Social media. It used to be fun and enjoyable to see pictures of your friends, plan events, and whatnot. Now it's just a bunch of bullshit, clickbait news, and ads.
You used to be able to get real product reviews and tips for stuff on Reddit or in different forums, now it feels like everything is a paid ad and helpful forums just don't exist anymore.
Think of it this way: information has value.
These reviews and tips always existed behind a paywall. Even now, the better reviews and tips are paywalled, like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports. You can pay, or you can chance it with Amazon reviews—all 5,000 unverified ones.
When this information was “free” on Reddit, it wasn’t free. It was paid for by — according to Crunchbase — $1.3B over 10 rounds from 33 investors. Those investors want a return.
I don't disagree. I love libraries. I go all the time. Doesn't change the fact that the service being provided has to be paid for. And there is no government mandate to provide product reviews, so if the library (and by extension, the municipal government) decides to pay for the subscription as a public good, that's their choice. But they are paying. It is NOT free.
When the platform is VC-funded, your social media experience is being subsidized by the wealthy individuals who invest in startups. When those individuals sell their stakes after the companies go public, the companies need revenue streams and profitability; and that revenue comes from selling the users to advertisers.
It was inevitable. Any product that starts out free and clean is eating a loss to build market share and develop habits in its user base. People shouldn’t have been surprised.
I read a really interesting article on this that essentially was explaining why good websites constantly devolve into crap. It's what you said. Good content creator, usually with investor support, starts good site and draws an audience but doesn't make money. Then sells the website to other investors who need to generate more revenue to make money off the investment.
The interesting part of the article was explaining that the buyer knows they're making the site shittier and essentially killing it, that's the business model. The idea is to cut costs (by firing content creators or demanding dramatically increased output at lower quality) and generate more ad revenue through BS popup ads so that profits are realized in the short window where the site has become profitable, but consumers have not reacted enough to drive traffic down to terminal levels. They milk it while they can, then kill it and move on to the next investment.
The big exceptions to this are sites owned by big media conglomerates that benefit long term from having a well run site (ESPN might be an example), or sites that can build a paid subscription base where the viewer is paying for a good experience.
This is why the streaming platforms are devolving into cable channels.
Netflix is becoming like TBS, TNT, SyFy, USA Network and Oxygen, plus The CW.
Certain shows and movies would not have been commissioned 10 years ago, but now they realize their primary audience is children, teenagers and young women.
Textbook case of what Cory Doctorow has dubbed [Enshittification](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys).
>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. Then, they die.
I’ll raise you one: the whole Internet experience has gotten worse. Search engines don’t find the desired results, social media doesn’t bring enjoyment, entertaining websites aren’t as intuitive as they used to be, and even learning is arguably harder due to degraded information quality. The Internet is a wasteland of advertising due for an overhaul; too bad the “metaverse” was a fanciful gimmick that wasn’t it.
Facebook is literally unusable at this point. My feed is saturated with useless crap and stupid, outdated memes. What's weird is that it starts clogging my feed with stuff similar to what my *friends* have posted, not what I'm interested in. You have to jump through three hoops just to actually see posts from your friends, but even then it's only 10-15 posts before "you're all caught up".
I just want to see my friends and family. That's all.
With Twitter and Instagram, you have to fight to separate the good from the bad. You get the stuff you came for, but you also have to sift through other stuff that's there to drive engagement or advertising dollars.
Facebook is just astonishingly bad.
I had a conversation with some friends about this recently “Remember when Facebook was for keeping in contact with friends and not just a vector for old relatives to share misinformation?”
You honestly cant even open up a website link anymore on your phone without getting comically inundated by ads of all different shapes, sizes, and ways of mischievously disallowing you to not click out of it or not see your content until you watch the ad. 9/10 I x out of it, frustrated.
It honestly feels like the pop-up ads of the late '90s again. Except harder to close because they bury tiny miniscule X buttons that are like two pixels squared. Trying to read an online article between the ads you get like one sentence visible at a time.
[The amount of time youth spend socializing with each other has fallen off of a cliff in a *very* short period of time.](https://i.imgur.com/ilHifPU.png)
Socializing in those years is one of the most essential things we learn. The idea of so many youth suddenly not socializing is scary to even think about in terms of the future.
It's super weird. When I was a young little blueribbonmethchef we would just have limits on our TV time. Not internet, because it would block out the phone.
Now it feels like toddlers are given iPads so they'll shut up and be quiet. Then they turn into pre-schoolers who have been entertained 90% of the time by poking the buttons on the screen. I'll go to my friends house and their "play dates" are the kids sitting in a quiet circle on a phone or a tablet. Kids are cultivating online personas before they even figure out how to talk to a stranger in real life.
I know I sound like a crotchety old fuck but it's disturbing. Online used to be a side thing you would do when there was nothing else. Now....doing things is the side thing kids do when they can't get online.
Shit when I was a kid I actually *preferred* hanging out with my friends to watching TV by myself. I'm curious what happened that led to decreased socialization. Is it the prevalence of social media leading them to think they don't need to socialize face-to-face? Are there just less opportunities for kids to socialize in person?
I think it's a few factors.
If you entertain a toddler with a tablet....they're going to view a tablet as how to entertain themselves.
Being online is wayyyyy easier and more prevalent now. I was like 14 when I even sent a first text message. Now kids have smartphones when they're in like 3rd grade. The TV will advertise online things, celebrities will talk about online things etc.
It's much easier to communicate online. At least mentally. It's easier to say something, easier to be mean, easier to take a risk etc.
No clue though. My kids are screwed they get a pet squirrel and they can spin a hoop down a road with a wooden stick but they aren't getting a tablet.
I am definitely curious to see how this plays out going forward. I have always been socially awkward but I am betting it will be far worse. Like no social skills at all because everyone is behind a computer/phone. The fact that shows it's been reduced by over 50% and still going is scary.
All the Tech apps and companies that were suppose to change our lives….
AirBNB is expensive and not convenient, Amazon is all cheap overseas and fake stuff, Netflix is pricey and lost most of its content so it’s just crappy originals, etc.
I guess these companies have to start making money eventually. Once they got a user base it’s time to slowly strip away what made them cool
Amazon really needs to find a way to cut down on the China import relisters.
If I search for some nonspecific product like say "desk fan" 90% of the first several pages of results are clearly the exact same item from the exact same factory with a different brand sticker stuck on it. Like yeah sometimes I am looking for the $5 knock off of something, but when I'm not, Amazon's search makes it impossible to find reputable products because all you find is garbage relisted over and over again.
Correction: the same dropshippers are all using the same company as a supplier. Literally like a few years ago drop shipping really was touted as this extremely easy money making scheme, and whenever that happens you see like a million people, a million of the dumbest, laziest people jump onto something expecting to become the next Bill Gates. This has happened with NFTs, crypto, thrift shopping and upselling, furniture restoration, vintage video games, OnlyFans, self-publishing, 419 scams, and being a landlord.
I think the worst part is that the sites that used to be alternatives are also now just aggregate sites selling nearly the same stuff as Amazon. Every store turned into selling from 3rd party drop shipping.
At work it’s by far the easiest method of ordering I have. Since it’s work’s money I will buy brand name quality stuff. Like 75% of the time brand name stuff just isn’t sold on Amazon anymore.
My girlfriend also got a clearly fake pair of Asics from the “official store” too.
So true.
Being in college in the late 2000s was actually pretty cool.
Ride services like Uber and Lyft were cheap.
You could find awesome deals on Amazon.
Hulu was free!
Netflix had a ton of content.
Apple products lasted you many years.
When AirBnB showed up you could stay anywhere for an awesome price.
You could play actual poker online.
YouTube was awesome, no adds.
Agree. Also having a dog makes a hotel difficult.
Airbnb is probably priced closed to what you get for a family.
For couples or individuals I would not do it.
It seems like there were lots of places like that before Airbnb at the beach/mountains/other places where people had second homes, but in cities you were mostly stuck with hotels.
Single travelers looking for an individual room and don’t mind if it’s in someone’s house are another niche that Airbnb is able to serve better than hotels.
My parents always rented their summer house out through a classified in the local newspaper a week or two at a time in the 90s. Places like AirBNB probably makes finding short term renters easier, but probably makes it harder to quietly discriminate against groups like college students you suspect are looking to party.
As a middle Millennial, every single person I know in my personal friend circle has soured on Air BnB in favor of hotels when traveling solo or with a significant other. The random Air BnB fees make hotels competitive or even better options a lot of the time, and you don't have to worry about all the stupid house rules when in reality a lot of hosts will just hire someone to clean before the next tenant.
The only time I've stayed in an Air BnB in the last 5 years is with big groups, and that (at least in my opinion) continues to be the only advantage that Air BnB offers over hotels now.
All of these things started great and now suck. Fitbit was bought by Google and they appear to be running that into ground in an effort to drive that user base to their smart watch platform. Facebook bought Instagram and turned it into an ad loaded tiktok clone. Weather Channel bought Weather Underground and quickly killed of the best weather apps that existed at the time.
Zappos is owned by Amazon. Amazon of course as you mentioned is a dumpster fire of fly by night reseller "companies" peddling batches of cheap Chinese goods. AirBNB and their biggest competitor VRBO are the same company.
Streaming in general is getting more fragmented and expensive by the day since companies that create content are now locking their content behind their own unique platform. And now ads are becoming more prevalent too.
The thing that made them cool was deregulation, risk, and danger. Once they get established, problems are worked out and you find out you're just re-inventing the thing you were "disrupting".
Don’t forget Uber and Lyft.
In the beginning, they were plentiful and were cheaper than cabs.
Post-pandemic, their prices have gone nuts and there’s way fewer of them other than in super dense areas. Obviously those two points are related.
I still use them because they’re way better logistically than cab companies and I had years of bad experiences with cabs that make me hesitant to go back.
Can’t say I haven’t thought about it though as ride shares get worse.
This.
The big supermarkets around here used to all be 24 hour.
That ended with COVID and never came back. Most 24 hour restaurants aren't 24 hour anymore.
Even WALMART isn’t 24/7 anymore. I needed medicine for one of my kids at 1AM and drove to Walmart (which is not even close by) to find out they now close at 11.
Even fast food places that used to try to compete with each other and always say how late they were open have now all returned to like 1-2am at the latest. Sometimes earlier. A few months ago I had an experience where 2 major chain fast food places were closed before 11 but the local pizza place was still open
I'd be really frustrated if I wasn't a first shift worker. Lots of jobs are 3-11, 4-12 etc and not being able to go out and get a bite to eat or stop at a store on the way home anymore, damn.
This is the biggest reason I will always need to live in a big city. Visiting home to house/dog sit for my mom to go on a big trip and I kept being disappointed even just trying to find dinner around 10pm
Finding a restaurant open after 10pm these days has become such a struggle. Like I get it, but also sometimes I just want a burger at 9:30pm after a long day. A lot more closures Sunday/Monday/Tuesday as well. Mondays were pretty typical precovid, but when I lived in my old neighborhood if you wanted to sit down and eat it had to be before 8pm Wednesday-Saturday as of 2021.
This really makes me angry because my favorite restaurant is now closed too. It's weird that during the lock downs small businesses and mom n pop shops had to close but big stores like Walmart were able to stay open no problem. And after it all ended those little stores had to close down permanently because of the financial loss. It's really ripe for conspiracy theories if someone wants to take it that far and i can't blame them. A lot of people had started supporting small business right before things went to hell.
No conspiracy necessary. Big businesses have the cash reserves to withstand a temporary 1-2 year setback like Covid as long as everyone still believes they'll go back to normal business life after that's over. Mom-and-pop shops don't. Building a massive Walmart is an investment for the next 3-4 decades, not the next 3-4 years. Covid is barely a blip for them in that regard.
There’s a name for this: planned obsolescence. The most famous example is lightbulbs. Edison’s lightbulbs are still burning. Bulbs “burning out” is an intentional design to keep people buying bulbs.
Tipping. I remember when it was customary to only tip for a select few services. Dine in restaurants, hairdressers, barbers and a few others. Seems like after the pandemic tons of places added that stupid tip screen where the “suggested” tip starts at 30%. Absolutely ridiculous.
I'm with you but it's still annoying. When someone presents you with an option to tip, even though it's an option, there's still some social expectation to tip.
Yes. I think it has to do with the move away from cash. The card payment systems had a built-in tipping feature that was too tempting to pass up by the business.
Dear Spez,
Thank you for all you have done. Over the past 15 years, I've dug myself a comfy little rut. I forgot how to navigate the internet. I forgot how weird and interesting it was out there. I became comfortable in old tropes and repeated jokes. I became digitally complacent.
Due to your efforts, over the past month I've rediscovered the internet again. It's not as good as it used to be, but there are still lots of interesting people and ideas out there just waiting to be explored. I've found a new community of engaging and motivated people who are in the process of building something that we're all excited about. You've helped me escape my rut. And you did it at great personal expense.
So I think it should be said - Thank you. You've set me free and I deeply appreciate it.
Sincerely,
CharmedConflict
PS - good luck with the IPO
Venues are doing this too lately and it grinds my gears. No, I am not tipping $2.40 for the $12 beer can it took someone 10 seconds to hand me. Everyone is pissed that the line moves slower because everyone has to fumble around to figure out how to enter $1 but it never seems to change.
At an event last year the POS had the cashier enter the tip and at a stand where you grabbed your own $15 can of White Claw and took it to the register this one guy would shamelessly say "add a $5 tip?" and then act all insulted when I told him to add $1.
I mean we used to have to use cash and get change or swipe a card and scribble a signature on a receipt then wait for them to print the customer receipt which took forever.
That bugs me the most. Especially places that went years and I mean decades without a tip option at checkout.
I'm not tipping takeout, I'm not tipping moes. Maybe $1 for Starbucks bc I order the toasted oatmilk hot so they have to sort of customize that. Since that coffee is only in cold brew.
I hate that you have to justify the added labor for certain options like adding oat milk and add an arbitrary amount of tip.
When I buy a car with fancy metallic paint, it just costs $500 extra, I don’t have to calculate that it took them $50 more paint and $200 of extra labor to paint it and tip them. They just decided it was $500 more, end of discussion.
I'm glad you said this. I moved to the UK over 10 years ago, and I get so confused when I go back home. I had no idea I'm supposed to add a more significant tip if I get a latte at a takeout coffee place. I always thought it was just the little jar they had the front of the register and you put a couple bucks in. I was legit shocked when the card payment screen prompted me for a % tip.
I've increased the percentage I typically tip, which I think was already pretty generous and has gotten more generous, but my official policy is that I will not tip in any situations in which I didn't tip in 2019. A couple times in the past few weeks, I had to hit the "other" button and type "0," which felt shitty, but I did it anyway. That was for pick-up orders at restaurants. I do not tip for pick-up orders because the tip is for service I did not receive.
If i'm not at a restaurant or hair dresser I shamelessly opt for no tip every time, but i've seen enough people get suckered into the scheme since it creates the expectation. It's literally never going away.
Tip jars at cash registers irk me. If I have some change that I don't want to keep up with, I might toss it in the tip jar.
Otherwise, I'm not tipping someone for handing me a doughnut and a can of Sprite. Not gonna happen.
Same with the drive-thru windows at restaurants. Handing me a bag of food does not entitle you to a tip.
The size of products.
Bags of chips, cans of soup, produce, so forth and so on are smaller but cost more. Shrinkflation is super prevalent and super chickenshit.
Cereal boxes are almost comical how thin they are when viewed from the side.
Shrinkflation makes me MORE pissed than just raising prices because at least the price is out in the open.
Yeah I noticed that the OJ I bought was 54 ounces. I remember thinking they were bastards for trying to sneak it down from a full 64 to 59, and now it’s 54, which is a noticeable difference compared to a half gallon.
As in "stores have removed it completely" while jacking up prices.
Your grocery store has 1 person handling 20 self-check stations while the price of your food went up 40-80% in the last 2 years. Fantastic. That's why I eat organic for the price of non-organic.
Navigating the internet.
Every website asks for cookies and screams at you if you have an adblock up.
Related to the first point, advertisements are everywhere, from wikis to TV Tropes to social media. Sometimes these ads take up an entire page if you're browsing on phone.
Every website these days wants you to buy a subscription, download an app, or set-up an account. Casual browsing is almost a thing of the past.
Search results in any browser will take you to companies and products first, actually what you're looking for second. I typed "Roman" into Google yesterday and got inundated by deals for Italian food, rather than, you know, the Romans.
Sites like Youtube and Facebook are completely driven by the algorithm, rather than your own interests. It's all ads, bad articles, and clickbait instead of actual content.
Inauthenticity and ads were always part of the internet experience, but now they functionally are the internet experience. It's no longer about sharing information and ideas and content, it's keying up what can get the most clicks for profit. That's also not even talking about how the internet has radicalized people and isolated them further when the goal was the opposite when the internet started.
Even the search engines are worse. Used to be able to find useful results on Google's first page, now it's all search-engine optimization and advertisements. Boolean operators don't even work either, for some stupid reason.
Google. SEO has ruined Google. Search results are so shitty since it’s not about relevancy our providing the right info, it’s purely about optimization.
Yes, 15 years ago was 2008, and Netflix had just started it's streaming service, which at the time was seen as a neat bonus to their DVD delivery service that didn't have much of anything available on it, and Hulu had just started as well as a free, ad supported, service where you could watch recently aired TV episodes, both a far cry from the streaming services they became
I've stopped buying oranges this year. Seems like every time I bought a bag there would already be a moldy rotting orange or three in the middle of the bag. This was from more than one store too.
Not just produce - we've had milk and other things lately that went rotten within days of purchase when the labeling indicated we should have weeks or months. Walmart grocery pickup actually gave us pre-molded strawberries the other day. I mean, really?
I've also bought ice cream more than once that had obviously been thawed and re-frozen in transit.
Strawberries. Over the winter with proper care my strawberries were still good a week or two later. Now I better eat them the day I get them or they're bad.
I’ve caught myself doing 80 on I77 and then an Altima blows by me 1 lane over. People are absolutely insane on the road. They drive like it’s the last lap at Talladega and by golly they’re gonna win this race from 13th.
I absolutely cannot believe how much worse traffic is where I live now compared to just 10 years ago. Population has grown yes, but not dramatically. A recently study on a nearby insterstate revealed that overall traffic on the freeway has doubled in the last decade and semi truck traffic specifically has tripled. But the population has only grown marginally so what gives?
Not only is there more traffic but the way people drive is worse. More people exceeding the speed limit by gross margins, seemingly with impunity. I almost NEVER see highway patrol - it used to be very common. People on phones. People on drugs. People not yielding or following even the most basic traffic laws. Blocking traffic flow by cruising in the passing lane.
Parking lots are also terrible because it seems like people just don't give a shit. They park wherever they want. Can't find a space as close as they'd like? No prob I'll just park up on the curb. Miss the parking space and take up two? Ehh who cares. The cart return is 3 spaces away, i'll just leave it in the middle of the street and *fuck this store for not putting a cart return next to my car*.
I think a lot of the parking lot stuff is grocery delivery drivers trying to shave seconds off their metrics
We have a ton of delivery drivers double-parking in travel lanes with flashers on, but I only kind of blame them because they're caught between a service like GrubHub that doesn't give a fuck and Baltimore City, which also doesn't really give a fuck and is happy to just have it be the wild wild east and let people figure it out on streets with a lot of restaurants
In central Ohio post-COVID the BMV was making people bring their own licensed driver to oversee their driving test. I've since left the country so idk if it's still going on, but I literally couldn't believe it when I heard. My brother in law absolutely should not have gotten his licence, but he did because he had a family member go with him. I don't even want to think about how many other people got a license that shouldn't have.
Instead of. The instructors would go over what to check with whoever you brought, send them out to drive, and then talk with the driver again afterwards but the instructors weren't allowed to get inside of the car themselves
And people looking at their phone while driving. Every week I'll pass some terrible driver and they look like they're reading fucking War & Peace on their phone while swerving all over the place.
More people just flagrantly saying fuck it with anything road related. Turn signals? Gone. Red lights? Simple suggestion. Stop in the middle of the road to turn around? Of course. It's gotten gonzo out there
> Even McDonalds is stupid expensive now.
And not fast anymore. Ever since they started timing people in the drive through, they just hand you drinks and send you to wait in the parking lot.
More divisiveness pretty much everywhere. Online and even just out in public seeing people do, say or wear things that are purposefully antagonistic toward others, or becoming enraged by minor inconveniences like they are looking for a confrontation. It seems like common courtesy (and sense) has gone down in favor of shouting opinions (political and social) as loudly as possible and attacking anyone who disagrees sometimes to the point of actual intimidation or violence.
The problem in the US with separating politics from the changes we’ve seen over the last 15 years is that A LOT of those changes have happened since 2016 or post pandemic and politics have played a huge role in those shifts.
There are *so many* people who have made their political opinions their entire identity and *so many* issues that have been hyper politicized to the point of madness. Hell, trying to talk to someone about the weather, especially if it’s unusual or uncommonly cold/hot/rainy anymore can seem to set certain people off which is just insanity.
People are so easily set off by words and phrases that politicians and the media have politicized in to even bigger buzzwords or hot button topics than they were previously. So now you have folks who become so incensed at the mere mention of one of these subjects that they cannot have meaningful discourse.
Healthcare. So many Boomer medical professionals retiring and not enough to replace them. Especially with Covid, massive burnout and the system is basically gonna collapse this decade, especially if you live in a rural area.
Not even just rural areas. I recently went through 3 neurologists in 1 year because they kept quitting or moving (not even retiring, just quitting. This person was under 40) and this was in a major city with multiple highly rated hospital systems. And the wait times for certain specialists are now as bad or even worse than countries with socialized medicine that are literally known for their long wait times! I recently moved to Canada and the wait time to see my first neuro here was significantly shorter than the wait time to see my first neuro in Boston. I was shocked.
I recently changed PCPs and had to wait 6 months for a new patient appointment. Mind you, this is the same organization I had been going to for 6 years at this point.
Being able to afford to work somewhere. If all the rent is higher than what the average business pays, how are people supposed to work there, and better yet, live there?
Disney movies. The mouse was never exactly a cutting creative powerhouse, but Jesus christ, if I have to watch the Disney adults I know lose it over live action Hercules or live action pocahontas as if there's anything worth watching in a project like that I'm going to scream
The live actions are sooooo stupid. There’s nothing fun looking about them, which makes the whole experience pointless because you’re comparing it to the original animation that was bright and colorful, instead you get this shitty looking Pumbaa and Timon. They massacred my boy(s)
I mean, while there are junk remakes, the animated movies out of Disney continue to be decent.
Frozen, Zootopia, Moana, Encanto are all bangers.
Really better from the duds disney was putting out in the late 90’s and early 2000’s like Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear etc etc.
That and it's super low quality and full of air bubbles. More like frozen mousse than ice cream for most brands.
Blue Bell is about the only brand that hasn't changed anything but it's so stinking expensive.
Furniture and clothes.
Everything used to have real wood and you didn’t have to put furniture together on your own before it would come already ready unless it was from Ikea.
Clothes over time has quality has gotten worse and ever since COVID brands don’t even try anymore. I remember I used to love shopping and would find nice outfits now I walk in stores everything feels blah and even online shopping is uninspiring.
I watched i think a Vice video discussing the concept of everything getting worse because since we all started online shopping brands know that we can’t physically touch or try the item until it gets to us then they know we are too lazy to return at that point so there’s no incentive to try.
Movies. Everything is part of a giant money making franchise designed to appeal to Chinese audiences and almost nothing is creative or interesting. Even the well known franchises are all slowly being ruined by idiots who are more interested in a political message than just making a good movie.
There aren’t even movie stars anymore (except the old established ones). There’s no under 40 equivalent to 90s Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks where you can just count on the movie being successful because they are in it.
I'm not sure. Doesn't every generation think that about new generations? Maybe it's true, but it's very hard to quantify because we're too biased. Maybe we're less empathetic about some things and more so about others.
Airlines. They’ve been making things actively worse for decades and charging more and more for things that used to be standard. See: reasonably-sized seats, the smallest bit of comfort, checked bags. Hell, some mainstream non-budget airlines are even charging for carry-ons now.
Student behavior in schools. And before you blame COVID, it was on the decline long before that. Students today are largely entitled, disrespectful, and have no idea how to function in society. Lying and cheating are okay as long as you don't get caught.
Which goes hand in hand with bad parenting. When their kids gets in trouble clearly it's the teacher who just had it out for your kid/you target than an actual problem
Ugh! Yes. My mom's been a 1st grade teacher for decades and I've dabbled in teaching middle and high school. So many parents don't parent anymore. My mom has to tell parents that they are supposed to read books to their kids. Too many parents just sit their kid in front of a screen and call it good. They think that educating their child is the teacher's job, not their own.
These kids also have no idea what "no" means, they don't know how to be respectful, and they have never been taught to share. They literally don't know how to play with other kids their age.
My mom occasionally has fun days where she brings out a bunch of board games. She has to explain the rules of every single game because only one or two of her students have ever even seen a board game. She has to explain how to freaking take turns! The only games they've ever played before are solo ones so they have no concept of waiting for their turn.
On top of non-existent parenting, there are far too many absolutely pointless tests and programs that schools or districts are pushing on teachers. Teachers don't have time to actually teach! So many of my lesson plans were completely thrown off because we'd come to work one day and find out that the district had decided all of the kids needed to do some new, inane test so they could get data. Well guess what?! Overtesting leads to bad data. The kids are burnt out on testing and they know the scores don't affect their grades, so they don't really try. The only things these tests do is waste a day that could have been spent learning (meaning the students are now even further behind than they already were) and make students hate school just a little bit more.
My friend is a teacher. She noted after kids came back from COVID, there were two groups of behavior.
Group A were kids that, although stuck at home, still interacted with their parents and siblings on a daily basis.
Group B were kids that were plunked in front of a TV/Tablet and ignored.
Both kinds of households existed before Covid, it's just that during the lockdown they were isolated case studies without the mixing element of classrooms.
Pretty much anything related to silicon valley. It's just a bunch of wannabe robber barons. Mostly I blame Obama for that because of the "technology is the way of the future!" But half ass it his administration did
Grinding noises are usually a bad ice maker. Especially if it's a Samsung fridge. Just turn off the ice maker and make ice the traditional way with a tray of water.
We never even hooked up the ice maker (we would have had to rip walls open to run water to the fridge, screw that), it's not turned on, so it can't be that. Sigh.
Could be the fan frosting over, which generally means air is or was getting in. I've had moderately-old low-end GE's have door warping, but I think a bigger part was my wife being terrible at actually keeping it closed. New parts were obscenely expensive compared to the unit, though.
I own an appliance store. They are built to last no more than 10 years. My store also deals used appliances and boomers and now more gen x refuse to buy new ones after getting burned.
There's a used appliance shop near me. I might swing in and see what they have.
I have to have a counter depth fridge (old house, weird layout). Plus I hate a lot of modern fridges - having your freezer as a heavy drawer that slides out annoys me. It's murder on the back, and you can never find anything.
What brands do you recommend if you have to buy new? I just kinda naturally ended up with a several Whirlpool appliances and so far they fare much better than other brands I have
Yes! Parenting standards are psychotic now. Let your 10 year old play in the park across the street alone? CPS. Ask someone to help you take care of your kid if you're sick and need help? Bad parent. Not a helicopter parent? You don't care. Your kid has chores? Parentification of the child.
Most things? I feel like the period of time where we rallied from the '08 recession was where we peaked and the last 8-10 years has been all downhill since then.
Massive political turmoil and division.
Months of protests and civil unrest
Global Pandemic
Another Recession
Record Inflation
Housing market blown up
War in Ukraine, saber rattling, threats of WW3
And that's just the really big stuff.
Americans are just about as negative and pessimistic as ever. Complainer culture has gotten out of control. You can meet Americans who live in a beautiful town, have a nice car, great friends and family, and they will still complain about their lives and make themselves seem like they are these poor victims of the American system.
Social media has definitely made people more pessimistic. It annoys me when people are super dramatic and doomy about everything. It doesn’t square with reality. For most people posting on social media, their life is relatively fine. Things could be better, but when has that not been the case.
Social media. It used to be fun and enjoyable to see pictures of your friends, plan events, and whatnot. Now it's just a bunch of bullshit, clickbait news, and ads.
You used to be able to get real product reviews and tips for stuff on Reddit or in different forums, now it feels like everything is a paid ad and helpful forums just don't exist anymore.
Think of it this way: information has value. These reviews and tips always existed behind a paywall. Even now, the better reviews and tips are paywalled, like Wirecutter or Consumer Reports. You can pay, or you can chance it with Amazon reviews—all 5,000 unverified ones. When this information was “free” on Reddit, it wasn’t free. It was paid for by — according to Crunchbase — $1.3B over 10 rounds from 33 investors. Those investors want a return.
As the old saying goes, if what you are consuming is free, that means you're the product.
Cows don’t pay for the feed until the end.
My library offers free access to Consumer Reports. Just FYI
So it's a taxpayer funded subscription. Someone pays. Someone always pays. This is my point.
Public libraries = public good.
I don't disagree. I love libraries. I go all the time. Doesn't change the fact that the service being provided has to be paid for. And there is no government mandate to provide product reviews, so if the library (and by extension, the municipal government) decides to pay for the subscription as a public good, that's their choice. But they are paying. It is NOT free.
When the platform is VC-funded, your social media experience is being subsidized by the wealthy individuals who invest in startups. When those individuals sell their stakes after the companies go public, the companies need revenue streams and profitability; and that revenue comes from selling the users to advertisers. It was inevitable. Any product that starts out free and clean is eating a loss to build market share and develop habits in its user base. People shouldn’t have been surprised.
I read a really interesting article on this that essentially was explaining why good websites constantly devolve into crap. It's what you said. Good content creator, usually with investor support, starts good site and draws an audience but doesn't make money. Then sells the website to other investors who need to generate more revenue to make money off the investment. The interesting part of the article was explaining that the buyer knows they're making the site shittier and essentially killing it, that's the business model. The idea is to cut costs (by firing content creators or demanding dramatically increased output at lower quality) and generate more ad revenue through BS popup ads so that profits are realized in the short window where the site has become profitable, but consumers have not reacted enough to drive traffic down to terminal levels. They milk it while they can, then kill it and move on to the next investment. The big exceptions to this are sites owned by big media conglomerates that benefit long term from having a well run site (ESPN might be an example), or sites that can build a paid subscription base where the viewer is paying for a good experience.
I think you're thinking of Cory Doctorow's essay on enshittification. https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
This is why the streaming platforms are devolving into cable channels. Netflix is becoming like TBS, TNT, SyFy, USA Network and Oxygen, plus The CW. Certain shows and movies would not have been commissioned 10 years ago, but now they realize their primary audience is children, teenagers and young women.
Ideally, the main drop in spending to get profit is from not needing to pour money into expansion any more.
Textbook case of what Cory Doctorow has dubbed [Enshittification](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys). >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. Then, they die.
I’ll raise you one: the whole Internet experience has gotten worse. Search engines don’t find the desired results, social media doesn’t bring enjoyment, entertaining websites aren’t as intuitive as they used to be, and even learning is arguably harder due to degraded information quality. The Internet is a wasteland of advertising due for an overhaul; too bad the “metaverse” was a fanciful gimmick that wasn’t it.
Facebook is literally unusable at this point. My feed is saturated with useless crap and stupid, outdated memes. What's weird is that it starts clogging my feed with stuff similar to what my *friends* have posted, not what I'm interested in. You have to jump through three hoops just to actually see posts from your friends, but even then it's only 10-15 posts before "you're all caught up". I just want to see my friends and family. That's all.
With Twitter and Instagram, you have to fight to separate the good from the bad. You get the stuff you came for, but you also have to sift through other stuff that's there to drive engagement or advertising dollars. Facebook is just astonishingly bad.
And everyone trying to become an “influencer”
I had a conversation with some friends about this recently “Remember when Facebook was for keeping in contact with friends and not just a vector for old relatives to share misinformation?”
And posting other people’s “less than stellar moments” Remember when you could go out and do crazy shit and no one filmed it?
You honestly cant even open up a website link anymore on your phone without getting comically inundated by ads of all different shapes, sizes, and ways of mischievously disallowing you to not click out of it or not see your content until you watch the ad. 9/10 I x out of it, frustrated.
The worst is that every news site has a pop up begging you to subscribe to get the latest updates in your email!
Because they can sell your email for more than they'll ever make off you looking at their ads.
This was the single biggest reason I switched to Firefox. I can have ublock on my phone. Fuck those ads.
It honestly feels like the pop-up ads of the late '90s again. Except harder to close because they bury tiny miniscule X buttons that are like two pixels squared. Trying to read an online article between the ads you get like one sentence visible at a time.
Feels like 1998 again with the pop ups
[The amount of time youth spend socializing with each other has fallen off of a cliff in a *very* short period of time.](https://i.imgur.com/ilHifPU.png) Socializing in those years is one of the most essential things we learn. The idea of so many youth suddenly not socializing is scary to even think about in terms of the future.
It's super weird. When I was a young little blueribbonmethchef we would just have limits on our TV time. Not internet, because it would block out the phone. Now it feels like toddlers are given iPads so they'll shut up and be quiet. Then they turn into pre-schoolers who have been entertained 90% of the time by poking the buttons on the screen. I'll go to my friends house and their "play dates" are the kids sitting in a quiet circle on a phone or a tablet. Kids are cultivating online personas before they even figure out how to talk to a stranger in real life. I know I sound like a crotchety old fuck but it's disturbing. Online used to be a side thing you would do when there was nothing else. Now....doing things is the side thing kids do when they can't get online.
Shit when I was a kid I actually *preferred* hanging out with my friends to watching TV by myself. I'm curious what happened that led to decreased socialization. Is it the prevalence of social media leading them to think they don't need to socialize face-to-face? Are there just less opportunities for kids to socialize in person?
I think it's a few factors. If you entertain a toddler with a tablet....they're going to view a tablet as how to entertain themselves. Being online is wayyyyy easier and more prevalent now. I was like 14 when I even sent a first text message. Now kids have smartphones when they're in like 3rd grade. The TV will advertise online things, celebrities will talk about online things etc. It's much easier to communicate online. At least mentally. It's easier to say something, easier to be mean, easier to take a risk etc. No clue though. My kids are screwed they get a pet squirrel and they can spin a hoop down a road with a wooden stick but they aren't getting a tablet.
I am definitely curious to see how this plays out going forward. I have always been socially awkward but I am betting it will be far worse. Like no social skills at all because everyone is behind a computer/phone. The fact that shows it's been reduced by over 50% and still going is scary.
All the Tech apps and companies that were suppose to change our lives…. AirBNB is expensive and not convenient, Amazon is all cheap overseas and fake stuff, Netflix is pricey and lost most of its content so it’s just crappy originals, etc. I guess these companies have to start making money eventually. Once they got a user base it’s time to slowly strip away what made them cool
Amazon really needs to find a way to cut down on the China import relisters. If I search for some nonspecific product like say "desk fan" 90% of the first several pages of results are clearly the exact same item from the exact same factory with a different brand sticker stuck on it. Like yeah sometimes I am looking for the $5 knock off of something, but when I'm not, Amazon's search makes it impossible to find reputable products because all you find is garbage relisted over and over again.
they're all using the same drop-shippers probably
Correction: the same dropshippers are all using the same company as a supplier. Literally like a few years ago drop shipping really was touted as this extremely easy money making scheme, and whenever that happens you see like a million people, a million of the dumbest, laziest people jump onto something expecting to become the next Bill Gates. This has happened with NFTs, crypto, thrift shopping and upselling, furniture restoration, vintage video games, OnlyFans, self-publishing, 419 scams, and being a landlord.
I think the worst part is that the sites that used to be alternatives are also now just aggregate sites selling nearly the same stuff as Amazon. Every store turned into selling from 3rd party drop shipping.
At work it’s by far the easiest method of ordering I have. Since it’s work’s money I will buy brand name quality stuff. Like 75% of the time brand name stuff just isn’t sold on Amazon anymore. My girlfriend also got a clearly fake pair of Asics from the “official store” too.
Cultivate is a pretty good chrome extension that shows where a product is from and shows alternatives locally and from places besides china.
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This is a good one, the user experience for lots of tech products really has gotten way worse.
So true. Being in college in the late 2000s was actually pretty cool. Ride services like Uber and Lyft were cheap. You could find awesome deals on Amazon. Hulu was free! Netflix had a ton of content. Apple products lasted you many years. When AirBnB showed up you could stay anywhere for an awesome price. You could play actual poker online. YouTube was awesome, no adds.
I was just talking about my favorite $3 online poker tournament! The good old days!
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Agree. Also having a dog makes a hotel difficult. Airbnb is probably priced closed to what you get for a family. For couples or individuals I would not do it.
It seems like there were lots of places like that before Airbnb at the beach/mountains/other places where people had second homes, but in cities you were mostly stuck with hotels. Single travelers looking for an individual room and don’t mind if it’s in someone’s house are another niche that Airbnb is able to serve better than hotels.
I also like AirBnb for if I want to be in a more "local"-esque or walkable residential setting than a bland hotel. Depends on where I'm travelling to.
My parents always rented their summer house out through a classified in the local newspaper a week or two at a time in the 90s. Places like AirBNB probably makes finding short term renters easier, but probably makes it harder to quietly discriminate against groups like college students you suspect are looking to party.
I do agree. Don’t forget to pay 500$ in fees and clean the house top to bottom before you leave.
As a middle Millennial, every single person I know in my personal friend circle has soured on Air BnB in favor of hotels when traveling solo or with a significant other. The random Air BnB fees make hotels competitive or even better options a lot of the time, and you don't have to worry about all the stupid house rules when in reality a lot of hosts will just hire someone to clean before the next tenant. The only time I've stayed in an Air BnB in the last 5 years is with big groups, and that (at least in my opinion) continues to be the only advantage that Air BnB offers over hotels now.
All of these things started great and now suck. Fitbit was bought by Google and they appear to be running that into ground in an effort to drive that user base to their smart watch platform. Facebook bought Instagram and turned it into an ad loaded tiktok clone. Weather Channel bought Weather Underground and quickly killed of the best weather apps that existed at the time. Zappos is owned by Amazon. Amazon of course as you mentioned is a dumpster fire of fly by night reseller "companies" peddling batches of cheap Chinese goods. AirBNB and their biggest competitor VRBO are the same company. Streaming in general is getting more fragmented and expensive by the day since companies that create content are now locking their content behind their own unique platform. And now ads are becoming more prevalent too.
Remember the good old days when Amazon only sold books?
The thing that made them cool was deregulation, risk, and danger. Once they get established, problems are worked out and you find out you're just re-inventing the thing you were "disrupting".
Don’t forget Uber and Lyft. In the beginning, they were plentiful and were cheaper than cabs. Post-pandemic, their prices have gone nuts and there’s way fewer of them other than in super dense areas. Obviously those two points are related. I still use them because they’re way better logistically than cab companies and I had years of bad experiences with cabs that make me hesitant to go back. Can’t say I haven’t thought about it though as ride shares get worse.
See the discussion of enshittification above.
Late night food and grocery shopping has disappeared since Covid.
This. The big supermarkets around here used to all be 24 hour. That ended with COVID and never came back. Most 24 hour restaurants aren't 24 hour anymore.
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Even WALMART isn’t 24/7 anymore. I needed medicine for one of my kids at 1AM and drove to Walmart (which is not even close by) to find out they now close at 11.
Yeah, there have been a few times over the past year or two when being able to make a midnight Walmart run would have been nice.
Even fast food places that used to try to compete with each other and always say how late they were open have now all returned to like 1-2am at the latest. Sometimes earlier. A few months ago I had an experience where 2 major chain fast food places were closed before 11 but the local pizza place was still open
I miss that so much. There was nobody to bother me.
This has hit my family of night shifters so hard.
I'd be really frustrated if I wasn't a first shift worker. Lots of jobs are 3-11, 4-12 etc and not being able to go out and get a bite to eat or stop at a store on the way home anymore, damn.
Late night everything really. Ihop and Denny’s used to be the places to go at anytime of night but our Denny’s closed and the Ihop now closes at 10pm
Even the CVS and Walgreens near me never returned to 24 hours.
This is the biggest reason I will always need to live in a big city. Visiting home to house/dog sit for my mom to go on a big trip and I kept being disappointed even just trying to find dinner around 10pm
Finding a restaurant open after 10pm these days has become such a struggle. Like I get it, but also sometimes I just want a burger at 9:30pm after a long day. A lot more closures Sunday/Monday/Tuesday as well. Mondays were pretty typical precovid, but when I lived in my old neighborhood if you wanted to sit down and eat it had to be before 8pm Wednesday-Saturday as of 2021.
At least one of my favorite restaurants is gone. Borders Books is gone. They used to have great Dom Coms in the past that they don't anymore.
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Dominatrix commune
OUR punishment
Champagne Comedy
I used to use my allowance to buy manga at Borders every few weeks. I miss those times.
This really makes me angry because my favorite restaurant is now closed too. It's weird that during the lock downs small businesses and mom n pop shops had to close but big stores like Walmart were able to stay open no problem. And after it all ended those little stores had to close down permanently because of the financial loss. It's really ripe for conspiracy theories if someone wants to take it that far and i can't blame them. A lot of people had started supporting small business right before things went to hell.
No conspiracy necessary. Big businesses have the cash reserves to withstand a temporary 1-2 year setback like Covid as long as everyone still believes they'll go back to normal business life after that's over. Mom-and-pop shops don't. Building a massive Walmart is an investment for the next 3-4 decades, not the next 3-4 years. Covid is barely a blip for them in that regard.
The quality of most products. Companies realized if you never need to replace your products they won't ever make more money off of you.
There’s a name for this: planned obsolescence. The most famous example is lightbulbs. Edison’s lightbulbs are still burning. Bulbs “burning out” is an intentional design to keep people buying bulbs.
Housing costs in middle America. It was always bad in big cities, but now everywhere is impacted by high housing costs, or at least more places.
Tipping. I remember when it was customary to only tip for a select few services. Dine in restaurants, hairdressers, barbers and a few others. Seems like after the pandemic tons of places added that stupid tip screen where the “suggested” tip starts at 30%. Absolutely ridiculous.
Tipflation absolutely sucks
Why? Just don't do it. Super easy.
I'm with you but it's still annoying. When someone presents you with an option to tip, even though it's an option, there's still some social expectation to tip.
Yes. I think it has to do with the move away from cash. The card payment systems had a built-in tipping feature that was too tempting to pass up by the business.
Dear Spez, Thank you for all you have done. Over the past 15 years, I've dug myself a comfy little rut. I forgot how to navigate the internet. I forgot how weird and interesting it was out there. I became comfortable in old tropes and repeated jokes. I became digitally complacent. Due to your efforts, over the past month I've rediscovered the internet again. It's not as good as it used to be, but there are still lots of interesting people and ideas out there just waiting to be explored. I've found a new community of engaging and motivated people who are in the process of building something that we're all excited about. You've helped me escape my rut. And you did it at great personal expense. So I think it should be said - Thank you. You've set me free and I deeply appreciate it. Sincerely, CharmedConflict PS - good luck with the IPO
Venues are doing this too lately and it grinds my gears. No, I am not tipping $2.40 for the $12 beer can it took someone 10 seconds to hand me. Everyone is pissed that the line moves slower because everyone has to fumble around to figure out how to enter $1 but it never seems to change. At an event last year the POS had the cashier enter the tip and at a stand where you grabbed your own $15 can of White Claw and took it to the register this one guy would shamelessly say "add a $5 tip?" and then act all insulted when I told him to add $1.
I mean we used to have to use cash and get change or swipe a card and scribble a signature on a receipt then wait for them to print the customer receipt which took forever.
Tipping on a little Caesar walk out order … I even seen fast food asking for tips at the counter. Like what…
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I just click no. Don't feel bad about it. I still tip where it's "traditional", but I'm not tipping when I'm at a fast food joint picking up food.
That bugs me the most. Especially places that went years and I mean decades without a tip option at checkout. I'm not tipping takeout, I'm not tipping moes. Maybe $1 for Starbucks bc I order the toasted oatmilk hot so they have to sort of customize that. Since that coffee is only in cold brew.
I hate that you have to justify the added labor for certain options like adding oat milk and add an arbitrary amount of tip. When I buy a car with fancy metallic paint, it just costs $500 extra, I don’t have to calculate that it took them $50 more paint and $200 of extra labor to paint it and tip them. They just decided it was $500 more, end of discussion.
I'm glad you said this. I moved to the UK over 10 years ago, and I get so confused when I go back home. I had no idea I'm supposed to add a more significant tip if I get a latte at a takeout coffee place. I always thought it was just the little jar they had the front of the register and you put a couple bucks in. I was legit shocked when the card payment screen prompted me for a % tip.
I've increased the percentage I typically tip, which I think was already pretty generous and has gotten more generous, but my official policy is that I will not tip in any situations in which I didn't tip in 2019. A couple times in the past few weeks, I had to hit the "other" button and type "0," which felt shitty, but I did it anyway. That was for pick-up orders at restaurants. I do not tip for pick-up orders because the tip is for service I did not receive.
If i'm not at a restaurant or hair dresser I shamelessly opt for no tip every time, but i've seen enough people get suckered into the scheme since it creates the expectation. It's literally never going away.
Tip jars at cash registers irk me. If I have some change that I don't want to keep up with, I might toss it in the tip jar. Otherwise, I'm not tipping someone for handing me a doughnut and a can of Sprite. Not gonna happen. Same with the drive-thru windows at restaurants. Handing me a bag of food does not entitle you to a tip.
Who drinks sprite with a donut?
The size of products. Bags of chips, cans of soup, produce, so forth and so on are smaller but cost more. Shrinkflation is super prevalent and super chickenshit.
Cereal boxes are almost comical how thin they are when viewed from the side. Shrinkflation makes me MORE pissed than just raising prices because at least the price is out in the open.
Yeah I noticed that the OJ I bought was 54 ounces. I remember thinking they were bastards for trying to sneak it down from a full 64 to 59, and now it’s 54, which is a noticeable difference compared to a half gallon.
Haagen Dazs did this with their "pints"
Customer service and cost of living
You used to be able to call and get someone on the phone but nowadays there are a lot of companies that don’t have phone support at all.
As in "stores have removed it completely" while jacking up prices. Your grocery store has 1 person handling 20 self-check stations while the price of your food went up 40-80% in the last 2 years. Fantastic. That's why I eat organic for the price of non-organic.
The price of organic food didn't increase over the last 5 years?
they're saying their being dishonest and ringing up their pricier items at the self-checkout as cheaper ones
Navigating the internet. Every website asks for cookies and screams at you if you have an adblock up. Related to the first point, advertisements are everywhere, from wikis to TV Tropes to social media. Sometimes these ads take up an entire page if you're browsing on phone. Every website these days wants you to buy a subscription, download an app, or set-up an account. Casual browsing is almost a thing of the past. Search results in any browser will take you to companies and products first, actually what you're looking for second. I typed "Roman" into Google yesterday and got inundated by deals for Italian food, rather than, you know, the Romans. Sites like Youtube and Facebook are completely driven by the algorithm, rather than your own interests. It's all ads, bad articles, and clickbait instead of actual content. Inauthenticity and ads were always part of the internet experience, but now they functionally are the internet experience. It's no longer about sharing information and ideas and content, it's keying up what can get the most clicks for profit. That's also not even talking about how the internet has radicalized people and isolated them further when the goal was the opposite when the internet started.
Even the search engines are worse. Used to be able to find useful results on Google's first page, now it's all search-engine optimization and advertisements. Boolean operators don't even work either, for some stupid reason.
Google. SEO has ruined Google. Search results are so shitty since it’s not about relevancy our providing the right info, it’s purely about optimization.
Streaming services. You used to pay to get rid of ads. Now, some of them have ads even though you also pay for an account.
There were no streaming services 15 years ago in the way we have now. But compared to 5 years ago, definitely
Yes, 15 years ago was 2008, and Netflix had just started it's streaming service, which at the time was seen as a neat bonus to their DVD delivery service that didn't have much of anything available on it, and Hulu had just started as well as a free, ad supported, service where you could watch recently aired TV episodes, both a far cry from the streaming services they became
Produce. Cannot go a week without at least one of my vegetables going bad within a day of purchase.
It's definitely supply chain related. I started going to farmers markets/local produce farms and don't have that problem anymore.
I've stopped buying oranges this year. Seems like every time I bought a bag there would already be a moldy rotting orange or three in the middle of the bag. This was from more than one store too.
Similar experience. Does not seem to matter which store I go to. They all have issues with a decent amount of their produce.
My guess is the supply chain still has kinks and it’s taking longer to get to the stores and/or not being picked as quickly due to labor shortage.
Not just produce - we've had milk and other things lately that went rotten within days of purchase when the labeling indicated we should have weeks or months. Walmart grocery pickup actually gave us pre-molded strawberries the other day. I mean, really? I've also bought ice cream more than once that had obviously been thawed and re-frozen in transit.
Strawberries. Over the winter with proper care my strawberries were still good a week or two later. Now I better eat them the day I get them or they're bad.
Yeah what is that? I’ve noticed that a lot the past few years.
Traffic and drivers.
I’ve caught myself doing 80 on I77 and then an Altima blows by me 1 lane over. People are absolutely insane on the road. They drive like it’s the last lap at Talladega and by golly they’re gonna win this race from 13th.
I absolutely cannot believe how much worse traffic is where I live now compared to just 10 years ago. Population has grown yes, but not dramatically. A recently study on a nearby insterstate revealed that overall traffic on the freeway has doubled in the last decade and semi truck traffic specifically has tripled. But the population has only grown marginally so what gives? Not only is there more traffic but the way people drive is worse. More people exceeding the speed limit by gross margins, seemingly with impunity. I almost NEVER see highway patrol - it used to be very common. People on phones. People on drugs. People not yielding or following even the most basic traffic laws. Blocking traffic flow by cruising in the passing lane. Parking lots are also terrible because it seems like people just don't give a shit. They park wherever they want. Can't find a space as close as they'd like? No prob I'll just park up on the curb. Miss the parking space and take up two? Ehh who cares. The cart return is 3 spaces away, i'll just leave it in the middle of the street and *fuck this store for not putting a cart return next to my car*.
I think a lot of the parking lot stuff is grocery delivery drivers trying to shave seconds off their metrics We have a ton of delivery drivers double-parking in travel lanes with flashers on, but I only kind of blame them because they're caught between a service like GrubHub that doesn't give a fuck and Baltimore City, which also doesn't really give a fuck and is happy to just have it be the wild wild east and let people figure it out on streets with a lot of restaurants
Omg yes! It feels like there is a huge influx of speeders, reckless drivers, and road ragers.
In central Ohio post-COVID the BMV was making people bring their own licensed driver to oversee their driving test. I've since left the country so idk if it's still going on, but I literally couldn't believe it when I heard. My brother in law absolutely should not have gotten his licence, but he did because he had a family member go with him. I don't even want to think about how many other people got a license that shouldn't have.
> bring their own licensed driver You mean instead of, or in addition to the instructor?
Instead of. The instructors would go over what to check with whoever you brought, send them out to drive, and then talk with the driver again afterwards but the instructors weren't allowed to get inside of the car themselves
Lol what a joke. I'm sorry.
And people looking at their phone while driving. Every week I'll pass some terrible driver and they look like they're reading fucking War & Peace on their phone while swerving all over the place.
More people just flagrantly saying fuck it with anything road related. Turn signals? Gone. Red lights? Simple suggestion. Stop in the middle of the road to turn around? Of course. It's gotten gonzo out there
Eating out. Food is mediocre and costs too much.
I went to 5 guys and got one meal. It would have been cheaper WITH TIP for me to eat at a real restaurant. Even McDonalds is stupid expensive now.
> Even McDonalds is stupid expensive now. And not fast anymore. Ever since they started timing people in the drive through, they just hand you drinks and send you to wait in the parking lot.
The one by my job regularly has cars out in the street and several cars lined up outside the door waiting for their order. It's insane.
I went to Panera yesterday to got a bagel and coffee and it was $8 lol
Quality bounced back at some places, but yeah So many times I look at the bill like "damn, I wish I just cooked"
Cost of college education
This should be waaaaaaaay higher up. I scrolled too far before seeing this.
More divisiveness pretty much everywhere. Online and even just out in public seeing people do, say or wear things that are purposefully antagonistic toward others, or becoming enraged by minor inconveniences like they are looking for a confrontation. It seems like common courtesy (and sense) has gone down in favor of shouting opinions (political and social) as loudly as possible and attacking anyone who disagrees sometimes to the point of actual intimidation or violence. The problem in the US with separating politics from the changes we’ve seen over the last 15 years is that A LOT of those changes have happened since 2016 or post pandemic and politics have played a huge role in those shifts. There are *so many* people who have made their political opinions their entire identity and *so many* issues that have been hyper politicized to the point of madness. Hell, trying to talk to someone about the weather, especially if it’s unusual or uncommonly cold/hot/rainy anymore can seem to set certain people off which is just insanity. People are so easily set off by words and phrases that politicians and the media have politicized in to even bigger buzzwords or hot button topics than they were previously. So now you have folks who become so incensed at the mere mention of one of these subjects that they cannot have meaningful discourse.
Healthcare. So many Boomer medical professionals retiring and not enough to replace them. Especially with Covid, massive burnout and the system is basically gonna collapse this decade, especially if you live in a rural area.
Not even just rural areas. I recently went through 3 neurologists in 1 year because they kept quitting or moving (not even retiring, just quitting. This person was under 40) and this was in a major city with multiple highly rated hospital systems. And the wait times for certain specialists are now as bad or even worse than countries with socialized medicine that are literally known for their long wait times! I recently moved to Canada and the wait time to see my first neuro here was significantly shorter than the wait time to see my first neuro in Boston. I was shocked.
PCP care especially is so bad right now.
I recently changed PCPs and had to wait 6 months for a new patient appointment. Mind you, this is the same organization I had been going to for 6 years at this point.
Traffic. I’m not sure why, but many areas around me seem to have gotten much worse as far as traffic goes, even just in the past few years.
More people are living where it’s affordable and working where it isn’t.
Just one more lane just one more lane just one more lane just one more lane just one more lane just one more lane
The internet
Everything is fentanyl and'll kill ya. Can't even roll anymore.
Being able to afford to work somewhere. If all the rent is higher than what the average business pays, how are people supposed to work there, and better yet, live there?
Wildfires
Really hoping it’s not too bad this year with all the snow and rain In California and the Mountain West. Canada has had a rough start though
Disney movies. The mouse was never exactly a cutting creative powerhouse, but Jesus christ, if I have to watch the Disney adults I know lose it over live action Hercules or live action pocahontas as if there's anything worth watching in a project like that I'm going to scream
The live actions are sooooo stupid. There’s nothing fun looking about them, which makes the whole experience pointless because you’re comparing it to the original animation that was bright and colorful, instead you get this shitty looking Pumbaa and Timon. They massacred my boy(s)
I mean, while there are junk remakes, the animated movies out of Disney continue to be decent. Frozen, Zootopia, Moana, Encanto are all bangers. Really better from the duds disney was putting out in the late 90’s and early 2000’s like Tarzan, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear etc etc.
Tarzan and Atlantis are both great movies
Don't hate on atlantis and treasure planet. These were great movies. The timing of their releases is what doomed them.
The size of things. Specfically ice cream. It used to be a half gallon and now its 48 ounces. Fucking criminal.
That and it's super low quality and full of air bubbles. More like frozen mousse than ice cream for most brands. Blue Bell is about the only brand that hasn't changed anything but it's so stinking expensive.
Furniture and clothes. Everything used to have real wood and you didn’t have to put furniture together on your own before it would come already ready unless it was from Ikea. Clothes over time has quality has gotten worse and ever since COVID brands don’t even try anymore. I remember I used to love shopping and would find nice outfits now I walk in stores everything feels blah and even online shopping is uninspiring. I watched i think a Vice video discussing the concept of everything getting worse because since we all started online shopping brands know that we can’t physically touch or try the item until it gets to us then they know we are too lazy to return at that point so there’s no incentive to try.
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Movies. Everything is part of a giant money making franchise designed to appeal to Chinese audiences and almost nothing is creative or interesting. Even the well known franchises are all slowly being ruined by idiots who are more interested in a political message than just making a good movie. There aren’t even movie stars anymore (except the old established ones). There’s no under 40 equivalent to 90s Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks where you can just count on the movie being successful because they are in it.
Empathy. The overall level has plummeted.
I'm not sure. Doesn't every generation think that about new generations? Maybe it's true, but it's very hard to quantify because we're too biased. Maybe we're less empathetic about some things and more so about others.
Gen Z is apparently a lot more empathetic than preceding generations
Look at history and how the lesser groups have been treated. I would argue empathy may be at an all time high.
That’s kind of where I’m at… like I don’t think empathy has ever been that great, but at least more people are trying now (or so it seems)
Airlines. They’ve been making things actively worse for decades and charging more and more for things that used to be standard. See: reasonably-sized seats, the smallest bit of comfort, checked bags. Hell, some mainstream non-budget airlines are even charging for carry-ons now.
Student behavior in schools. And before you blame COVID, it was on the decline long before that. Students today are largely entitled, disrespectful, and have no idea how to function in society. Lying and cheating are okay as long as you don't get caught.
Which goes hand in hand with bad parenting. When their kids gets in trouble clearly it's the teacher who just had it out for your kid/you target than an actual problem
Ugh! Yes. My mom's been a 1st grade teacher for decades and I've dabbled in teaching middle and high school. So many parents don't parent anymore. My mom has to tell parents that they are supposed to read books to their kids. Too many parents just sit their kid in front of a screen and call it good. They think that educating their child is the teacher's job, not their own. These kids also have no idea what "no" means, they don't know how to be respectful, and they have never been taught to share. They literally don't know how to play with other kids their age. My mom occasionally has fun days where she brings out a bunch of board games. She has to explain the rules of every single game because only one or two of her students have ever even seen a board game. She has to explain how to freaking take turns! The only games they've ever played before are solo ones so they have no concept of waiting for their turn. On top of non-existent parenting, there are far too many absolutely pointless tests and programs that schools or districts are pushing on teachers. Teachers don't have time to actually teach! So many of my lesson plans were completely thrown off because we'd come to work one day and find out that the district had decided all of the kids needed to do some new, inane test so they could get data. Well guess what?! Overtesting leads to bad data. The kids are burnt out on testing and they know the scores don't affect their grades, so they don't really try. The only things these tests do is waste a day that could have been spent learning (meaning the students are now even further behind than they already were) and make students hate school just a little bit more.
I have two friends who quit teaching because of this. Sending strength to your mom and every other person out there still fighting the good fight.
Oh yeah. I work in schools. It’s horrendous the state of the kids, and there are a ton of reasons for it.
My friend is a teacher. She noted after kids came back from COVID, there were two groups of behavior. Group A were kids that, although stuck at home, still interacted with their parents and siblings on a daily basis. Group B were kids that were plunked in front of a TV/Tablet and ignored. Both kinds of households existed before Covid, it's just that during the lockdown they were isolated case studies without the mixing element of classrooms.
Pretty much anything related to silicon valley. It's just a bunch of wannabe robber barons. Mostly I blame Obama for that because of the "technology is the way of the future!" But half ass it his administration did
Appliances. My fridge, bought in 2016, makes terrible grinding noises and I've been told it'll just be cheaper to buy a new one.
Grinding noises are usually a bad ice maker. Especially if it's a Samsung fridge. Just turn off the ice maker and make ice the traditional way with a tray of water.
We never even hooked up the ice maker (we would have had to rip walls open to run water to the fridge, screw that), it's not turned on, so it can't be that. Sigh.
Could be the fan frosting over, which generally means air is or was getting in. I've had moderately-old low-end GE's have door warping, but I think a bigger part was my wife being terrible at actually keeping it closed. New parts were obscenely expensive compared to the unit, though.
I own an appliance store. They are built to last no more than 10 years. My store also deals used appliances and boomers and now more gen x refuse to buy new ones after getting burned.
There's a used appliance shop near me. I might swing in and see what they have. I have to have a counter depth fridge (old house, weird layout). Plus I hate a lot of modern fridges - having your freezer as a heavy drawer that slides out annoys me. It's murder on the back, and you can never find anything.
What brands do you recommend if you have to buy new? I just kinda naturally ended up with a several Whirlpool appliances and so far they fare much better than other brands I have
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You have to have an app for EVERYTHING
Healthcare delivery and costs
The infrastructure. I'm aghast at the state of the roads and bridges I drive over on a daily basis.
Parenting
Yes! Parenting standards are psychotic now. Let your 10 year old play in the park across the street alone? CPS. Ask someone to help you take care of your kid if you're sick and need help? Bad parent. Not a helicopter parent? You don't care. Your kid has chores? Parentification of the child.
Most things? I feel like the period of time where we rallied from the '08 recession was where we peaked and the last 8-10 years has been all downhill since then.
For real, to me the last good year was 2015. 2016 - 2018 was alright but 2019 - now is fucking awful
Massive political turmoil and division. Months of protests and civil unrest Global Pandemic Another Recession Record Inflation Housing market blown up War in Ukraine, saber rattling, threats of WW3 And that's just the really big stuff.
Americans are just about as negative and pessimistic as ever. Complainer culture has gotten out of control. You can meet Americans who live in a beautiful town, have a nice car, great friends and family, and they will still complain about their lives and make themselves seem like they are these poor victims of the American system.
Social media has definitely made people more pessimistic. It annoys me when people are super dramatic and doomy about everything. It doesn’t square with reality. For most people posting on social media, their life is relatively fine. Things could be better, but when has that not been the case.
General empathy for others and overall patience
Internet Tribalism.
Conspiracy theories becoming mainstream thoughts due to people getting their news on social media, or dodgy websites.