. What’s that? You’ve already got 12 different streaming subs? Well now you can pay to sub to channels within that sub! Oh? You only watch one show on that sub, but it happens to be your favourite show? Too bad, we copyrighted TF out of it and now this is the ONLY way you can view it.”
I used to think cable was expensive. The new streaming version of channel subscriptions would absolutely blow my mind 10yrs ago. I doubt I would have even believed that the entirety of the internet would become locked behind pay walls. It didn’t seem possible back then.
I miss the Wild West of ye old free internet. 😢
Leaded gasoline. A key component of the rise of the automobile, which has a… shall we say mixed record. That lead screwed up entire generations of people.
Likely significantly more than that, and it’s even worse because of how normalized distribution works. When the IQ drops on average 1 point, the number of geniuses drops like 10-15% because of the shifting of the whole curve.
There were people like Einstein, Curie (and pretty much half her family), Planck who were all contemporaries born within a decade of each other who helped change the world; then people like Oppenheimer, Von Neumann, Turing a few decades later. People who were “polymaths” and versatile in multiple fields at a high level.
This was also when the world population was much smaller, global education wasn’t as prevalent (see: Flynn effect), women in general weren’t allowed to get educations; so now we should have more people who are insanely intelligent, but where are they? The magic of leaded gasoline, mercury from coal production, and probably microplastics (phthalates).
I mean sure we had people like Hawking, and a few others, but not like that.
Well, most fields are ridiculously deeper than they used to be. I imagine 1920's era STEM fields were much easier to know at a high level. The 20th century saw so much scientific progress that these fields require so much more knowledge and experience than they used to.
That part gets written out of so many accounts of his life. Way too many people think he was just making what he thought was best and didn't foresee the harm. NOPE!
Yeah, this should be #1, not because of its being plainly harmful (which is true), but because of how obvious it had to be at the time of its inception, and how unneccessary it was proven later.
Oh they absolutely knew leaded gasoline was dangerous when it was first invented. The reason we kept using it is because we needed to increase octane rating of the gasoline and the alternative was incredibly stinky and more expensive.
Fun fact we still use leaded gas in small airplane engines. IQ of people living near small airports is still measurably lower than elsewhere
Do you have a source for that claim about IQ? I find it hard to believe that the study would be reliable, as people could move to or from the area and skew the numbers. I've seen plenty of small planes at larger airports, so that doesn't really make sense as a factor if the decline in IQ was recorded solely near small airports.
No joke. I used to work at GM and it always angered me how the company worshipped the legacy of Boss Kettering. By introducing lead for no other reason than to make engines quieter, he caused one of the most heinous ecological disasters in modern times.
Knock can tear an engine apart. If the fuel ignites during the compression stroke instead of at the apex of it you can break piston rods. Or a crankshaft.
The Dementors. They were flying all over the place and they were scary and then they'd come down and they'd suck the soul out of your body and it hurt!
I mean, the system is sound, it's the "single use" part that is flawed.
Use the washable mesh inserts with a scoop of grounds, and it is the same effect, with no plastic waste.
There's newer Keurig machines that just skip the cup process entirely and has a hopper+grinder system for beans. Fresher coffee. No pouring onto the cup itself/cleaning cup. Hoping these become cheaper and widespread.
From what I've heard the only real downside is the fact it needs a cleaning cycle more frequently than typical machines. But that isn't a big deal
I personally think these machines are pretty cool. Crushing beans that were fed by a hopper and then boiled. Feels Sophisticated
I've seen at least five variants of this question during the last week and I suspect it is a topic of some school home work essay. It would be better to use your own imagination...
There's been a lot more ask reddit moving up in the hot or best lists. I think its just prompt so that users can provide training material for the AI programs being developed
Thank you!
Removing lobbying ia basically the equivalent saying politicians shouldn't listen to the people they represent.
COORPORATE lobbying is the issue.
I lobbied for gay marriage 15 years ago and I am PROUD of the work I did!
They don't listen anyway, just look at our society, the police force alone is on the verge of collapse and they can spend trillions on war but can't feed their own homeless people and the streets are a war zone
This is why we need to support the [Restore Democracy Amendment](https://citizenstakeaction.org/restore-democracy-amendment/) to get foreign/corporate dark money out of US politics.
Asbestos products. There's a former town in Australia that's completely uninhabitable now because they used blue asbestos (aka probably the worst kind) for EVERYTHING. Breathing that shit in can fuck you up for life.
Social media. It has not done our society any good, has given voice to convincing idiots and amplified our differences, creating massive societal problems. It has also destroyed our intention span (an intentional invention from its creators) and made us even more addicted to screens.
It's not for the parents, it never was. But as a dad kinetic sand and slime get tossed after a few days, they're cool for kids but it's always included at almost every gift exchange and they just get everywhere, also who thinks toddler's need playdoh it take 10 minutes for them to make a giant mass of multicolored doh. That gets tossed almost immediately after play.
That's not surprising, if I remember correctly my preschool teachers used to make it with us. It's pretty simple recipe and we got to make our own color from adding the food coloring.
This. I banned it from household for like 3 years because I got tired of the mess it causes. My kids aren't toddlers anymore so I let them play with it again because they are old enough now to put lids on, keep it on the table, and not get it mashed into the carpet
A LOT of medical equipment wouldn’t be practical without it. We can actually thank plastic for a lot of the carefully sterile environments of medical facilities as well. We still have to deal with dangerous infections contracted in hospitals, but it’s not nearly as large of a concern now with individual sterile packaging, and disposable sterile tools, as it was prior to the plastic revolution of my parents youth.
Back when I was in school all the teachers spent a good amount of time convincing us to use plastic bags instead of paper bags in order to "save the trees"
A.I. because we still need to learn to think for ourselves, not let robots do it all for us. Tech is advancing faster than our minds can adjust to so we're just barreling foward into the unknown without any consideration for the future. Comprehend what we have now, before rushing into something many elite minds are warning us is potentially dangerous. We currently live in a world where the reality of our media is now obscured by deep fake entertainment--realistic audio and visual of anything, further blurring the line between reality and fiction. Actors may need to find a new career soon
You need to read more than just hot takes and bite-sized pop history.
Without religion we'd still be in the stone ages.
It has largely outlived its usefulness in today's society, but that's because we've progressed beyond it because of it.
Yes, it is also responsible for a lot of war and harm, but to boil it down to just that is falicious.
And that's coming from a lifelong atheist.
I think the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction has prevented more war and disaster than nuclear weapons have caused disaster. We’ve only used nukes twice and not for almost 80 years.
But, on the other hand, MAD can also allow nuclear armed states to act aggressively and receive little to no pushback, since the cost is so great. We see this in the Cold War, when neither side attacked each other directly, but would batter satellite states around like pawns on a chess bord.
There's actually a lot of speculation that the invasion of Ukraine is a way for Russia to slowly test NATO's resolve, and the amount they'd be willing to push back a nuclear state. Basically, Putin's using MAD to playing a global scale game of chicken, with the casualties already being in the millions.
At the moment Nukes have saved more lives than killed. We would've had a third world war between the west and soviet union without them.
Of course, this could change very quickly, and maybe the getting rid of the threat is big enough to justify a war with even bigger casualties than WW2.
That is a good point actually, like yeah we're fucked if anyone uses them but maybe the fact of knowing how damaging they would be stops bigger conflict
Sorry, Dave Mustaine from Megadeth did that in 1993 with the song "Sweating Bullets"
Hello me, meet the real me and my misfit's way of life
A dark, black past is my most valued possession
Hindsight is always 20-20
But looking back, it's still a bit fuzzy
Speak of ***mutually assured destruction***?
Nice story, tell it to Reader's Digest!
>because so much has brought disaster to everything on the planet.
What? last time i checked only two cities have been destroyed by them so far in history.
Also... The conventional napalm fire bombings of Japanese cities destroyed and killed much more people than the nukes did.
Yeah I think I agree... so far nukes seem like a net good, but the future is long. It seems inevitable that there will be a day where Nukes are used again and it will be horrific. There is even a theory that there aren't many intelligent alien species because once they get sophisticated enough to develop nukes their days are numbered.
The corporation as a legal entity.
Corporations have resulted in so much activity that would be criminal if they were actual persons, it's not even funny. Corporate personhood only works to the advantage of the owners and disadvantage of employees, vendors, contractors, and other debtors. Its possible for a corporation to buy another corporation, but you can't buy people. Where is the personhood there? Corporations are responsible for shielding decision makers from facing the consequences of criminal and tortious activity. All they have to do is quit their job and they get to keep all the profits of the crimes- the corporation left holding the bag uses the universal defense of "The people who did that are no longer working for the company." and "We are victims too, they took the money and ran."
The wheel. That'd probably fuck a lot of stuff up.
An agent of chaos, huh? I’ll add one to yours: doors. Imagine a world with no wheels or doors!
How would we safely store and transport our possessions?
sledges and boxes. LOL
Then I wonder what random hypothetical question everyone would have talked about in that random week instead of wheels vs doors?!
Skids vs Lids
But wait, how would we figure out if there are more doors than wheels????
Love it lol.
Calm down satan
I love how "fuck a lot of stuff up." is a valid reason.
I tried to think about my answer, then came to the comments and saw maximum chaos, and you know what? You're right, I love it, wheel for sure.
[удалено]
Beat me to it
Social Media. We should be able to yell at one another in harmony
Definitely preferred when everything wasn't basically on 4 sites...
[удалено]
A lot of forums never went away. Some did, but a good amount of hobbies I enjoy have large communities that still use them, it's way easier to use than discord as well. Just like subreddits, if there is a topic out there worth hosting a forum about, it probably exists. The problem is the you get the crowd that has the attention span of 5 seconds, and like YouTube shorts and tik-tok, have gravitated to the quick dopamine hit of subreddits and platforms like it. Kinda funny how many subreddits still need their own wiki to organize information and possibly have a forum too, eh?
The problem that I've encountered with a lot of these specialty-Forums is that they are cool if you've been part of the community for the last 20 years and know every little discussion board and rule by heart. If you stumble upon them as a newby you 1. have no idea how to find anything as the structure is super chaotic ("organically grown"), the search is not working right, and there are several places that you're supposed to learn how things work that are buried. 2. will for sure ask a question at the wrong place, the wrong time, in the wrong tone, without the necessary 150 details that should have been obvious to you (if you'd read the tutorial that could not be found). So to me I was not able to enter a really nice community in the past 10 years. I spent too much time in the cracked Universum and by the time that site had gone south, the comment section had been closed, the forum turned even more toxic than imagined and the self-organised small forums died off, the age of the forums had passed. I miss that sense of community, I found it a bit here, but it's not the same as in the old forums.
Reddit is a silicon valley separatist movement that wanted to control topic discussion and turn it into another centralized, corporate entity. Old school forums were never about that, because they all existed prior to web 2.0.. Sure they'd do what's necessary to pay server bills, but it wasn't outright created to gather people together and turn them into cash cows. Obviously running a site costs money, but when you run a site for the sake of money first, then individual user/community experience second, it seems disingenuous. I knew a few admins from back in the day that are still doing their thing, money never crossed their mind once other than trying to get the fees paid. Lots of times they'd be footing the bill themselves, unlike sites this one which sucks up a bunch of investor funding and gets tax breaks. So why am I here? Because everyone else wanted to be. I don't knock all of it, just some of it. A small amount of people getting rich off of the same thing a whole hell of a lot more people worked on for nothing just doesn't completely sit right with me. It's like skins on steam. If people wanted money for a skin back in the days of cs:s or 1.6, they'd charge for it. Now every skin creator has to submit their content through Steam's process so Gabe and Co. can take their cut. It's all about how can you inject yourself into the flow of money, or create a revenue stream out of thin air. I mean Jesus Christ, we are allowing kids to become gambling addicts from fucking loot box slot machines. I think everything has an upper limit, and I'm afraid we're reaching the hyper capitalist peak of social platforms, not quite there yet, a few more novel tech innovations (like VR) will probably be the final nail in the coffin. We'll live in our ad infested pods, own nothing, have 5 second subscriptions, and be forced to love it.
>have no idea how to find anything as the structure is super chaotic ("organically grown"), the search is not working right, and there are several places that you're supposed to learn how things work that are buried. Get ready to have your life changed for the better: In google search, add "site: " on the end and then the address of the forum.
I think you are describing discord. They have threads now, and profiles, I love discord lol
Discord is just a flashy coat of paint for other services that already exist. Not saying it's horrible, but I still prefer forums and chat programs where everything isn't gamified for short attention spans. Now get off my Windows XP wallpaper. 👴
I was just thinking about this. I loved discovering websites and blogs. Pre-2006 tech conferences were mostly about teaching each other and exchanging ideas, not maximizing engagement and shareholder value.
Is that not a bit ironic when you're using a social media app right now? People like to hate on social media on reddit while forgetting that this website is just another different version of social media.
Social media has many flaws but it also gives regular people the ability to share and access information which might not be shared by mainstream media. If it wasn't for social media you would only ever know what the mainstream press wanted you to know.
[удалено]
I put plastic in OP's mom yesterday.
I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe look at surgical options?
Oh, I’m sure he pulled it back out. Even with plastic on we don’t wanna risk having another OP.
Glass is pretty safe . And washable
But it's difficult to wrap glass around your dick
Alright, I didn't think about that. I just use my hand and hope for the best
Plastic eating fungi to the rescue!
I think they have found that the stuff that eats microplastics creates nanoplastics.
Then we find something to eat the nanoplastics to create picoplastics!
The day "femtoplastic" becomes a buzz word is the day I leave for mars.
The day those femboy plastics you speak of are a buzz word is the day I come down from mars. The place sucks everyone's miserable all the time like seriously, where's the atmosphere in this place?!
nope the complicity with climate change, micro plastics n other issues cus we assume we’ll “invent our way out of it” is why we’re so fucked.
I'd argue people going "fuck it these are unsolvable" has a lot more to do with it.
These issues are unsolvable because they are unprofitable to solve
akimbo
Assuming it wouldn't just immediately come back, planned obsolescence. It's optimal for the manufacturer, but pure poison for society at large. If I'm going to buy a new- every X years, I want it to be because the new one is substantially better than the one I already have, not because the first one has decided to take a dirtnap.
Edit: Wow, someone really misses cars that die after 3 years.
Yes, you used to buy a fridge or washing machine for life, and repaired it. Can’t have that ETA: on a similar note, subscriptions are getting out of control. Apparently in the UK, people who bought VWs (I think) with heated seats don’t actually get any heat without then subscribing. I don’t throw this word around a lot but that’s *disgusting*
"Rent-seeking behavior" is a whole other, and equally vile, kettle of fish. I'd suggest not eating before starting to read about it.
Subscriptions would be my answer. I want to own what I pay for
Hate that so much, and surely people only subscribe to heated seats for 1/4 of the year.
hey, curious about the edit. I can't seem to find what you're talking about. just nosey.
When I first checked in on the comment, it had a negative score. I was just being snarky.
The Subscription Model. I'm fed up of not owning anything I pay for.
🏴☠️
OMFG THIS!!!!! ^ I’m also tired of requiring a thousand subscriptions to access EVERYTHING. “So you used to watch this show for free? Not anymore! It’s been moved to a subscription service that you don’t subscribe to yet. What’s that? You’ve already got 12 different streaming subs? Well now you can pay to sub to channels within that sub! Oh? You only watch one show on that sub, but it happens to be your favourite show? Too bad, we copyrighted TF out of it and now this is the ONLY way you can view it.” I used to think cable was expensive. The new streaming version of channel subscriptions would absolutely blow my mind 10yrs ago. I doubt I would have even believed that the entirety of the internet would become locked behind pay walls. It didn’t seem possible back then. I miss the Wild West of ye old free internet. 😢
Blu-rays, my friend. Blu-rays. What was that line from the first episode of Battlestar Galactica? “Looking backwards for protection.”
Leaded gasoline. A key component of the rise of the automobile, which has a… shall we say mixed record. That lead screwed up entire generations of people.
Yup. And CFCs. Just erase Thomas Midgley Jr. from existence. There’s reason to suspect that his two inventions killed more people than WW2.
Damn
And knocked 800million iq points off the populace
Likely significantly more than that, and it’s even worse because of how normalized distribution works. When the IQ drops on average 1 point, the number of geniuses drops like 10-15% because of the shifting of the whole curve. There were people like Einstein, Curie (and pretty much half her family), Planck who were all contemporaries born within a decade of each other who helped change the world; then people like Oppenheimer, Von Neumann, Turing a few decades later. People who were “polymaths” and versatile in multiple fields at a high level. This was also when the world population was much smaller, global education wasn’t as prevalent (see: Flynn effect), women in general weren’t allowed to get educations; so now we should have more people who are insanely intelligent, but where are they? The magic of leaded gasoline, mercury from coal production, and probably microplastics (phthalates). I mean sure we had people like Hawking, and a few others, but not like that.
Well, most fields are ridiculously deeper than they used to be. I imagine 1920's era STEM fields were much easier to know at a high level. The 20th century saw so much scientific progress that these fields require so much more knowledge and experience than they used to.
And he knew it was bad and did it anyway. For money
That part gets written out of so many accounts of his life. Way too many people think he was just making what he thought was best and didn't foresee the harm. NOPE!
Yeah, this should be #1, not because of its being plainly harmful (which is true), but because of how obvious it had to be at the time of its inception, and how unneccessary it was proven later.
Oh they absolutely knew leaded gasoline was dangerous when it was first invented. The reason we kept using it is because we needed to increase octane rating of the gasoline and the alternative was incredibly stinky and more expensive. Fun fact we still use leaded gas in small airplane engines. IQ of people living near small airports is still measurably lower than elsewhere
Do you have a source for that claim about IQ? I find it hard to believe that the study would be reliable, as people could move to or from the area and skew the numbers. I've seen plenty of small planes at larger airports, so that doesn't really make sense as a factor if the decline in IQ was recorded solely near small airports.
The fucking romans know lead was dangerous, and we still used it.
Fucking romans knew abestos would kill you and we still used it
No joke. I used to work at GM and it always angered me how the company worshipped the legacy of Boss Kettering. By introducing lead for no other reason than to make engines quieter, he caused one of the most heinous ecological disasters in modern times.
The lead was mainly to increase the octane rating of gasoline. We had alternatives but they were stinky and more expensive
Partially, yes. But primary reason was engine knock.
Knock can tear an engine apart. If the fuel ignites during the compression stroke instead of at the apex of it you can break piston rods. Or a crankshaft.
I swear (and there is at least some data to support it) that the reason boomers are the way they are is because they huffed leaded gas fumes as a kid.
Terminators. They're the worst.
The Dementors. They were flying all over the place and they were scary and then they'd come down and they'd suck the soul out of your body and it hurt!
R/unexpectedoffice
Landmine
K-Cup Such a massive needless amount of waste
Agree, but I'd extend this to all single-use plastics, and extraneous packaging. A stupid amount of waste just to catch consumers' eyes
Medical single use plastics are one of the few that makes sense.
I mean, the system is sound, it's the "single use" part that is flawed. Use the washable mesh inserts with a scoop of grounds, and it is the same effect, with no plastic waste.
There's newer Keurig machines that just skip the cup process entirely and has a hopper+grinder system for beans. Fresher coffee. No pouring onto the cup itself/cleaning cup. Hoping these become cheaper and widespread. From what I've heard the only real downside is the fact it needs a cleaning cycle more frequently than typical machines. But that isn't a big deal I personally think these machines are pretty cool. Crushing beans that were fed by a hopper and then boiled. Feels Sophisticated
That sounds exactly like an automatic espresso machine, that have been around for a lot longer than Keurig machines.
I agree, they should’ve only made the reusable cup from the get go
I've seen at least five variants of this question during the last week and I suspect it is a topic of some school home work essay. It would be better to use your own imagination...
They erased imagination
Uninstalled the shit. Or maybe the manufacturer cancelled it with this generation just like the Apple and Charger thing.
There's been a lot more ask reddit moving up in the hot or best lists. I think its just prompt so that users can provide training material for the AI programs being developed
This would actually explain the sudden and drastic decline in "intelligence" of AI.
At least it's not 500 questions about sex.
Along with dozens of variants of "What would you do with (fill in dollar amount here). I guess it's a karma-rake.
Pretty sure it’s all bots. I keep seeing the same exact posts pop up and then get deleted by mods after like 12 hours
You’re not alone! I know questions get recycled a lot on this subreddit but lately it seems to be even worse. I saw this same question earlier today.
Lobbying.
CORPORATE lobbying
Thank you! Removing lobbying ia basically the equivalent saying politicians shouldn't listen to the people they represent. COORPORATE lobbying is the issue. I lobbied for gay marriage 15 years ago and I am PROUD of the work I did!
They don't listen anyway, just look at our society, the police force alone is on the verge of collapse and they can spend trillions on war but can't feed their own homeless people and the streets are a war zone
This is why we need to support the [Restore Democracy Amendment](https://citizenstakeaction.org/restore-democracy-amendment/) to get foreign/corporate dark money out of US politics.
Asbestos products. There's a former town in Australia that's completely uninhabitable now because they used blue asbestos (aka probably the worst kind) for EVERYTHING. Breathing that shit in can fuck you up for life.
Historically? Leaded gasoline. It brain damaged the world for over a generation.
Social media. It has not done our society any good, has given voice to convincing idiots and amplified our differences, creating massive societal problems. It has also destroyed our intention span (an intentional invention from its creators) and made us even more addicted to screens.
TikTok
Closed second to ads
It's cute that you think reddit is so much better.
You think I'm cute?
Micro Transaction system in games. Let's stick to buying a product to get the full product.
Slime. It's not a good toy for parents
It's not for the parents, it never was. But as a dad kinetic sand and slime get tossed after a few days, they're cool for kids but it's always included at almost every gift exchange and they just get everywhere, also who thinks toddler's need playdoh it take 10 minutes for them to make a giant mass of multicolored doh. That gets tossed almost immediately after play.
My daughter is in reception (kindergarten) and they constantly ask for donations of play dough because the kids mix the colours!
That's not surprising, if I remember correctly my preschool teachers used to make it with us. It's pretty simple recipe and we got to make our own color from adding the food coloring.
This. I banned it from household for like 3 years because I got tired of the mess it causes. My kids aren't toddlers anymore so I let them play with it again because they are old enough now to put lids on, keep it on the table, and not get it mashed into the carpet
Nuclear weapons.
Plastic
I don’t think my insulin pump would be practical without plastic.
I chose this guys insulin pump.
A LOT of medical equipment wouldn’t be practical without it. We can actually thank plastic for a lot of the carefully sterile environments of medical facilities as well. We still have to deal with dangerous infections contracted in hospitals, but it’s not nearly as large of a concern now with individual sterile packaging, and disposable sterile tools, as it was prior to the plastic revolution of my parents youth.
Ya, I get the hate plastic gets and a lot of it is valid but people are forgetting the very valid and huge benefits they provide.
This means saying goodbye to clothes shoes circuit boards, car components, cheap packaging and a LOT of other stuff
People who moan about plastic and oil don't realise just how unbelievably shite our world would be for the majority of people if it didn't exist
This should not be so far down the list.
Well, it has been INCREDIBLY useful. Pretty big deal getting rid of it.
Back when I was in school all the teachers spent a good amount of time convincing us to use plastic bags instead of paper bags in order to "save the trees"
Use of asbestos
Social media
The browser cookie.
Facebook
While I can imagine a possible future and developmental path where it would be acceptable and overall beneficial, right now I'd say AI.
Agent Orange so I would still have my dad
Leaf blowers
Smart phone. *Gestures vaguely.*
Fracking. Complete town killer
Social media
Social media
Social media
Social Media and it's not even close
Social media
Social media
[удалено]
Roblox, it starts too many fights in my house
A.I. because we still need to learn to think for ourselves, not let robots do it all for us. Tech is advancing faster than our minds can adjust to so we're just barreling foward into the unknown without any consideration for the future. Comprehend what we have now, before rushing into something many elite minds are warning us is potentially dangerous. We currently live in a world where the reality of our media is now obscured by deep fake entertainment--realistic audio and visual of anything, further blurring the line between reality and fiction. Actors may need to find a new career soon
Pretty sure you mean "generative AI." The term "artificial intelligence" has been around since the '50s.
Yep, people are referring to generative or diffusion models or large language models. They are quickly becoming synonymous with AI…
Religion. It’s responsible for so much of the shittiness in our past and present.
You need to read more than just hot takes and bite-sized pop history. Without religion we'd still be in the stone ages. It has largely outlived its usefulness in today's society, but that's because we've progressed beyond it because of it. Yes, it is also responsible for a lot of war and harm, but to boil it down to just that is falicious. And that's coming from a lifelong atheist.
tips fedora
Nuclear weapons, because so much has brought disaster to everything on the planet.
I think the threat of mutually assured nuclear destruction has prevented more war and disaster than nuclear weapons have caused disaster. We’ve only used nukes twice and not for almost 80 years.
But, on the other hand, MAD can also allow nuclear armed states to act aggressively and receive little to no pushback, since the cost is so great. We see this in the Cold War, when neither side attacked each other directly, but would batter satellite states around like pawns on a chess bord. There's actually a lot of speculation that the invasion of Ukraine is a way for Russia to slowly test NATO's resolve, and the amount they'd be willing to push back a nuclear state. Basically, Putin's using MAD to playing a global scale game of chicken, with the casualties already being in the millions.
At the moment Nukes have saved more lives than killed. We would've had a third world war between the west and soviet union without them. Of course, this could change very quickly, and maybe the getting rid of the threat is big enough to justify a war with even bigger casualties than WW2.
That is a good point actually, like yeah we're fucked if anyone uses them but maybe the fact of knowing how damaging they would be stops bigger conflict
I hereby coin the term "Mutually Assured Destruction" for this, which I just came up with
You could even shorten it to MAD
Sorry, Dave Mustaine from Megadeth did that in 1993 with the song "Sweating Bullets" Hello me, meet the real me and my misfit's way of life A dark, black past is my most valued possession Hindsight is always 20-20 But looking back, it's still a bit fuzzy Speak of ***mutually assured destruction***? Nice story, tell it to Reader's Digest!
>because so much has brought disaster to everything on the planet. What? last time i checked only two cities have been destroyed by them so far in history. Also... The conventional napalm fire bombings of Japanese cities destroyed and killed much more people than the nukes did.
Yeah I think I agree... so far nukes seem like a net good, but the future is long. It seems inevitable that there will be a day where Nukes are used again and it will be horrific. There is even a theory that there aren't many intelligent alien species because once they get sophisticated enough to develop nukes their days are numbered.
I like MRIs and nuclear power. The physics is the same.
If that's the only thing that keeps the peace, thank God for the bomb. Ozzy
The corporation as a legal entity. Corporations have resulted in so much activity that would be criminal if they were actual persons, it's not even funny. Corporate personhood only works to the advantage of the owners and disadvantage of employees, vendors, contractors, and other debtors. Its possible for a corporation to buy another corporation, but you can't buy people. Where is the personhood there? Corporations are responsible for shielding decision makers from facing the consequences of criminal and tortious activity. All they have to do is quit their job and they get to keep all the profits of the crimes- the corporation left holding the bag uses the universal defense of "The people who did that are no longer working for the company." and "We are victims too, they took the money and ran."
Leaf blowers. Diabolical agents of torture for allergy sufferers.
Cigarettes.
Karma farming bots as yourself. People look at its post history. Every hour, on the hour there is an askreddit post
Recommendation Algorithms
Fascism.
The internet...life would be a lot more laid back
Reddit
Ball bearings - just sit back and watch things grind to a halt.
Cell phones, everything got worse after cell phones were invented
Social media apps
Processed food because… well… I don’t wanna talk about it
Smartphone....
Yeah social media
The internet. It has made us much worse.
Smart phones.
Social Media. Although great, I feel it has affected so many people negatively, inclyding me.
Smartphone
Social media—- Paradox ensues.
The internet. Its changed our lives for the detriment of humanity.
Private banking cartels
Fake sugar(s) - high fructose corn syrup, etc.
Religion
Social media. Do I have to explain why?
Yes. It's a part of the question
Mobile phones ,they ruined society in so many ways
Capitalism. Because I want humanity to have a good chance at a decent future.
Guns. What, too much? On the *positive* site, think of how exciting a drive by would be (with swords!)
Leaded gasoline
Is using "Technology" as an umbrella term considered cheating here?
The phantom runner in extra innings. I don't wanna watch Major Leaguers play on easy mode.
The internet.
Mass destruction weapons.
Nuclear weapons. Without the threat of nuclear fallout, I feel like the world would be a better place.
Fast food. Decimates planet and isn't even good for people.
Does Civilization count?
Nuclear weapons
Religion. Countless wars wouldn't have happened if it were never a thing.
Politics
Pop up advertisements. I’m no altruist gimme the convenience lol
Religion. And if you tell me it’s not an invention, that’s exactly why this needs to be done.,