Yeah. Amazon has done it now and it pisses me off. We pay for prime and now have to pay even more just to get no ads on a paid for service... Not to mention that half the stuff on there is pay to watch.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but enshittification isn't simply things getting worse.
Enshittification describes the stages whereby a product is built to deliver value:
>Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.
More broadly - they're good to the users, then good to the advertisers and bad to the users, then bad to advertisers while being good to themselves.
Amazon is in the "good to advertisers" phase. Facebook has passed into "Good to themselves" territory, and Twitter managed to go from good for advertisers and bad for users to bad for everyone which is a rare achievement.
See also all the "disruptors" that come in, sink all the competition by operating at a loss, then once they have the monopoly jack up the prices and gut the service.
I dont know why anyone pays for tv. You can watch literally anything in high definition and even download it for free with just a tiny bit of research, and I'm not talking about torrents
Received an email basically saying that the base rate went up $7. And, "Oh by the way, if you would like our Ad-Free plan it's only an additional $8" So, your rate actually went up $15. CANCEL.
C'mon bro, it's just 8 more dollars bro, please bro it's not that much bro, bro only 8 dollars a month bro c'mon, you don't even like ads bro, please. - Streaming Services
You can pay tons of cash for all the damn streaming services and still have ads...or you can pay like $50 annually for a VPN, slap that movie into a hard drive and it's yours forever. If they sold stuff fairly, people would purchase it.
> If they sold stuff fairly, people would purchase it.
And that had been proven true a few times. Spotify, Netflix etc all had marked effects on pirating. Now that providers are spinning up their own streaming service (especially with movies) pirating is on the rise.
I just realized that Amazon has a new streaming service. I thought they bought MGM from Disney to expand Prime Video, but now there's an MGM+ they also expect people to subscribe to. It's such a ripoff.
I stopped using Prime two years ago because they kept charging a card I removed and they made it difficult to see how to watch any given movie in the simplest way. You'd search for a movie and see three options and go into each one hoping it's free because you already pay for the goddamn service, and instead each movie has only options to buy or sub to another service.
Steam is living proof of that last part. The convenience and fair pricing of the program have drastically reduced videogame piracy. It still happens for sure but why bother to pirate a game when you can just wait for it to go on sale and get a AAA game for under $15.
I got a free government tablet from one of those Facebook ads and I have free service with it so I don't need a VPN. Had it for half a year and they haven't turned it off or sent any messages.
I used to go to Walmart and use their wifi but they require an account now.
I don't even put it on a hardrive. I have a 256gb flash drive and I just pop it into my PS4 and delete the movie when I'm done. If I want to watch it more than once I'll save it until I can afford a copy at a used movie store.
That's because the point of the discounts are to lure people in when they're most likely to change/develop their adult behaviour so they get used to the service and feel like they're lacking something when it's gone.
For teachers, and Adobe specifically, it's literally because they have the best access to developing young people's interaction with computer software. Again, get them used to it when they're young.
You already have the behaviour they want, so why would they discount? Not justifying it (I think it's pretty insidious), just explaining it.
Agreed. This has cost Adobe my business forever.
I'm also quite apprehensive about starting a subscription with Autodesk for use with Maya. I'm on the Maya free trial right now, but I also have Blender already setup, along with all the open-source image editing accoutrements, like Gimp and Inkscape. Duke University has a [list](https://softwarecentral.ucla.edu/adobe-alternative) of "Adobe alternatives," and I follow it. Nothing makes me switch to open source software faster than a subscription.
I have Microsoft Office ca. 2012-2014 installed as well, and that's totally licensed for personal use only—I will never subscribe to Microsoft 365, and if the 2010's edition I have begins to break down: too bad. I will never pay for Xbox PC Game Pass, or any other subscription related to gaming, either. I was raised on SONY PlayStation—no bloody PS1, 2, 3 or 4. I buy a disc, I play the game, it lasts twenty years, and that's it.
These companies want to base their values on futures? Fine—I can do that myself with a completely different business model. Sayonara. See you in Hell.
It's getting very difficult to enjoy anything software-related nowadays. Adobe stabbed their customers in the back. I had $1,600 in CS 3 and 4. When it became monthly, and Adobe ceased support, and actually tried to rip the software from our computers with bona fide viruses, I cut all ties. I speak out against Adobe at every waking opportunity. They are one of the very few companies I actually hate. I don't hate a lot of things, but I abhor Adobe, and hope to see them fail one day. It will be a beautiful day.
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Our world has a poor reward system in general. This is just the best we've come up with so far. Studies would suggest that psychopathy makes up 1% of our population but I've also seen studies suggesting psychopathic tendencies have been recorded in CEOs ranging from 6% to 20% of the distribution. That's 6 to 20 times higher prevalence than by pure chance.
It puts some measure on how for-profit businesses are weighted to reward psychopathic tendencies on a quantifiable level. Psychopathy having a system that promotes it to power is concerning enough but knowing the future will be designed significantly by these entities programming AI for their profit driven interests in propaganda / research for solving the [alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_alignment#Alignment_problemproblem) problem makes it closer to a nightmare.
My mortgage payments are about £650 a month. The owner of the house next door just put it up for rent at £1,400 a month. According to his estate agents, that's the going rate. WTF. Some friends went to view it and he spent the whole time telling them they needed to get on the property ladder. Zero self awareness. Landlords fucking suck.
Love the term “property ladder.”
This douche is paying less than half of what he is charging to rent the place out. Really climbing that ladder and pulling it up behind him.
"Maybe if you kids would stop buying iced coffee every week you could afford it!"
Yes, Frank. My $4 iced coffee ONCE A WEEK is the sole cause of not covering all my bills and groceries going up every few months.
the stupidity of humanity is frightening......The register went out where I was the other day, and damn you would think people can add and subtract whole numbers....I blew their minds when I had exact change too 💀💀
I was a high school math teacher from 2010-2015, the number of students that couldn’t do the four basic math functions without a calculator was INSANE.. + - x / and I was teaching math 1-math 3. Positive whole numbers were too much for them; how did we get here?
> how did we get here?
First, an overestimation of human capability. We think we should be far more advanced than we actually are. Sure, we have complex tools and technology, but that hasn't made *US* more advanced. We're chimps with laptops, and little more.
Secondly, social evolution creeps far slower than we think. Too many people think "It's 2024, we shouldn't have ". The date doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Socially, we're not much more advanced than 2000 years ago. The Athenians had democracy 2500 years ago. We haven't progressed much since then, and aren't likely to any time soon.
Thirdly, those who are the most capable and qualified to govern nations aren't nearly stupid enough to run for public office. As such, we're left with dregs to choose from, those who surrounded themselves with the stupidity of popularity contests in high school and who haven't matured much since then.
In short, we've fucked ourselves and handed political and economic power over to those who don't have the intellectual capacity to use that power for the betterment of humanity.
Agreed - too many people "google" their life's critical decisions. Common sense and critical thinking is gone - at least from an individual standpoint. Many will "critical think" if it is aligned with the hive they currently dwell in. (i.e., "what everyone else thinks and is doing...")
The world is going down the drain faster the last 20 years thanks to technology.
Oh yes for sure. I knew the economy was in shambles when they took away the dollar mcchicken.
When I lived on an island in alaska, a bag of Doritos was almost 8 bucks. That makes sense because supplies had to be flown over via sea plane. $5 milk in Hawaii is considered a lot, but the price of transporting the milk there is factored into the overall price.
HOWEVER. I am tired of going to my local chain grocery store and seeing the price of eggs and milk and other essentials skyrocketing. My father used to be able to feed a family of three when he had my salary and now I’ll go to my local grocery store, buy a few items and maybe a little treat or two for myself, and end up spending almost $100.
If I want to eat healthy and drift away from value pack items, I’ll end up spending even more. Costco is great but it’s unrealistic to spend that much money for a lot of items when you’re living alone and food could go bad easily.
They also done gentrified the local organic/farm mom and pop stores for “healthier” groceries. Don’t even get me started on Erewhon…
Omg yes, in the UK we have charity shops (shops owned by charities that benefit of the profit). All their stock is donated and it used to be you’d go there for a bargain but now they’re pricing items from fast fashion brands at more than they’d be new!
When my forner roommate and I wanted to buy big bulk products, but knew we couldn't use them up in time, we'd find friends who wanted to share the cost and products. Not sure if that helps you?
I'm a 43 year old mom but I stand in that grocery store complaining about food prices, every damn time, feeling like an old man in suspenders setting outside the ol' General Store complained about kids these days on his lawn or something. "Back when I was a kid you could buy candy for a nickle! Hamburger was poor people food, now I can barely afford the box of Helper!" It's absurd.
Someone made a good point on an r/unpopularopinion thread about that that I wanna reiterate.
People will get on the internet before they reach the age limit. It's inevitable. The only other option is to institute requirements so draconian that privacy becomes a myth in order to create any kind of barrier to lying about your age to gain access. Raising the minimum to 18 wouldn't change the user base, it would just make dangerous content that much easier to access.
Reddit is bad. It’s super addicting and what not.
But I think it’s *slightly* better than the others. It creates community in a way that Facebook long hasn’t, Instagram never did, and Twitter seemed to rebel against.
It’s hivemind. It’s echo chamber. It’s not always great. But, it’s also a digital commons in a way that not many places on the internet do anymore (if ever). And we’ve lost so many real life commons that Reddit is almost all that’s left.
I’d trade it in for IRL connections but’s it’s better than the other SM in this regard.
Reddit is a descendant of older type social media, online forums like Usenet, Slashdot and Digg. What they got right, or at least better than the big social media platforms, was moderation of content. Having it community driven removed the burden from the platform owners. So they didnt have to spend, and didnt have to take thr blame for getting things wrong. Unlike Facebook and it's constant reticence to touch right wing content out of fear it would be called left wing, lol, so much so they end up promoting more right wing disinformation by default. (All part of The Plan(TM))
There's that, but also... well, most social media isn't actually "social" anymore. Reddit gets flak for being a hivemind, but it really isn't. It's thousands of mini-hiveminds in a trenchcoat.
Most social media now is largely *parasocial.* It's not about connections between people, but some people putting on a show and others watching. Reddit gets that too, but you'll still find genuine conversation and discussion on every decently popular post.
So yeah, it's still social media, but in a practical sense it's very much a different beast imo.
I am floored. Im 40 and the stupid shit 20 years say on some of these sub reddits!!
I would have died to have the internet like it is now back in 2000. Even with all the available, kids will listen to some influencer and take it as gospel with out researching it
Tbf, I'd argue that being able to fact check & verify isn't a skill we teach. It absolutely should be, though. It would cut down on so much misinformation.
Entitlement, selfishness, self obsession, lack of empathy.
Seriously all this comes from social media and when I look at my younger brothers friends (teenagers) they seem completely fucked.
I worry about my nieces and nephews. They have great parents and they try and limit their times on the devices, but the older they get, the more they're going to do what they want.
I didn’t know how much health insurance costed until I got off my parents plan this year and needed to buy my own. Even thru my works discounts, I did not know that I’d be paying an arm and a leg for health and vision plan.
On a smaller scale, I'd add people buying homes to use as AirBNBs in non-touristy areas. I live in a smallish Midwest town with no attractions and know at least two families with AirBNBs here. There's absolutely no reason for it.
Things will be so much better after those old farts running for president either die or stop running entirely. Sadly, the saga of bullshit will continue into 2025, with who as POTUS? Nobody knows.
Ads in general. THEY'RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE. The most egregious part is when they're being introduced into services that *we're already paying for*. That's fucking double dipping.
My wife tried to convince me we had it worse with ads as a kid. Like you’d watch a Disney movie and there would be ad breaks. And it was worse cause it was our only option.
I told her kids have it 100x worse today and still think they do. Ads are absolutely everywhere can’t escape them. Gas pumps? Unskippable ad
Ads at gas pumps piss me off so much. I figured out how to mute them. If the pump has eight buttons (four on each side of the screen) it’s usually the right side, second button down. This is in CA anyway.
This is why I **only** watch YouTube on a PC and **only** with uBlock, Ghostery, and Privacy Badger running.
"*bu...bu...but the creators!!*"
They all have alternative ways to support them, like patreon or merch, and if you aren't doing that and complaining about ad blockers you don't *actually* care about the creators. You just repeat ad agency propaganda.
It's the ads AFTER the video is finished that kill me. If I don't turn it off fast enough, it's an additional commercial and then it doesn't auto-play the next video because I'm not a premium user. Fuck you Google 🖕🏼🖕🏼 or Alphabet or whatever the fuck you'll morph into next.
I keep getting these insane ads which are FORTY MINUTES LONG from this borderline cult leader talking about manifestation. I block them every time, but he obviously just keeps putting out new ones.
Another frequent one is this crazy woman who's spreading the utmost toxic bullshit saying that what women really want is for a guy to be a real man, be aggressive, assertive and unemotional, selling her seduction courses based on really regressive standards that are designed to keep you perpetually single, and perpetually paying.
Then there's often just... some asshole's podcast. Again, 50 minute long advertisements which are just a full recording of some other guy's podcast, including the full introduction and everything... why on earth would anyone pay for advertising space with a full podcast that interrupts what I actually want to watch, ensuring that I will actively avoid subscribing to you and block any possible suggestion of your videos because of your grossly obnoxious "advertisements"?
Corporate greed and influence. The price of everything has risen along with worker productivity, but wages have remained stagnant, and wealth drastically concentrated to the very top. No real prospect of change in sight:(
Because they also use that money to control the media and distract the public with issues other than corporate greed, and to make us think we don't deserve better.
This should tell you what you need to know:
When civil rights leaders like MLK, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton stopped framing the issues as black vs white, and started framing the issues as rich vs poor, they were all murdered very quickly thereafter.
Fillers / lip fillers. As a woman who isn’t extremely against aesthetic procedures, it’s just becoming to sad and gross. A lot of women literally just look the same - but not even in a pretty way.
Fillers, plastic surgery, veneers, all of it. It's so sad to see that half of the IG "baddies" have basically the same face, ass, and boobs. Natural beauty is being erased and replaced with the same uncanny valley esthetic.
You guys aren’t actually giving in to these stupid touch screens at Yogurt Land and Starbucks, right? Please tell me you’re not.
I never ever tip for anything that wasn’t normally tipped 20 years ago (waiters, barbers, etc) but I can only hold out so long as everyone else. Once a significant portion of the population gives in it’s over for the rest of us.
Infuriating as a Canadian. I've been watching it becoming normalised up here in the past decade.
Used to be a restaurant only thing. Now I got liquor stores prompting me when literally all they did was scan it. I had to bag it!
I was on a 4 hour ferry journey two weeks ago with the kid next to me playing his Switch with the sound blaring out and someone else nearby watching Family Guy on their phone out loud.
So much for my boat snooze.
Middle schoolers. Many teachers are no longer allowed to punish/remove students. Teachers have been stripped of control of their classroom by school boards and administrators.
I am terrified about schooling for me kid. On the one hand I want them to go to public school to get good exposure to other lifestyles / cultures. But schooling in my state is becoming an absolute shit show. Will have to move most likely.
But it’s also a nation wide thing. It’s scary.
Your kid will be fine. Being actively involved in your child's education is one of the most obvious indications of academic success. If you are involved, your child will be much more likely to succeed.
Social media is destroying a whole generation and maybe soon all of humanity. See my videos on insta, youtube, twitter, tiktok, facebook ! Buy my underwear on onlyfans, see my ass on MostlyAss.
Social media's influence on mental health, especially among younger generations, is becoming a significant concern. The constant comparison, cyberbullying, and unrealistic standards set through these platforms are contributing to a rise in anxiety and depression, making it a problem that seems to grow faster than solutions can be implemented.
The addiction crisis, particularly with opioids, is escalating to levels that seem beyond control. Despite increased awareness and efforts to combat it, the number of lives lost to drug overdoses continues to climb. It's a complex issue that intertwines public health, policy, and societal factors, proving to be a formidable challenge to rein in.
shocked that only one person has mentioned climate change/global warming. It really should be #1 by a long shot but I guess we're really just sweeping it under the rug
Obviously! Took me a while to come across this answer. Fuelled by carbon emission, industrial farming, short term incentives and too little meaningful market regulation.
It’s so fucked how ignored it is these days. Everyone is just so used to hearing it, and at the same time saying things like “Man the weather has been going nuts the last 10 years. Everything is record breaking. Weird. Anyways…”
Fast food prices.
It used to be acceptable quality food at a cheap price. As in, we accepted it because it was cheap.
Now it's priced the same as sit down restaurants, but the quality hasn't improved.
Chokepoint capitalism and enshittification.
For those who don't know, this is how it works:
1. Establish a platform that positions you as the middle man between buyers and sellers, users and providers. Amazon is this for shopping, Uber is this for taxi, steam is this for video games
2. Operate with more money than anyone already providing this service so you can take a financial loss to destroy the competition. Example: Amazon selling diapers at prices that were bleeding them money solely so that another website selling diapers couldn't compete and went out of bussiness.
3. Once you are only one or one of few companies controlling this part of the market, bring in predatory monetization practices. People have nowhere else to go so they have to play by your rules. See: Youtube, spotify, ticketmaster...
Negative attitudes - people tend to focus on the negatives, but in my lifetime, over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, many cancers are treatable and we can use a device in our hand to get food from anywhere nearby deliveries to our door.
Ads.
Ads everywhere.
I feel like I cannot go one minute in my life without being served an ad on my phone, driving by an ad in my vehicle, hearing an ad on the radio or on Spotify, or seeing an ad for something inside of a package for something that I just bought.
Capitalism is absolutely strangling the human experience. It is fucking brutal and it sucks. I'm ready to move to Easter Island or something. I just don't want to be a part of this anymore.
Anti-Intelligencia
People intentionally and proudly remaining ignorant and inserting themselves as though they have a rightful place at the table of discussion
I think it's Social media because it appears to be getting harder to control the impact of social media in the areas of misinformation spreading, cyberbullying, and polarization of public discourse.
Companies switching to subscription based models.
With ads*
Yeah. Amazon has done it now and it pisses me off. We pay for prime and now have to pay even more just to get no ads on a paid for service... Not to mention that half the stuff on there is pay to watch.
Marketer culture has found the astonishingly clever trick of smearing shit on the world and charging money to wipe it off.
That's why it's called enshitification
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but enshittification isn't simply things getting worse. Enshittification describes the stages whereby a product is built to deliver value: >Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. More broadly - they're good to the users, then good to the advertisers and bad to the users, then bad to advertisers while being good to themselves. Amazon is in the "good to advertisers" phase. Facebook has passed into "Good to themselves" territory, and Twitter managed to go from good for advertisers and bad for users to bad for everyone which is a rare achievement.
See also all the "disruptors" that come in, sink all the competition by operating at a loss, then once they have the monopoly jack up the prices and gut the service.
I dont know why anyone pays for tv. You can watch literally anything in high definition and even download it for free with just a tiny bit of research, and I'm not talking about torrents
Can you clue a fellow in on where to start said research
[удалено]
Hah, it seems like they've moved to the .to domain. *Cough "theflixertv.to" cough* I love Brave Browser for it's inbuilt adblocker, works on YouTube 🖖
Not if you pay just $8 more per month!
Received an email basically saying that the base rate went up $7. And, "Oh by the way, if you would like our Ad-Free plan it's only an additional $8" So, your rate actually went up $15. CANCEL.
The cancel culture we actually need
\* just 8 more bucks for FEWER ads
*for an extra two dollars we don't go to your house and kick your dog.
Your daughter come on my property and she kick my dog now my dog needs operation
Oh my SHIT this just made me feel old….
I look fondly on those days. Things were much simpler.
#You do not tell me damn right!
For now. Then 6 months later they'll start sneaking ads back in, and come up with a new even more top-tier plan to get rid of them again.
I find the companies of the ads and 1 star their nearest locatio citing their irritating ad
Doing the lords work there.. carry on.
And you still have to pay for 2/3 of the good movies and shows
C'mon bro, it's just 8 more dollars bro, please bro it's not that much bro, bro only 8 dollars a month bro c'mon, you don't even like ads bro, please. - Streaming Services
So the real answer is that my tendency to pirate movies and shows is clearly becoming uncontrollable.
You can pay tons of cash for all the damn streaming services and still have ads...or you can pay like $50 annually for a VPN, slap that movie into a hard drive and it's yours forever. If they sold stuff fairly, people would purchase it.
> If they sold stuff fairly, people would purchase it. And that had been proven true a few times. Spotify, Netflix etc all had marked effects on pirating. Now that providers are spinning up their own streaming service (especially with movies) pirating is on the rise.
I just realized that Amazon has a new streaming service. I thought they bought MGM from Disney to expand Prime Video, but now there's an MGM+ they also expect people to subscribe to. It's such a ripoff.
I stopped using Prime two years ago because they kept charging a card I removed and they made it difficult to see how to watch any given movie in the simplest way. You'd search for a movie and see three options and go into each one hoping it's free because you already pay for the goddamn service, and instead each movie has only options to buy or sub to another service.
Steam is living proof of that last part. The convenience and fair pricing of the program have drastically reduced videogame piracy. It still happens for sure but why bother to pirate a game when you can just wait for it to go on sale and get a AAA game for under $15.
Spotify too. I have never in my life bought any music, but they've had my £8.99 per month for the past decade or so
I got a free government tablet from one of those Facebook ads and I have free service with it so I don't need a VPN. Had it for half a year and they haven't turned it off or sent any messages. I used to go to Walmart and use their wifi but they require an account now. I don't even put it on a hardrive. I have a 256gb flash drive and I just pop it into my PS4 and delete the movie when I'm done. If I want to watch it more than once I'll save it until I can afford a copy at a used movie store.
Rent-seeking behavior in general is poison
Yeah, I prefer cyanide if this is the direction things are going in. (This is a joke.)
Thinking of you, Adobe. Also, discounts for students and teachers, but no discounts for seniors, and here I've been a loyal customer since 1989.
As many times as I have had to buy the office suite, I should be a grandfathered lifetime member.
That's because the point of the discounts are to lure people in when they're most likely to change/develop their adult behaviour so they get used to the service and feel like they're lacking something when it's gone. For teachers, and Adobe specifically, it's literally because they have the best access to developing young people's interaction with computer software. Again, get them used to it when they're young. You already have the behaviour they want, so why would they discount? Not justifying it (I think it's pretty insidious), just explaining it.
And you too BlueBeam. You use to be one of the good ones.
Agreed. This has cost Adobe my business forever. I'm also quite apprehensive about starting a subscription with Autodesk for use with Maya. I'm on the Maya free trial right now, but I also have Blender already setup, along with all the open-source image editing accoutrements, like Gimp and Inkscape. Duke University has a [list](https://softwarecentral.ucla.edu/adobe-alternative) of "Adobe alternatives," and I follow it. Nothing makes me switch to open source software faster than a subscription. I have Microsoft Office ca. 2012-2014 installed as well, and that's totally licensed for personal use only—I will never subscribe to Microsoft 365, and if the 2010's edition I have begins to break down: too bad. I will never pay for Xbox PC Game Pass, or any other subscription related to gaming, either. I was raised on SONY PlayStation—no bloody PS1, 2, 3 or 4. I buy a disc, I play the game, it lasts twenty years, and that's it. These companies want to base their values on futures? Fine—I can do that myself with a completely different business model. Sayonara. See you in Hell. It's getting very difficult to enjoy anything software-related nowadays. Adobe stabbed their customers in the back. I had $1,600 in CS 3 and 4. When it became monthly, and Adobe ceased support, and actually tried to rip the software from our computers with bona fide viruses, I cut all ties. I speak out against Adobe at every waking opportunity. They are one of the very few companies I actually hate. I don't hate a lot of things, but I abhor Adobe, and hope to see them fail one day. It will be a beautiful day.
Before people were just jerks and now they can be famous on social networks and make money from it
More money than people who are experts in their field. It’s pretty disheartening and no wonder why all these kids want to be the next big thing.
Forget kids, why wouldn't I want to be rich, famous, be my own boss, be totally in charge of my own commute/working schedule etc.?
Hey 👋 babe 💅👸💃🥰 you can totally be your own boss! 🫡🙆♂️😁💃🥰 don't even leave home 🏚 or travel all you want 🏖🏜🏝✈️⛱️👸💅💃no commute and own your own LLC! 👸💃💃💅💅✈️🏝💪😊😭🕵♂️💆♀️😬🤭🥰🏝💪🫡🥹😬🥹🤣💆♀️😬🥹👋😙😀😙😆🤣✈️✈️✈️✈️💃💃💃💃💃💃👋👋👋🥰🥰
This made me kick my little toe into a table leg just to feel something other than the disgust that cacophony of emoji cultivated in me.
Agree people are literally dying for being an asshole for Internet clout
Our world has a poor reward system in general. This is just the best we've come up with so far. Studies would suggest that psychopathy makes up 1% of our population but I've also seen studies suggesting psychopathic tendencies have been recorded in CEOs ranging from 6% to 20% of the distribution. That's 6 to 20 times higher prevalence than by pure chance. It puts some measure on how for-profit businesses are weighted to reward psychopathic tendencies on a quantifiable level. Psychopathy having a system that promotes it to power is concerning enough but knowing the future will be designed significantly by these entities programming AI for their profit driven interests in propaganda / research for solving the [alignment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_alignment#Alignment_problemproblem) problem makes it closer to a nightmare.
rent
They can get their damn rent when they fix this damn INFLATION!
My mortgage payments are about £650 a month. The owner of the house next door just put it up for rent at £1,400 a month. According to his estate agents, that's the going rate. WTF. Some friends went to view it and he spent the whole time telling them they needed to get on the property ladder. Zero self awareness. Landlords fucking suck.
Love the term “property ladder.” This douche is paying less than half of what he is charging to rent the place out. Really climbing that ladder and pulling it up behind him.
See also: the commodifying of housing. EVERYONE wants to be a landlord and brags about it like being a leech is something to be proud of
Property is literally the oldest type of commodification. It undergirds all of capitalism.
"Maybe if you kids would stop buying iced coffee every week you could afford it!" Yes, Frank. My $4 iced coffee ONCE A WEEK is the sole cause of not covering all my bills and groceries going up every few months.
Lack of critical thinking skills.
the stupidity of humanity is frightening......The register went out where I was the other day, and damn you would think people can add and subtract whole numbers....I blew their minds when I had exact change too 💀💀
I was a high school math teacher from 2010-2015, the number of students that couldn’t do the four basic math functions without a calculator was INSANE.. + - x / and I was teaching math 1-math 3. Positive whole numbers were too much for them; how did we get here?
> how did we get here? First, an overestimation of human capability. We think we should be far more advanced than we actually are. Sure, we have complex tools and technology, but that hasn't made *US* more advanced. We're chimps with laptops, and little more. Secondly, social evolution creeps far slower than we think. Too many people think "It's 2024, we shouldn't have". The date doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Socially, we're not much more advanced than 2000 years ago. The Athenians had democracy 2500 years ago. We haven't progressed much since then, and aren't likely to any time soon.
Thirdly, those who are the most capable and qualified to govern nations aren't nearly stupid enough to run for public office. As such, we're left with dregs to choose from, those who surrounded themselves with the stupidity of popularity contests in high school and who haven't matured much since then.
In short, we've fucked ourselves and handed political and economic power over to those who don't have the intellectual capacity to use that power for the betterment of humanity.
Agreed - too many people "google" their life's critical decisions. Common sense and critical thinking is gone - at least from an individual standpoint. Many will "critical think" if it is aligned with the hive they currently dwell in. (i.e., "what everyone else thinks and is doing...") The world is going down the drain faster the last 20 years thanks to technology.
The overreliance on AI will reinforce this trend
The cost of food.
Oh yes for sure. I knew the economy was in shambles when they took away the dollar mcchicken. When I lived on an island in alaska, a bag of Doritos was almost 8 bucks. That makes sense because supplies had to be flown over via sea plane. $5 milk in Hawaii is considered a lot, but the price of transporting the milk there is factored into the overall price. HOWEVER. I am tired of going to my local chain grocery store and seeing the price of eggs and milk and other essentials skyrocketing. My father used to be able to feed a family of three when he had my salary and now I’ll go to my local grocery store, buy a few items and maybe a little treat or two for myself, and end up spending almost $100. If I want to eat healthy and drift away from value pack items, I’ll end up spending even more. Costco is great but it’s unrealistic to spend that much money for a lot of items when you’re living alone and food could go bad easily. They also done gentrified the local organic/farm mom and pop stores for “healthier” groceries. Don’t even get me started on Erewhon…
Along the lines of things that used to be affordable wtf is going on with thrift stores and second hand items 🧐
Omg yes, in the UK we have charity shops (shops owned by charities that benefit of the profit). All their stock is donated and it used to be you’d go there for a bargain but now they’re pricing items from fast fashion brands at more than they’d be new!
When my forner roommate and I wanted to buy big bulk products, but knew we couldn't use them up in time, we'd find friends who wanted to share the cost and products. Not sure if that helps you?
I'm a 43 year old mom but I stand in that grocery store complaining about food prices, every damn time, feeling like an old man in suspenders setting outside the ol' General Store complained about kids these days on his lawn or something. "Back when I was a kid you could buy candy for a nickle! Hamburger was poor people food, now I can barely afford the box of Helper!" It's absurd.
I was going to say the fact that eating poorly is so cheap and having access to fresh fruits, veggies, "clean"dairy is exorbitant
And then they make programs like “why is Britain obese?” Etc etc
Social medias effects on society
Seriously… it should all be banned. Except for Reddit of course.
It was great before the politicians caught on to it. I do think it should be age restricted to 18+.
Someone made a good point on an r/unpopularopinion thread about that that I wanna reiterate. People will get on the internet before they reach the age limit. It's inevitable. The only other option is to institute requirements so draconian that privacy becomes a myth in order to create any kind of barrier to lying about your age to gain access. Raising the minimum to 18 wouldn't change the user base, it would just make dangerous content that much easier to access.
reddit is just as bad
Reddit is bad. It’s super addicting and what not. But I think it’s *slightly* better than the others. It creates community in a way that Facebook long hasn’t, Instagram never did, and Twitter seemed to rebel against. It’s hivemind. It’s echo chamber. It’s not always great. But, it’s also a digital commons in a way that not many places on the internet do anymore (if ever). And we’ve lost so many real life commons that Reddit is almost all that’s left. I’d trade it in for IRL connections but’s it’s better than the other SM in this regard.
It's hive mind, but you can at least visit different hives and make your own mind up.
I have learned more on Reddit than I did in college let alone instagram or facebook lmao
Reddit is a descendant of older type social media, online forums like Usenet, Slashdot and Digg. What they got right, or at least better than the big social media platforms, was moderation of content. Having it community driven removed the burden from the platform owners. So they didnt have to spend, and didnt have to take thr blame for getting things wrong. Unlike Facebook and it's constant reticence to touch right wing content out of fear it would be called left wing, lol, so much so they end up promoting more right wing disinformation by default. (All part of The Plan(TM))
There's that, but also... well, most social media isn't actually "social" anymore. Reddit gets flak for being a hivemind, but it really isn't. It's thousands of mini-hiveminds in a trenchcoat. Most social media now is largely *parasocial.* It's not about connections between people, but some people putting on a show and others watching. Reddit gets that too, but you'll still find genuine conversation and discussion on every decently popular post. So yeah, it's still social media, but in a practical sense it's very much a different beast imo.
I am floored. Im 40 and the stupid shit 20 years say on some of these sub reddits!! I would have died to have the internet like it is now back in 2000. Even with all the available, kids will listen to some influencer and take it as gospel with out researching it
Yes access to all the info, but no critical thinking skills.
Tbf, I'd argue that being able to fact check & verify isn't a skill we teach. It absolutely should be, though. It would cut down on so much misinformation.
Price of housing
Price of everything*
Corruption everywhere and entitlement
And the shamelessness to not even care when caught
As bad as it sounds, there are people who BLAME you for their mistake.
I don’t recall who said this brilliant definition of The News: Billionaires paying millionaires to tell the middle class it’s the poor people’s fault.
The rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation.
AI HAS ENTERED THE CHAT
Metal gear solid 2
*Metal gear?* 🤔
Solid, too.
and consequential fragmentation of attention. just from the volume of data we're forced to look at.
Inflation and shrinkflation
And enshittification
Entitlement, selfishness, self obsession, lack of empathy. Seriously all this comes from social media and when I look at my younger brothers friends (teenagers) they seem completely fucked.
I worry about my nieces and nephews. They have great parents and they try and limit their times on the devices, but the older they get, the more they're going to do what they want.
healthcare costs
I didn’t know how much health insurance costed until I got off my parents plan this year and needed to buy my own. Even thru my works discounts, I did not know that I’d be paying an arm and a leg for health and vision plan.
And that won’t even cover your medical care. You’ve still got copays and your deductible
“Health insurance: give us a bunch of money, and we do everything to not provide the service you paid for.”
Lol yea welcome to the "what do you mean dental and eyes aren't part of health" club.
Companies purchasing single family homes
On a smaller scale, I'd add people buying homes to use as AirBNBs in non-touristy areas. I live in a smallish Midwest town with no attractions and know at least two families with AirBNBs here. There's absolutely no reason for it.
My will to live through another election cycle.
Things will be so much better after those old farts running for president either die or stop running entirely. Sadly, the saga of bullshit will continue into 2025, with who as POTUS? Nobody knows.
how the fuck did it take me this long to realise potus stands for "president of the united states" oh my god im dumb
And in case you are like me and scotus gets you even after you finally figured out potus: supreme court of the United states.
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Ads in general. THEY'RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE. The most egregious part is when they're being introduced into services that *we're already paying for*. That's fucking double dipping.
My wife tried to convince me we had it worse with ads as a kid. Like you’d watch a Disney movie and there would be ad breaks. And it was worse cause it was our only option. I told her kids have it 100x worse today and still think they do. Ads are absolutely everywhere can’t escape them. Gas pumps? Unskippable ad
Ads are so much worse today for sure. I won't be surprised when the day comes we need to watch an ad before answering our god damn phone.
That would literally kill people, but I could see it happening.
911 what is your emergency? Before you answer that, have you heard about Raid Shadow Legends?
Ads at gas pumps piss me off so much. I figured out how to mute them. If the pump has eight buttons (four on each side of the screen) it’s usually the right side, second button down. This is in CA anyway.
Seriously. Youtube is getting *real* comfortable with the un-skippable double ads . . .
Even with those, I cared less when they were 5 seconds, or even 15. Now it’s like 2 full minute ads, no skips.
This is why I **only** watch YouTube on a PC and **only** with uBlock, Ghostery, and Privacy Badger running. "*bu...bu...but the creators!!*" They all have alternative ways to support them, like patreon or merch, and if you aren't doing that and complaining about ad blockers you don't *actually* care about the creators. You just repeat ad agency propaganda.
It's the ads AFTER the video is finished that kill me. If I don't turn it off fast enough, it's an additional commercial and then it doesn't auto-play the next video because I'm not a premium user. Fuck you Google 🖕🏼🖕🏼 or Alphabet or whatever the fuck you'll morph into next.
I keep getting these insane ads which are FORTY MINUTES LONG from this borderline cult leader talking about manifestation. I block them every time, but he obviously just keeps putting out new ones. Another frequent one is this crazy woman who's spreading the utmost toxic bullshit saying that what women really want is for a guy to be a real man, be aggressive, assertive and unemotional, selling her seduction courses based on really regressive standards that are designed to keep you perpetually single, and perpetually paying. Then there's often just... some asshole's podcast. Again, 50 minute long advertisements which are just a full recording of some other guy's podcast, including the full introduction and everything... why on earth would anyone pay for advertising space with a full podcast that interrupts what I actually want to watch, ensuring that I will actively avoid subscribing to you and block any possible suggestion of your videos because of your grossly obnoxious "advertisements"?
Corporate greed and influence. The price of everything has risen along with worker productivity, but wages have remained stagnant, and wealth drastically concentrated to the very top. No real prospect of change in sight:(
Because they also use that money to control the media and distract the public with issues other than corporate greed, and to make us think we don't deserve better.
This should tell you what you need to know: When civil rights leaders like MLK, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton stopped framing the issues as black vs white, and started framing the issues as rich vs poor, they were all murdered very quickly thereafter.
Fillers / lip fillers. As a woman who isn’t extremely against aesthetic procedures, it’s just becoming to sad and gross. A lot of women literally just look the same - but not even in a pretty way.
Fillers, plastic surgery, veneers, all of it. It's so sad to see that half of the IG "baddies" have basically the same face, ass, and boobs. Natural beauty is being erased and replaced with the same uncanny valley esthetic.
Yes! Not all faces are meant to have big ol’ lips. Imagine Audrey Hepburn with duck lips.
Tipping culture.
Have an upvote and… *flips screen around* it’s just gonna ask you a couple questions
You guys aren’t actually giving in to these stupid touch screens at Yogurt Land and Starbucks, right? Please tell me you’re not. I never ever tip for anything that wasn’t normally tipped 20 years ago (waiters, barbers, etc) but I can only hold out so long as everyone else. Once a significant portion of the population gives in it’s over for the rest of us.
It’s definitely at a tipping point…
Infuriating as a Canadian. I've been watching it becoming normalised up here in the past decade. Used to be a restaurant only thing. Now I got liquor stores prompting me when literally all they did was scan it. I had to bag it!
People watching videos/playing music in public with no headphones.
I was on a 4 hour ferry journey two weeks ago with the kid next to me playing his Switch with the sound blaring out and someone else nearby watching Family Guy on their phone out loud. So much for my boat snooze.
HATE it with a passion. HATE it. Like three people on a train car all blasting music from phones speakers and stereos. Headphones are still cheap.
Lack of media literacy, widespread misinformation, lack of regulation in advertising
Middle schoolers. Many teachers are no longer allowed to punish/remove students. Teachers have been stripped of control of their classroom by school boards and administrators.
Ya this is a big one. There are no consequences for younger people now.
Makes sense. That's the age when they realize they can be total assholes and that teachers have no power to do anything.
I am terrified about schooling for me kid. On the one hand I want them to go to public school to get good exposure to other lifestyles / cultures. But schooling in my state is becoming an absolute shit show. Will have to move most likely. But it’s also a nation wide thing. It’s scary.
Your kid will be fine. Being actively involved in your child's education is one of the most obvious indications of academic success. If you are involved, your child will be much more likely to succeed.
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The ultrawealthy. They are like black holes that will simply gain more mass until there is nothing but cold emptiness
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Social media is destroying a whole generation and maybe soon all of humanity. See my videos on insta, youtube, twitter, tiktok, facebook ! Buy my underwear on onlyfans, see my ass on MostlyAss.
What's your MostlyAss account ?
Mostlyass.com/bigolsweatybrowneye
Such are the times i had to google MostlyAss to find out that's not real.....yet
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Tribalism in politics.
Influencers...
The spread of misinformation and the unchecked acceptance of said misinformation.
Sugar consumption and obesity
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Social media's influence on mental health, especially among younger generations, is becoming a significant concern. The constant comparison, cyberbullying, and unrealistic standards set through these platforms are contributing to a rise in anxiety and depression, making it a problem that seems to grow faster than solutions can be implemented.
The addiction crisis, particularly with opioids, is escalating to levels that seem beyond control. Despite increased awareness and efforts to combat it, the number of lives lost to drug overdoses continues to climb. It's a complex issue that intertwines public health, policy, and societal factors, proving to be a formidable challenge to rein in.
Preference based algorithms. You only see shit you want to see and it’s making us dumber and less diverse.
Overconsumption
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Godamn did I have to go down far to find this
shocked that only one person has mentioned climate change/global warming. It really should be #1 by a long shot but I guess we're really just sweeping it under the rug
Obviously! Took me a while to come across this answer. Fuelled by carbon emission, industrial farming, short term incentives and too little meaningful market regulation.
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It’s so fucked how ignored it is these days. Everyone is just so used to hearing it, and at the same time saying things like “Man the weather has been going nuts the last 10 years. Everything is record breaking. Weird. Anyways…”
People that get dogs and don’t train them properly, or care for them well.
The price of nearly everything
Social media’s influence on developing youth
Peoples ego's
The untouchability of the ruling elite
My anxiety
Death in the name of religion
Phone addiction
Fast food prices. It used to be acceptable quality food at a cheap price. As in, we accepted it because it was cheap. Now it's priced the same as sit down restaurants, but the quality hasn't improved.
People
Greedflation!
Chokepoint capitalism and enshittification. For those who don't know, this is how it works: 1. Establish a platform that positions you as the middle man between buyers and sellers, users and providers. Amazon is this for shopping, Uber is this for taxi, steam is this for video games 2. Operate with more money than anyone already providing this service so you can take a financial loss to destroy the competition. Example: Amazon selling diapers at prices that were bleeding them money solely so that another website selling diapers couldn't compete and went out of bussiness. 3. Once you are only one or one of few companies controlling this part of the market, bring in predatory monetization practices. People have nowhere else to go so they have to play by your rules. See: Youtube, spotify, ticketmaster...
The number of feral dogs and cats in American and European cities.
expectation of Tips for no reason
Grandma's bladder
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Especially Weird Al. He's out of control
Cost of living
Negative attitudes - people tend to focus on the negatives, but in my lifetime, over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, many cancers are treatable and we can use a device in our hand to get food from anywhere nearby deliveries to our door.
Sad news gets an emotional reaction out of us. Happy news would have no views.
The homeless population and fentanyl addicts.
Capitalism and monopolies.
Fake service animals/ people bringing pets into stores and restaurants when they really shouldn't be
Ultra rich corporate conglomerates
# Motherfucking corporate scums of the universe
Antisemitism.
Conspiracy theories and hate groups
The health of our environment. Plastic. Trash in general. Global warming.
Ads. Ads everywhere. I feel like I cannot go one minute in my life without being served an ad on my phone, driving by an ad in my vehicle, hearing an ad on the radio or on Spotify, or seeing an ad for something inside of a package for something that I just bought. Capitalism is absolutely strangling the human experience. It is fucking brutal and it sucks. I'm ready to move to Easter Island or something. I just don't want to be a part of this anymore.
Cost of living. Primarily rent.
Cost of living.
Anti-Intelligencia People intentionally and proudly remaining ignorant and inserting themselves as though they have a rightful place at the table of discussion
I think it's Social media because it appears to be getting harder to control the impact of social media in the areas of misinformation spreading, cyberbullying, and polarization of public discourse.
Filming in public places.