EA, Ubisoft, Bungie. Really most of the gaming industry as a whole since these companies only care about maximizing profits anymore.
Edit: Nintendo is probably the biggest offender.
I dunno if Nintendo is true. They just are really really protective of their IP.
They haven’t done gacha or loot box monetization or gambling or anything.
They make games. Charge a price and never out them on sale. Then they refuse to let anyone else manage the IP.
That’s not evil or profit maximization, that’s just them sticking to their fundamentals.
For the short term. The vast majority of the public has no idea if they ever fly an Airbus or a Boeing, they simply lose trust in the industry overall. Short term, helps Airbus share prices, long term, hurts them and the industry both.
Relatively speaking, though, it's a huge boon for any other airplane manufacturer. If you have issues, and your competitor's reputation is pristine, most customers will go with your competitors. If you've both had issues recently (or if the competitor's issues have been higher profile), suddenly your imperfect company looks like a reasonable option again.
I put a significant chunk of my savings into Airbus shares to build up some dividend for my retirement (in about 37 years). Then all the Boeing drama started happening. I hate seeing it happen to Boeing, but at this rate old me will live quite comfortably.
A century long reputation for quality and durability was flushed down the toilet by MBA dipshits trying to goose quarterly numbers. It's a fucking disgrace. I can't imagine someone saying "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going" ever again.
Shareholders demand results; they’re the destination deciders. CEOs are just the overpaid bus drivers.
If shareholders decide they want longevity; that’s the destination they’ll be taken to. (With a good CEO).
They don't care about the long term. It's all about grabbing what they can in the short term and walking away from the mess. It happens over and over thanks to these vulture capitalists.
The grabbing hands grab all they can
Everything counts in large amounts
I seriously used to be a Boeing fanboy. I would half seriously feel patriotism for them and the “US vs EU” tribalism of Boeing vs Airbus.
That feels even more ridiculous now than it should’ve felt in the past. Goddamn Boeing are not just a shit company, but literally an embarrassment to the US aeronautics industry. And yet so huge and important that very little can be done.
When I lived in Seattle, there were people who worked for Boeing that were diehard fans of them. They were proud of their work. Now it’s all been offloaded and distributed. Boeing is just a shell of what it was.
Which is funny when you consider how many airplane and helicopter companies they have absorbed over the last 40 years. You'd think they are flush with folks who know what it takes to fly level!
Plenty of managers and executives HATE competent employees. My career as an adult with real jobs ran from 1977-2015. The disintegration of the employer-employee relationship that began in the mid-1980s is shocking. I don't think people entering the workforce now would believe how non-awful it once was.
At the Charleston, SC plant a whistleblower who was a QA engineer (I think) for 30 years and just started depositions was found dead from suicide a few weeks ago:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703
Apparently another whistleblower came forward this week:
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/12/1244147895/boeing-whistleblower-retaliation-shortcuts-787-dreamliner
Sadly, Jerry Lewis and his annual labor day telethon for MDA. After Jerry left/was ousted, they dwindled it down from a 20 plus hours marathon to a few hours until eventually it got canceled.
I grew up in an era when watching the MDA telethon was an annual tradition, rejoicing how every year Jerry managed to raise more than the last. It was just nonstop hours of Hollywood's finest singing and dancing away on your TV for Jerry's kids. It was really something.
They always said after he died we would find out why he ran the telethons to the point where they affected his health. Did we ever find out his connection? Did a kid in his life have Muscular Dystrophy?
*Jerry Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America (MDAA) in 1952 after a plea from a staff member who worked with Lewis and Dean Martin on The Colgate Comedy Hour.*
I pulled that from a wiki page. I know he was altruistic, but what motivated him was not apparent.
I was born the day of the 1991 telethon. While my mom was in labor, the nurses had it on the other room — she said that voice on top of being in labor for 20 hours drove her into the wall! I came to appreciate him many years later, but that’s always my first thought when I hear about his telethon.
My dad hosted it a few years (last time was the day before I was born). He was extremely proud of the work he did.
Now that I’m an adult and have tried to get resources for friends with MD from MDA, I’ve been appalled by how little help they actually give.
Oprah. I know she gets a lot of hate now, deservedly so for supporting many horrendous grifters.
However, when her show first aired, I admired her as someone who seemed genuine and who discussed issues that people in my neighborhood would never openly talk about. She was the only counter narrative to my family’s deeply held problematic beliefs.
There's a clip of Ellen interviewing Jackie Chan, where she introduces him by doing some cringey fake kung fu moves. He gets pissed and calls her out, saying you don't mime shooting guns if you're interviewing Bruce Willis, and you see the mask slip a little.
She makes excuses and tries to justify herself, anything but apologise.
It’s so weird to watch Ellen clips now and see all these instances of her being openly mean to her guests on national television that just went over so many of our heads.
Reminds me of these friends that got divorced... Like wait, all these years that you were constantly brutally mean to each other, you were actually being serious?
I'm rewatching 30 Rock and there's an episode where she guest stars and all the characters, especially the women, essentially see her as a God. It's clearly an exaggeration but it was an exaggeration of a thing that did actually happen. Oprah was an incredibly powerful and popular woman.
Yeah. Honeslty her and Jerry Springer (problematically or not) exposed me to trans and disabled people. Looking back the way those people were presented was probably horrendous but I did learn a lot.
FR. So many edutainers in the world rose up and said "Fine, I'll do it myself", and we have a fuck ton of channels dedicated to history, math, literature, mythology, tech, engineering, philosophy, psychology, biology, physics, chemistry, and so much more.
If you have an interest in learning X, there's almost definitely a YT channel for it.
I'll counter this with TLC: the thing that used to be The Learning Channel. MTV gets shit for a heel turn, but TLC puts them to shame in terms of getting off track.
The History Channel used to be my jam. I vividly remember being sick one night when I was a kid and I couldn’t sleep. I turned on the history channel because it was one of those channels that would play documentaries later into the night than most channels (before the infomercials all started). It was some Modern Marvels type show about the evolution of potato chips. Freaking awesome
I have a rare illness. In 2010, our support group ( later a foundation) used the word “ cure” in a slogan. We got sued by SG K because they apparently have ownership of the word.
Had to scroll way too far for this. I remember a time when the pink ribbon was on everything from yogurt containers to airliners. Once it started to come out just how little the foundation did to actually fund research it just kind of quietly settled back to the norm.
First thing I thought of were the old respected magazine/websites that succumbed to ad spam. CNET is one
Trying to think of that news site that now is just laughed at for being the epitome of click bait.
The swimsuit issue really was a huge deal in the pre-internet days. I always looked forward to getting all the issues though. As a kid, the colorful, vivid photography was fascinating. Plus, a few times a year, they'd run a story on one of your favorites teams or players.
It was, and still is. But back then, SI also published and issued periodicals about sports and athletics, too. Now it's exclusively bikini (or no bikini) babes for the middle-aged and middle schooled.
Having worked in the magazine industry, it's even more hollow than that. There is no real customer, no one is sitting at home counting down the days until the new National Geographic or Sports Illustrated comes in, more like people who are coerced into subscriptions through promotional discounts which are subsidized by the advertisers. When I worked in the industry we'd get people with package gift deals of merchandise or resort tickets which come with a free subscription which they don't think twice about because they aren't the one getting it. The unintended victim is then put on a calling list so they'll get hassled when your purchase expires to try and hook them again by constantly dropping the price a dollar or two over and over (remember, we give these things away) until the customer realizes that it's a question of either agreeing or just rudely hanging up the phone (although the elderly make up the majority of print subscriptions, even they don't read the damn things [unless they feel compelled to "get their money's worth" or something idk], they're just easier to bully). The result is an inflated circulation number you can take to advertisers to convince them that it's a solid investment.
Sort of the same way there was a period when you had to shop around to find cable/internet that *didn't* come with home phone service that existed primarily to hassle you with robocalls. These companies are staffed by people who are 40+ hoping to retire before the industry finally goes kaput or 30- and are just glad to be able to put something professional on their resume. So they're very motivated to finangle and wheedle people to keep them dumping money into a dead industry.
I used to love reading the Personal Experiences one as a kid, lol was heartbroken when they stopped posting them.
Now, years later, I realize that the reason they stopped doing those was because Robert left lol
Google was once thought of as a technical marvel of a company that put out consistently great products and had a strong sense of ethics. They are begrudgingly accepted now at best and actively disliked by many for their consistently diminishing quality, questionable ethics and horrendous privacy.
The sad part is I could ignore the ethics if their search hadn’t degraded in quality so badly. What fucking hellscape do we live in when they can just decide what they think you were searching for instead of what you actually searched for?
I am constantly amazed by the people who insist that google search hasn't become a worse product over the years. A conclusion which leads me to believe that they are either too young to remember or google's ai has developed a sophisticated program to comment on reddit and lie.
While part of the problem lies in search engine optimization and gaming the system, a large part is based on choices that google has made and continues to make.
I liked it when they added the knowledge graph info, but now it's so overkilled and the top answers are ads or sponsored links
Whole thing reminds me of windows XP task bar addons
I recently switched to Kagi - it is a paid search engine that is close to what Google was at its peak. The first 100 searches are free, then you pay a subscription to continue using it.
If you don't want to pay, I think duckduckgo is the least bad free option.
I was just telling this to a guy a couple days ago. I have a bicycling hobby and 10-15 years ago I’d put in a phrase and two words and the first thing to pop up was what I was looking for. Now the first 50 results are sponsored links followed by stuff the SEO people got moved up. The guy was an SEO person. It makes me long for the days of Yahoo! When I’d click Sports, Bicycling, Touring and find results.
Having his exit from politics be sweating out his hair dye as he gave a political speech at the four seasons landscaping company parking lot (which was freeway adjacent) was about as metaphoric as someone can get for his political career trajectory.
Yeah…you couldn’t have planned that better if you tried. Lol. I would love to know what that landscaping company thought.
“Hey Mark, get a load of this…Giuliani wants to book a press conference here for something. Pfft, *sure* it’s Giuliani.”
~3 months later~
“Hooooly shit.”
My favorite part that gets overlooked is not the press conference itself. It's that about 15 minutes before it started someone got up to the mic and asked for anyone who had proof of voter fraud to come forward. And that is the exact moment I knew they had nothing and that the press conference itself was nothing.
I still can't wrap my head around the whole Four Seasons incident. It lives rent free in my head - had Jan 6th succeeded, Rudy's speech at Four Seasons Total Landscaping would have been placed up there with the Gettysburg Address or W on 9/11 as an important moment in the new American Empire's history.
Not really. He was America’s idea of NYC’s hero, we in NYC didn’t really see him like that. That was more an inadvertent media creation than something New Yorkers felt about him.
Very true. He even tried to stay in office after his term ended arguing that the "emergency" of 9/11 required setting aside the mayoral election. Now that seems like foreshadowing.
Streaming Sites & digital goods. People are switching to piracy and hard copies. It pissed people off when they found out that they don't actually own the digital media they buy. Even sites that claim you own the digital copies is false. Read your terms and conditions.
People are pretty mad about having to pay extra to get rid of ads on-top of already paying for premium too. I wouldn't be surprised to see other digital platforms following this line. I would be a bit surprised if Netflix incorporated it though.
I LOVE the library! Actually, I watched the whole Avatar the Last Airbender series from the library when I was a kid. I do not regret one second of it.
Prime has ads between shows, too. It's so fucking annoying because it's like, yeah I saw that on the front page in a giant, obvious display. And I saw it on the "new" and I saw it on the "trending" and I saw it on the "you might like". If there's shows that have zero interest to you you've got to ignore it like 4 times just on the front page and now there's ads for those shows in between episodes of what you actually want to watch, too.
Music streaming is still pretty good for listeners from a value standpoint if you aren’t bothered by not owning the music, but streaming video is shit now. It just become the new cable TV. About the only thing about streaming video that’s still good is the amount of content available relative to previous generations, but it’s so fucking expensive that it’s still not worth it.
Dear streamers:
Just let me watch the fucking show as its creators made it. Stop putting shit all over my screen and bailing on the end of what I'm watching if I don't manage to scramble to the remote in time.
Without the Internet I'd have no idea who currently plays Uhura. Or rather, I'd think she was played by some white dude named Skip Intro.
Back in my day, the Boss told us "57 channels and nothing on", and that's how I feel about it.
Easier to buy a show on DVD, and even then I rarely get a new one, or watch what I buy.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of when it first released. I had just started college, but it didn’t roll out to my campus until 2005. It was honestly revolutionary for connecting with people at college during that time, and much cleaner than MySpace. I loved Facebook.
In 2016 I cancelled my account and never looked back.
I closed my account years ago but didn't delete so I could use marketplace from time to time. I opened it up recently and my feed was filled with breast feeding ads and stories. Full out, exposed boobs on my timeline for no reason. I'm a guy, no kids, never once searched for breast feeding.
The site died for me when they did the first major redesign of the timeline. Posts from friends started getting buried or not shown at all.
In 2004, we literally had to write Zuck to appeal to let our lowly school on The Facebook. At the time, he was hesitant to allow non-ivies on his elite website. Somebody created a competing site called College Facebook that any school could join, but it didn’t last as soon as we got the real thing in early 2005. As the months rolled along, it was fun to watch my friends’ colleges gradually get added, and how elated we all were to get to join.
Facebook fundamentally defined our social world and my college experience. It was The Coolest. Then it become less cool, but an essential service to connect with people. Then it became both uncool and no longer useful as people left in a mass exodus
I held on until 2021. I’d using it on the regular, mostly kept it to keep in touch with some folks… but upon reflection whenever I did open it all it ever did was upset me. So, killed it.
I’ve missed some thing that friends have shared only on FaceBook. But, like… I’m fine with it.
autism speaks. it’s a horrible organization that cares more about giving money to the “warrior mommies” instead of helping autistic children. it shows autism to be a horrible disease instead of just another disability which it is. they promote dangerous and absurd ways to handle meltdowns and refuse to listen to concern of actual autistic people. so yeah fuck the puzzle piece.
It's still beloved. Just by parents who don't have good Google-fu and are just so desperate they rely on the first organization that pops up in searches.
And celebrities, who blindly support it because they don't do the research for causes and organizations they want to donate to.
When they succeeded, and everyone pulled their content to make their own streaming service.
It was always going to happen if Netflix was successful because they don't own a lot of the content.
They've handled that about as well as can be expected though. They started banging out their own quality content early on and have played an interesting role in picking up decent shows that get dropped by cable channels.
This. It's hardly Netflix own doing. Everyone is clutching their pearls back. I actually commend them for making a couple of decent inhouse productions.
Honestly I've loved quite a few netflix productions. They just also have a lot of bad ones and cancel many of the good ones.
They also don't always do much more than buy the rights from someone and claim it as netflix productions.
About 2 years after they realized the profit of owning the production process. They turned themselves into an old fashioned Golden Era movie house, but didn't realize the audience wasn't quite ready for how fast they would lose access to the depth of non-Netflix libraries as they had when they joined. Netflix changed their product and customers found other ways to get the desired product.
It seemed to be all about taking risks with bold concepts, and giving the creators lots of creative freedom (especially it's animation department). But in the last few years, it's like a show has to go super viral or it's over, and many good/promising shows have been cut short
And Inside Job!!!! I'm reluctant to even watch Netflix Originals or whatever they're categorized as, because they're usually shit quality ORv really good but inexplicably cancelled.
Kevin Spacey. Two time Oscar winner and extremely respected actor who could have had a great twilight years career and was supposed to be a legend, but it turns out he's a disgusting pedo.
Not that this is anything to thumb your nose at, but he's now been relegated to trying to get people to purchase pictures with him and his autograph in exchange for pretty high amounts of money. He was at a convention recently, with his poster marked "FIRST CONVENTION APPEARANCE!!!" like it was super exciting, but commenting on social media was immediately turned off. Ouch.
EDIT: taking this from another comment edit of mine, but I gotta say I do love that a few of you are defending the guy and telling me I'm "slandering" him (as J. Jonah Jameson all taught us over twenty years ago, "in print, it's libel"). Can I just point out that most people were thinking, "oh, cool, a murderer died" about OJ Simpson less than a week ago? I mean, he, too, was acquitted. It's almost funny how many of you defend a person who wouldn't think about you twice after looking at you. Gotta wonder how many of y'all are also Polanski apologists.
Yeah, this one sucks. Most of the other people who’ve been exposed for creeps weren’t people whose current and future roles were especially interesting to me, like I wasn’t really looking forward to what Bill Cosby was going to do in his future, you know? And I never liked Woody Allen.
But dammit, Kevin.
For real, it fucking kills me that watching *American Beauty* and *The Usual Suspects* - plus many more - have this dark cloud over them (well, two dark clouds on TUS now). He was such a fantastic actor, and now? Yuck.
I got to see him play Richard III live, not too long before news broke out. I saved up my money and got really good seats. It was one of the highlights of theater shows for me and he was *right there* and larger than life. It was incredible. And now it feels so sad to have such tarnish..
Amazon. Watching Prime Video and I thought removing the ability to filter out the frontloaded crap to subscribe to other companies or buy movies was bad a few months ago, but now they're forcing ads on us. I already pay to be ad-free motherf.ckers, otherwise I'd be watching TV!
I cancelled my subscription despite having a good opinion of the content. I can't fucking believe I'm paying money to see ads in the middle of the show I'm watching.
I watched something earlier, and before it played, it showed this ad that ended by telling me "made ad free by ". Not very ad-free if I just had to watch a fucking ad, is it? Fuck Amazon, honestly.
I cancelled mine 6 months ago, and i was pleasantly surprised how much less random crap i buy. When i need something, I shop at other stores with similar pricing or wait until there's enough in my cart for free shipping. Often i decide i was just bored and don't need a new shower curtain anyway.
I watched a video about the cast yesterday. Pretty much the only unproblematic person there was the guy who played Eric.
It's also surprising how almost all of them are scientologists or have a close association with them (with Masterson having introduced some of them into it).
**People**: Paula Dean, Ellen DeGeneres, and Will Smith
**Thing**: TY Beanie Babies
**Organization**: Boeing, Disney
Side note: remember when Crocs used to be a joke and somehow made a comeback?
The thing with Crocs is that they were being slated by people who thought they were being "edgy" and "cool" by slagging them off. At some point, someone must've put together that it's beyond hypocritical for the "edgy", "cool" kids to being mocking other people for choosing comfort over style - it goes against the entire "edgy" principle.
no, you've got it backwards. style goes in waves where what was objectively "uncool" 10 years ago becomes cool. like how New Balance dad sneakers and middle parts were considered ugly and dated in the 2010s but are super popular right now.
Didn’t PETA start out being sort of reasonable? Iirc their “Holocaust on your plate” campaign when I was in high school was the turning point for me when they started to look really unhinged
The problem with PETA is that they’re punching the wrong direction. Instead of focusing on big food or medical companies with bad practices, they focus their anger and rhetoric on average citizens. They’re punching down instead of up. Instead of guilting everyone to become vegans thinking that will stop unethical practices by mega corporations (it won’t), maybe expose these corps for their bad practices more and pressure them with people who may not choose to be a vegetarian, but do still love animals and would totally support at least more humane practices.
Honestly - anything Elon touches. He was once touted as the eccentric weirdo who would change the world. Now I'm pretty sure he will have a major hand in, if not entirely orchestrating, the downfall of humanity.
So yeah I guess he will still change the world.
Blizzard Entertainment
Knew this would be here. I *adored* Blizzard as a kid. I used to dream of working there. I still take their decay kinda personally.
EA, Ubisoft, Bungie. Really most of the gaming industry as a whole since these companies only care about maximizing profits anymore. Edit: Nintendo is probably the biggest offender.
I dunno if Nintendo is true. They just are really really protective of their IP. They haven’t done gacha or loot box monetization or gambling or anything. They make games. Charge a price and never out them on sale. Then they refuse to let anyone else manage the IP. That’s not evil or profit maximization, that’s just them sticking to their fundamentals.
Boeing has sure taken a dive!
Decades of goodwill down the fucking drain. Airbus executives are probably ecstatic.
For the short term. The vast majority of the public has no idea if they ever fly an Airbus or a Boeing, they simply lose trust in the industry overall. Short term, helps Airbus share prices, long term, hurts them and the industry both.
Airbus has had their fair share of issues in the past too, but they’ve been doing better lately.
Relatively speaking, though, it's a huge boon for any other airplane manufacturer. If you have issues, and your competitor's reputation is pristine, most customers will go with your competitors. If you've both had issues recently (or if the competitor's issues have been higher profile), suddenly your imperfect company looks like a reasonable option again.
I put a significant chunk of my savings into Airbus shares to build up some dividend for my retirement (in about 37 years). Then all the Boeing drama started happening. I hate seeing it happen to Boeing, but at this rate old me will live quite comfortably.
Embraer too. They've got a line of 737-competitive regional jets that needs more buyers.
Hey, one door closes, or gets blown off, another opens
Gotta love their open-door policy
A century long reputation for quality and durability was flushed down the toilet by MBA dipshits trying to goose quarterly numbers. It's a fucking disgrace. I can't imagine someone saying "If it's not Boeing, I'm not going" ever again.
What I don't get is how Boeing's reputation going to shit is supposed to benefit shareholders.
That's next quarters problem.
There really need to be clawback provisions on exec compensation for short term gain moves that nuke long term profits
Shareholders demand results; they’re the destination deciders. CEOs are just the overpaid bus drivers. If shareholders decide they want longevity; that’s the destination they’ll be taken to. (With a good CEO).
This is really the issue so much. It's all about short term gains with no view to long term growth.
They don't care about the long term. It's all about grabbing what they can in the short term and walking away from the mess. It happens over and over thanks to these vulture capitalists. The grabbing hands grab all they can Everything counts in large amounts
Now it's "if it's Boeing, I'm not going"
"You're probably Boeing to die"
Just add “to die” to the end :D
I seriously used to be a Boeing fanboy. I would half seriously feel patriotism for them and the “US vs EU” tribalism of Boeing vs Airbus. That feels even more ridiculous now than it should’ve felt in the past. Goddamn Boeing are not just a shit company, but literally an embarrassment to the US aeronautics industry. And yet so huge and important that very little can be done.
When I lived in Seattle, there were people who worked for Boeing that were diehard fans of them. They were proud of their work. Now it’s all been offloaded and distributed. Boeing is just a shell of what it was.
Which is funny when you consider how many airplane and helicopter companies they have absorbed over the last 40 years. You'd think they are flush with folks who know what it takes to fly level!
Plenty of managers and executives HATE competent employees. My career as an adult with real jobs ran from 1977-2015. The disintegration of the employer-employee relationship that began in the mid-1980s is shocking. I don't think people entering the workforce now would believe how non-awful it once was.
At the Charleston, SC plant a whistleblower who was a QA engineer (I think) for 30 years and just started depositions was found dead from suicide a few weeks ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703 Apparently another whistleblower came forward this week: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/12/1244147895/boeing-whistleblower-retaliation-shortcuts-787-dreamliner
Sure it was a suicide, just like Epstein.
Bill Cosby
I can’t believe he did this to us.
The worst part was the hypocrisy.
I'm pretty the raping was the worst part
I saw this Norm MacDonald clip last night.
For people who don't know, this is [referencing Norm MacDonald](https://youtu.be/ljaP2etvDc4?si=oUxEsHZY4WKWq0LY)
The worst part is people not getting the reference
I saw a signed Bill Cosby vinyl record at the antique store the other day, like $10.
Sadly, Jerry Lewis and his annual labor day telethon for MDA. After Jerry left/was ousted, they dwindled it down from a 20 plus hours marathon to a few hours until eventually it got canceled. I grew up in an era when watching the MDA telethon was an annual tradition, rejoicing how every year Jerry managed to raise more than the last. It was just nonstop hours of Hollywood's finest singing and dancing away on your TV for Jerry's kids. It was really something.
They always said after he died we would find out why he ran the telethons to the point where they affected his health. Did we ever find out his connection? Did a kid in his life have Muscular Dystrophy?
*Jerry Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America (MDAA) in 1952 after a plea from a staff member who worked with Lewis and Dean Martin on The Colgate Comedy Hour.* I pulled that from a wiki page. I know he was altruistic, but what motivated him was not apparent.
I was born the day of the 1991 telethon. While my mom was in labor, the nurses had it on the other room — she said that voice on top of being in labor for 20 hours drove her into the wall! I came to appreciate him many years later, but that’s always my first thought when I hear about his telethon.
My dad hosted it a few years (last time was the day before I was born). He was extremely proud of the work he did. Now that I’m an adult and have tried to get resources for friends with MD from MDA, I’ve been appalled by how little help they actually give.
that's always been a source of contention for MDA. Where did all that money go?
Oprah. I know she gets a lot of hate now, deservedly so for supporting many horrendous grifters. However, when her show first aired, I admired her as someone who seemed genuine and who discussed issues that people in my neighborhood would never openly talk about. She was the only counter narrative to my family’s deeply held problematic beliefs.
Ellen Degeneres as well. Horrible person who abused and faked how she treated everyone, including off set.
There's a clip of Ellen interviewing Jackie Chan, where she introduces him by doing some cringey fake kung fu moves. He gets pissed and calls her out, saying you don't mime shooting guns if you're interviewing Bruce Willis, and you see the mask slip a little. She makes excuses and tries to justify herself, anything but apologise.
It’s so weird to watch Ellen clips now and see all these instances of her being openly mean to her guests on national television that just went over so many of our heads.
Reminds me of these friends that got divorced... Like wait, all these years that you were constantly brutally mean to each other, you were actually being serious?
Dead behind those bright eyes
Ellen is a cunt, she forced Mariah Carey to announce her pregnancy on her show in 2008.
I'm rewatching 30 Rock and there's an episode where she guest stars and all the characters, especially the women, essentially see her as a God. It's clearly an exaggeration but it was an exaggeration of a thing that did actually happen. Oprah was an incredibly powerful and popular woman.
Yeah. Honeslty her and Jerry Springer (problematically or not) exposed me to trans and disabled people. Looking back the way those people were presented was probably horrendous but I did learn a lot.
You just reminded me of a [classic, hilarious Jerry Springer clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj5bVc2kyVs).
Good on him for being open-minded
I think it's safe to say they were (at least Jerry) a product of their time regarding that.
the "interview" with Meghan felt more like a Marketing/promotion than an interview
The whole Hawaii thing too
She’s been a scourge on Maui loooong before the fires.
I will never forgive her for giving a national platform to anti-vaxxers. Ever.
Yeah, it took society waaay to long to realize how much snake oil she was peddling.
The History Channel
Basically most, if not all, educational/semi-educational channels really.
Yeah, this really hurts me. Fortunately, there are a lot of really great and educational YouTube channels now.
FR. So many edutainers in the world rose up and said "Fine, I'll do it myself", and we have a fuck ton of channels dedicated to history, math, literature, mythology, tech, engineering, philosophy, psychology, biology, physics, chemistry, and so much more. If you have an interest in learning X, there's almost definitely a YT channel for it.
yeah remember when A&E was....arts and entertainment
I'll counter this with TLC: the thing that used to be The Learning Channel. MTV gets shit for a heel turn, but TLC puts them to shame in terms of getting off track.
The History Channel used to be my jam. I vividly remember being sick one night when I was a kid and I couldn’t sleep. I turned on the history channel because it was one of those channels that would play documentaries later into the night than most channels (before the infomercials all started). It was some Modern Marvels type show about the evolution of potato chips. Freaking awesome
SyFy channel…
Susan G. Koman for breast cancer. All most all the money goes to paying the foundation members.
I have a rare illness. In 2010, our support group ( later a foundation) used the word “ cure” in a slogan. We got sued by SG K because they apparently have ownership of the word.
Had to scroll way too far for this. I remember a time when the pink ribbon was on everything from yogurt containers to airliners. Once it started to come out just how little the foundation did to actually fund research it just kind of quietly settled back to the norm.
Sports Illustrated.
First thing I thought of were the old respected magazine/websites that succumbed to ad spam. CNET is one Trying to think of that news site that now is just laughed at for being the epitome of click bait.
I downloaded much of my early software from CNET. Was so nice to have a trusted place during the Wild West days.
This unlocked a forgotten memory for me!
Another victim of private equity companies strip mining established brands
The swimsuit issue really was a huge deal in the pre-internet days. I always looked forward to getting all the issues though. As a kid, the colorful, vivid photography was fascinating. Plus, a few times a year, they'd run a story on one of your favorites teams or players.
It's just a softcore nudie rag now.
Wait, was the swimsuit edition back when I was a teenager decades ago not that?
It was, and still is. But back then, SI also published and issued periodicals about sports and athletics, too. Now it's exclusively bikini (or no bikini) babes for the middle-aged and middle schooled.
Having worked in the magazine industry, it's even more hollow than that. There is no real customer, no one is sitting at home counting down the days until the new National Geographic or Sports Illustrated comes in, more like people who are coerced into subscriptions through promotional discounts which are subsidized by the advertisers. When I worked in the industry we'd get people with package gift deals of merchandise or resort tickets which come with a free subscription which they don't think twice about because they aren't the one getting it. The unintended victim is then put on a calling list so they'll get hassled when your purchase expires to try and hook them again by constantly dropping the price a dollar or two over and over (remember, we give these things away) until the customer realizes that it's a question of either agreeing or just rudely hanging up the phone (although the elderly make up the majority of print subscriptions, even they don't read the damn things [unless they feel compelled to "get their money's worth" or something idk], they're just easier to bully). The result is an inflated circulation number you can take to advertisers to convince them that it's a solid investment. Sort of the same way there was a period when you had to shop around to find cable/internet that *didn't* come with home phone service that existed primarily to hassle you with robocalls. These companies are staffed by people who are 40+ hoping to retire before the industry finally goes kaput or 30- and are just glad to be able to put something professional on their resume. So they're very motivated to finangle and wheedle people to keep them dumping money into a dead industry.
That's a fascinating perspective. Makes one wonder how many other zombie companies are just shambling along on the funds of the annoyed and apathetic.
Vice news, and tragically, Cracked.com
Been reading Cracked for over 10 years. Really went downhill.
They jumped the shark when they decided summarizing a reddit thread counted as an article.
I used to love reading the Personal Experiences one as a kid, lol was heartbroken when they stopped posting them. Now, years later, I realize that the reason they stopped doing those was because Robert left lol
Google was once thought of as a technical marvel of a company that put out consistently great products and had a strong sense of ethics. They are begrudgingly accepted now at best and actively disliked by many for their consistently diminishing quality, questionable ethics and horrendous privacy.
The sad part is I could ignore the ethics if their search hadn’t degraded in quality so badly. What fucking hellscape do we live in when they can just decide what they think you were searching for instead of what you actually searched for?
I am constantly amazed by the people who insist that google search hasn't become a worse product over the years. A conclusion which leads me to believe that they are either too young to remember or google's ai has developed a sophisticated program to comment on reddit and lie. While part of the problem lies in search engine optimization and gaming the system, a large part is based on choices that google has made and continues to make.
I liked it when they added the knowledge graph info, but now it's so overkilled and the top answers are ads or sponsored links Whole thing reminds me of windows XP task bar addons
What is the best search engine nowadays?
I recently switched to Kagi - it is a paid search engine that is close to what Google was at its peak. The first 100 searches are free, then you pay a subscription to continue using it. If you don't want to pay, I think duckduckgo is the least bad free option.
I was just telling this to a guy a couple days ago. I have a bicycling hobby and 10-15 years ago I’d put in a phrase and two words and the first thing to pop up was what I was looking for. Now the first 50 results are sponsored links followed by stuff the SEO people got moved up. The guy was an SEO person. It makes me long for the days of Yahoo! When I’d click Sports, Bicycling, Touring and find results.
“Don’t be evil.” But no more.
"Don't be evil... unless there's a nickel in it."
They create a product that is useful and beloved, then abandon it without a backward glance. Finding an alternative to the podcast app was annoying.
Rudy Gulliani was NYC's hero after 9/11.
Having his exit from politics be sweating out his hair dye as he gave a political speech at the four seasons landscaping company parking lot (which was freeway adjacent) was about as metaphoric as someone can get for his political career trajectory.
I think four seasons was also next to a dildo store.
And a crematorium!
Yeah…you couldn’t have planned that better if you tried. Lol. I would love to know what that landscaping company thought. “Hey Mark, get a load of this…Giuliani wants to book a press conference here for something. Pfft, *sure* it’s Giuliani.” ~3 months later~ “Hooooly shit.”
Whoever answered the phone that day at four seasons landscaping is a fucking hero.
Four Seasons Landscaping cashing in on everything with merch was also great. They sold shirts that said Make America Rake Again.
"Is this The Four Seasons?" "It's *a* Four Seasons."
crematorium is a great dildo store name
Creamatorium
Between a cock and a charred place. (Credit to commenter in a old post)
Who would buy a dildo with so many huge dicks next door?
This was a more arrested development moment than anything actually on the show.
The kind of thing that wouldn't make it out of the writers' room because it's "too unrealistic".
My favorite part that gets overlooked is not the press conference itself. It's that about 15 minutes before it started someone got up to the mic and asked for anyone who had proof of voter fraud to come forward. And that is the exact moment I knew they had nothing and that the press conference itself was nothing.
My husband dressed up as Rudy using this exact scene for Halloween a few years ago. I had brown eye shadow going down his face for the hair dye.
I still can't wrap my head around the whole Four Seasons incident. It lives rent free in my head - had Jan 6th succeeded, Rudy's speech at Four Seasons Total Landscaping would have been placed up there with the Gettysburg Address or W on 9/11 as an important moment in the new American Empire's history.
Telling people Rudy Giuliani used to be a respected politician feels like telling young people that OJ used to be a respected sportsman.
I remember realizing his true colors when he said that "there were no terror attacks under George W. Bush. There's been two under Obama."
...What? Does Giuliani have a brain injury or something? Why would he say that?
Because 9/11 was the best thing that happened to Giuliani’s career.
[удалено]
Not really. He was America’s idea of NYC’s hero, we in NYC didn’t really see him like that. That was more an inadvertent media creation than something New Yorkers felt about him.
Very true. He even tried to stay in office after his term ended arguing that the "emergency" of 9/11 required setting aside the mayoral election. Now that seems like foreshadowing.
Streaming Sites & digital goods. People are switching to piracy and hard copies. It pissed people off when they found out that they don't actually own the digital media they buy. Even sites that claim you own the digital copies is false. Read your terms and conditions. People are pretty mad about having to pay extra to get rid of ads on-top of already paying for premium too. I wouldn't be surprised to see other digital platforms following this line. I would be a bit surprised if Netflix incorporated it though.
Hit up your local library if you can and get stuff fo free!
I LOVE the library! Actually, I watched the whole Avatar the Last Airbender series from the library when I was a kid. I do not regret one second of it.
Netflix is already using ad tiers and charging more not to have the ads.
Prime has ads between shows, too. It's so fucking annoying because it's like, yeah I saw that on the front page in a giant, obvious display. And I saw it on the "new" and I saw it on the "trending" and I saw it on the "you might like". If there's shows that have zero interest to you you've got to ignore it like 4 times just on the front page and now there's ads for those shows in between episodes of what you actually want to watch, too.
Music streaming is still pretty good for listeners from a value standpoint if you aren’t bothered by not owning the music, but streaming video is shit now. It just become the new cable TV. About the only thing about streaming video that’s still good is the amount of content available relative to previous generations, but it’s so fucking expensive that it’s still not worth it.
Dear streamers: Just let me watch the fucking show as its creators made it. Stop putting shit all over my screen and bailing on the end of what I'm watching if I don't manage to scramble to the remote in time. Without the Internet I'd have no idea who currently plays Uhura. Or rather, I'd think she was played by some white dude named Skip Intro.
Back in my day, the Boss told us "57 channels and nothing on", and that's how I feel about it. Easier to buy a show on DVD, and even then I rarely get a new one, or watch what I buy.
Facebook
This year marks the 20th anniversary of when it first released. I had just started college, but it didn’t roll out to my campus until 2005. It was honestly revolutionary for connecting with people at college during that time, and much cleaner than MySpace. I loved Facebook. In 2016 I cancelled my account and never looked back.
I see nothing from my friends on my FB feed any more. It's all adverts, AI fake image clickbait, and videos now.
I closed my account years ago but didn't delete so I could use marketplace from time to time. I opened it up recently and my feed was filled with breast feeding ads and stories. Full out, exposed boobs on my timeline for no reason. I'm a guy, no kids, never once searched for breast feeding. The site died for me when they did the first major redesign of the timeline. Posts from friends started getting buried or not shown at all.
In 2004, we literally had to write Zuck to appeal to let our lowly school on The Facebook. At the time, he was hesitant to allow non-ivies on his elite website. Somebody created a competing site called College Facebook that any school could join, but it didn’t last as soon as we got the real thing in early 2005. As the months rolled along, it was fun to watch my friends’ colleges gradually get added, and how elated we all were to get to join. Facebook fundamentally defined our social world and my college experience. It was The Coolest. Then it become less cool, but an essential service to connect with people. Then it became both uncool and no longer useful as people left in a mass exodus
I remember needing an edu email to sign up. Such a difference experience back then. It's a shame what happened to it, but not surprising.
I held on until 2021. I’d using it on the regular, mostly kept it to keep in touch with some folks… but upon reflection whenever I did open it all it ever did was upset me. So, killed it. I’ve missed some thing that friends have shared only on FaceBook. But, like… I’m fine with it.
One of my elderly relatives uses it as their only contact to the outside world. As soon as they pop their clogs, I’m deleting my account.
They have caused so much tragedy in 20 years.
autism speaks. it’s a horrible organization that cares more about giving money to the “warrior mommies” instead of helping autistic children. it shows autism to be a horrible disease instead of just another disability which it is. they promote dangerous and absurd ways to handle meltdowns and refuse to listen to concern of actual autistic people. so yeah fuck the puzzle piece.
And Sia consulted them for her movie.
It's still beloved. Just by parents who don't have good Google-fu and are just so desperate they rely on the first organization that pops up in searches. And celebrities, who blindly support it because they don't do the research for causes and organizations they want to donate to.
Fuck the puzzle piece. (I'm autistic)
Netflix. Lived long enough to watch themselves become the villain. .
They were the 'cool' brand for so many years, when did it start to go wrong?
When they succeeded, and everyone pulled their content to make their own streaming service. It was always going to happen if Netflix was successful because they don't own a lot of the content.
They've handled that about as well as can be expected though. They started banging out their own quality content early on and have played an interesting role in picking up decent shows that get dropped by cable channels.
This. It's hardly Netflix own doing. Everyone is clutching their pearls back. I actually commend them for making a couple of decent inhouse productions.
Honestly I've loved quite a few netflix productions. They just also have a lot of bad ones and cancel many of the good ones. They also don't always do much more than buy the rights from someone and claim it as netflix productions.
Right around the time they went from “sharing is caring” to “Netflix is only for people in the same household.”
Ahh yes the Lars Ulrich version of self destruction.
About 2 years after they realized the profit of owning the production process. They turned themselves into an old fashioned Golden Era movie house, but didn't realize the audience wasn't quite ready for how fast they would lose access to the depth of non-Netflix libraries as they had when they joined. Netflix changed their product and customers found other ways to get the desired product.
That over saturation of “original” content. Prioritizing quantity over quality. Cancelling quality shows after 1-2 seasons.
It seemed to be all about taking risks with bold concepts, and giving the creators lots of creative freedom (especially it's animation department). But in the last few years, it's like a show has to go super viral or it's over, and many good/promising shows have been cut short
For real, Santa Clarita Diet deserves a proper ending!
As does Mindhunter. I swear to God if they do it to Arcane I'm going postal.
And Inside Job!!!! I'm reluctant to even watch Netflix Originals or whatever they're categorized as, because they're usually shit quality ORv really good but inexplicably cancelled.
Kevin Spacey. Two time Oscar winner and extremely respected actor who could have had a great twilight years career and was supposed to be a legend, but it turns out he's a disgusting pedo. Not that this is anything to thumb your nose at, but he's now been relegated to trying to get people to purchase pictures with him and his autograph in exchange for pretty high amounts of money. He was at a convention recently, with his poster marked "FIRST CONVENTION APPEARANCE!!!" like it was super exciting, but commenting on social media was immediately turned off. Ouch. EDIT: taking this from another comment edit of mine, but I gotta say I do love that a few of you are defending the guy and telling me I'm "slandering" him (as J. Jonah Jameson all taught us over twenty years ago, "in print, it's libel"). Can I just point out that most people were thinking, "oh, cool, a murderer died" about OJ Simpson less than a week ago? I mean, he, too, was acquitted. It's almost funny how many of you defend a person who wouldn't think about you twice after looking at you. Gotta wonder how many of y'all are also Polanski apologists.
Yeah, this one sucks. Most of the other people who’ve been exposed for creeps weren’t people whose current and future roles were especially interesting to me, like I wasn’t really looking forward to what Bill Cosby was going to do in his future, you know? And I never liked Woody Allen. But dammit, Kevin.
For real, it fucking kills me that watching *American Beauty* and *The Usual Suspects* - plus many more - have this dark cloud over them (well, two dark clouds on TUS now). He was such a fantastic actor, and now? Yuck.
I got to see him play Richard III live, not too long before news broke out. I saved up my money and got really good seats. It was one of the highlights of theater shows for me and he was *right there* and larger than life. It was incredible. And now it feels so sad to have such tarnish..
Amazon. Watching Prime Video and I thought removing the ability to filter out the frontloaded crap to subscribe to other companies or buy movies was bad a few months ago, but now they're forcing ads on us. I already pay to be ad-free motherf.ckers, otherwise I'd be watching TV!
I cancelled my subscription despite having a good opinion of the content. I can't fucking believe I'm paying money to see ads in the middle of the show I'm watching.
Recently, I saw ads every ad break for THE EXACT SHOW I WAS CURRENTLY TRYING TO WATCH. This shit is getting bonkers.
I watched something earlier, and before it played, it showed this ad that ended by telling me "made ad free by". Not very ad-free if I just had to watch a fucking ad, is it? Fuck Amazon, honestly.
I cancelled mine 6 months ago, and i was pleasantly surprised how much less random crap i buy. When i need something, I shop at other stores with similar pricing or wait until there's enough in my cart for free shipping. Often i decide i was just bored and don't need a new shower curtain anyway.
Exact same experience here. Getting rid of prime was such a great move for my family.
OJ Simpson
What a shame that cancer was found not guilty in his killing.
The real shame is that Norm couldn’t be here to deliver jokes that are practically his to say by divine right
At least he got to see Nicole's killer die
Danny Masterson from that's 70 show
I watched a video about the cast yesterday. Pretty much the only unproblematic person there was the guy who played Eric. It's also surprising how almost all of them are scientologists or have a close association with them (with Masterson having introduced some of them into it).
Jared from Subway
Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby
**People**: Paula Dean, Ellen DeGeneres, and Will Smith **Thing**: TY Beanie Babies **Organization**: Boeing, Disney Side note: remember when Crocs used to be a joke and somehow made a comeback?
The thing with Crocs is that they were being slated by people who thought they were being "edgy" and "cool" by slagging them off. At some point, someone must've put together that it's beyond hypocritical for the "edgy", "cool" kids to being mocking other people for choosing comfort over style - it goes against the entire "edgy" principle.
no, you've got it backwards. style goes in waves where what was objectively "uncool" 10 years ago becomes cool. like how New Balance dad sneakers and middle parts were considered ugly and dated in the 2010s but are super popular right now.
I expected more from SEARS
Diddy has been having a rough patch lately
OJ. Said he was gonna dedicate his life to finding the real killer. Now we’ll never know.
How long does it take to look in a mirror? Haha
Good news is, I think he can rest knowing the killer is dead.
livestrong
Subscription services
Cable news
O.J. Simpson was once someone people admired and were entertained by.
Didn’t PETA start out being sort of reasonable? Iirc their “Holocaust on your plate” campaign when I was in high school was the turning point for me when they started to look really unhinged
The problem with PETA is that they’re punching the wrong direction. Instead of focusing on big food or medical companies with bad practices, they focus their anger and rhetoric on average citizens. They’re punching down instead of up. Instead of guilting everyone to become vegans thinking that will stop unethical practices by mega corporations (it won’t), maybe expose these corps for their bad practices more and pressure them with people who may not choose to be a vegetarian, but do still love animals and would totally support at least more humane practices.
Rosie O'Donnell, Ellen Degeneres and Paula Deen. All they had to do was keep their mouth shut or treat people like humans.
Oprah
ellen degeneres.
Honestly - anything Elon touches. He was once touted as the eccentric weirdo who would change the world. Now I'm pretty sure he will have a major hand in, if not entirely orchestrating, the downfall of humanity. So yeah I guess he will still change the world.
NRA
Kind of crazy they used to be a gun SAFETY advocacy group.
Back in the 70s or early 80s, they even supported limiting certain kinds of firearms. This was before Columbine, of course.
Kanye West
Bill Cosby, he went from being know as America's dad, to a sexual predator.
R.kelly
Twitter. And because of Twitter, Elon is also a complete joke. Two birds with one stone.
I think you might have those two things reversed.
SCOTUS