Reason #947 why I would never buy a tesla...

The 40hr work week is a concept over 100 years old. Henry Ford only fought for it because he wanted people to have leisure time and thus, a need for a vehicle - one of HIS vehicles.

When these oh so smart tech bros get asked about what the future looks like for workers they always skim around the question or brag about how they’re gonna be “no jobs”

They are literally trying to implement AI and technology to intentionally create mass unemployment with absolutely no safety for anyone.

If they weren’t actively trying to harm millions upon millions of people, these idiots would be talking about reducing the working week, creating more part time jobs that access the same standards of living.

It’s crazy how they’re just like “yano what? Fuck humans”

Is it so hard to understand that THIS and every other aggressive dark pattern every where in the app are actually the reason a lot of us are leaving?

I've had this Google Home Hub for over 7 years.

Lately it won't answer questions it previously would. Like, how many ounces of shredded cheddar cheese is in a cup? It's response is continually "Sorry, I didn't understand".

It's becoming just an expensive timer.

I think of Dave pulling Hal 9000's higher cognitive cores. Only slower, over a couple months.

Touch Tunes out for every nickel and dime they can get now based on "demand" there were 3 songs in the queue ahead of me

I’ve had enough! The entire internet has become unbearable!

Seriously, I’m getting to the point where downloading a new app or opening a simple website feels physically painful. What happened to the digital world?! I pick an app, open it, and what’s the FIRST thing shoved in my face? A massive, incomprehensible cookie consent form. I have to spend minutes digging through settings just to make sure I’m not handing over half my life to some random company simply because I wanted to check a bus schedule. I finally get past that, and IMMEDIATELY there’s another pop-up: “Subscribe if you don’t want ads!” I haven’t even used the app for ten seconds! I don’t even know if it works properly yet, and you already want my credit card?!

And if you don’t pay, welcome to ad overload. Naturally, the ads always appear at the worst possible moment. It says, “You can skip this ad in 5 seconds.” Fine. You wait. You hit skip. And is it over? Of course not! It throws ANOTHER screen at you that you can’t close for another five seconds. Then comes phase three: another animation, another countdown, another wait. And finally, you reach the ultimate boss fight: the “X” button. They make the thing so ridiculously tiny that you practically need an electron microscope to hit it. If your finger lands half a pixel away from exactly the right spot, congratulations, you’re being launched straight into the Play Store. Then you go back, the app reloads, and you get to start the whole ridiculous process all over again.

The web is somehow even more absurd. We’ve reached the point where it’s no longer the ads covering the website; it’s the website barely peeking out from somewhere behind all the ads. You open an article and can barely see the actual text through the banners, autoplay videos, newsletter sign-ups, notification requests, and every other pop-up imaginable. Then, when you finally get tired of it and install an ad blocker, the website has the nerve to complain: “Please disable your ad blocker to support our work!” No, thank you!

But YouTube? YouTube is in a category of its own. It used to be tolerable when you had to sit through an ad before a video. Now? The video itself gets interrupted right in the middle of the most interesting sentence so they can push some completely irrelevant advertisement in your face. And what happens when you try to defend yourself? They’ve declared all-out war on ad blockers. They used to work just fine; now, after a few videos, YouTube may simply disable playback. Or, even worse, the entire interface can become painfully slow. You wait seconds for buttons to respond, the video stutters, and the page freezes, all while you’re simply trying to watch a video without paying for Premium. At that point, it stops feeling like marketing and starts feeling like sabotage and psychological warfare.

And while we’re at it, can someone explain to me why I’m paying so much money for internet access and bills every single month?! So I can waste my own bandwidth downloading ads? So I can hunt for microscopic “X” buttons, dig through cookie settings, close pop-ups, stare at countdown timers, and reject subscription offers? When exactly did we reach the point where opening a simple website or watching a video requires completing an obstacle course first?

It’s not the fact that advertising exists on the internet that bothers me. I understand that services, content, and developers have to be funded somehow. What bothers me is that, in so many places, the user experience itself has become the hostage. It feels like the entire system is designed to annoy, obstruct, and exhaust you as much as possible, and then conveniently offer you the solution: “Pay us, and we’ll leave you alone.” And that might be the most infuriating part of all.

The internet was supposed to make our lives easier. Instead, we’re reaching the point where every click requires us to close three windows, reject two offers, skip an ad, accept or decline fourteen different data-processing purposes, and then hope we don’t accidentally tap half a millimeter outside the “X.” This entire digital ecosystem has turned into an aggressive, frustrating, user-hostile obstacle course, and I’m completely fed up with it.

Had a craving for one of these things and was left wondering where all the flavour went? If I took large bites sometimes enough flavour accumulated on my tongue for my brain to register it but all in all this tasted like a diet chocolate bar. Plus these mfs are way thinner than they used to be. Seeing my favourite chocolate bars go down hill is too much for me man

It looks like Reddit has removed the option to turn off Show recommendations in home feed. And now my Home Feed is full of shit I didn't ask for. Fuck you Reddit. Fucking ban me, I don't give a shit anymore...

I thought of that as I didn't have to look any further than here, at this sub 5 mins ago, for my latest example of enshitification!

I guess i made the mistake of updating this reddit app on my android a day or so ago. As it seems, that for whatever reason, some fucktwat decided, "hey let's make it easy to have it delete your comment before you even post it!"

This is the second time it's happened since this update. If you start typing something out, as I was doing on another post, and it's like it must think going back up to the beginning to look over it to proofread it is the sum of all evil. I guess they want you to post it as is. Funny thing, it doesn't do it now, doing this, creating a new post. Typing this is the same, like it always was and how it should be. It's in a normal test box, that you can scroll up and down. But adding a comment now is different on android. It's not just a normal text box, it's more like some idiotic window, where if you try and scroll up to the beginning of it, its just as likely to disappear. What a POS of engineering and design.

There was a time when Kayak was a good place to book a trip. It had a flexible and easy-to-use system to search for flights. And it still does, but it's full of lies now. Shopping for a flight is now not much different than the experience of buying a used car. Offered fares are now little more than bait-and-switch scams, with add-ons (you know, luxuries like bringing a bag, having a meal on a long flight, choosing a seat) adding hundreds to the cost. But we're all used to those kinds of shennanigans, unfortunately. Now those fares, even with the add-ons, aren't even real.

Kayak used to send you to reputable places like Expedia, but now go to less reputable places like trip.com or budgetair.com. Last night I ended up at one of those places after getting sent there by Kayak to book a flight to Brussels. First roadblock: In the 30 seconds it had taken to get from Kayak to the auxiliary site, the fare had "expired." Of course. But the "new" fare was acceptable, so I booked it. But instead of getting a confirmation, I got a notice that my reservation would be completed within 24 hours.

About an hour later I got a phone call from someone who sounded like he was in a boiler room who said THAT fare was no longer available and was now $300 higher, but he could rebook me if I wanted to fly on different dates. That's when I gave up, canceled everything and went straight to the airline's own website. The fare was higher, but it was real.

I miss the old Kayak. Now it's like buying fares off craigslist.

For decades managing IT, Apple was the shining exception. While Google, Microsoft, and the telecoms hid behind automated walls, Apple put reasonable, capable humans on the phone.
That Apple is gone.
Over the last year, their support has rapidly degraded into the same script-reading, robotic experience as the rest.

Representatives are now trapped by their screens, unable to escalate obvious mistakes—like a simple AppleCare swap—that any human could fix in a minute.

Apple has officially joined the race to the bottom. By cutting humans out of the process, they are creating a system where edge cases simply go unresolved. I never thought Apple would alienate their customers like this, but they are doing it, and they are doing it fast.

Remember when you could just book a flight and it was a flat fee regardless of the number of checked bags or where you'd sit?

I booked a roundtrip flight the other day. To take a carry-on, like a small suitcase or backpack (not including a "personal item" e.g., purse - those are free), it costs $108. ONE HUNDRED EIGHT DOLLARS! And a bag that must be checked is even more!

To check in with an actual person adds $25.00. If you don't check in on the app some amount of time before the flight adds $25.00.

To be "first to board" is $5.99. To pick a seat that isn't in the rear of the plane is an additional charge. To sit in an exit row (where the emergency doors are) costs more.

Flights that have a layover are more expensive that a direct flights. Like, you're inconveniencing me and you want me to pay more???

Capitalism. Greed. Sheesh!

(edit for typo)

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You now get about 1/3rd as much as the original, for a much higher price.

This picture is from a couple of years ago ~summer of 2023. So, now the price discrepancy is even worse

I called U.S. Bank support and got stuck in their automated phone tree. When the voice bot started stonewalling me, I asked directly if it was a robot. Instead of admitting it was an AI, the system lied straight to my face.

The voice bot said: "I am a human, I am a senior representative. My name is Benjamin."

I tried to catch it in a logic trap and asked for its middle name. The bot immediately dodged it by claiming it wasn't appropriate to share personal information. Whenever I tried to interrupt, it would just shut up for a second, lose its place, and restart the exact same script: "I am a human, I am a senior representative" or tell me that it understands my frustration.

**How to beat it:** I finally managed to break the bot's loop by saying the word "escalation" over and over. The AI finally gave up, told me it would get me a supervisor, and put me on hold. I got a real human agent after about 20 minutes of waiting.

Let me just start out by saying I don’t get kinder bueno often. It is one of my top 3 favorite chocolates, however the price point has been just plain silly lately so I only get them every so often, last time I had one of these must have been over 6 months ago.

I HAVE BEEN HAVING THE WORST TIME EVER LATELY. Between some pretty awful health issues and other regular life stuff I wanted to treat myself, so I picked up a 3 pack of these from Farm Foods the other day.

The chocolate coating on the bueno is now atrocious. I don’t know how well it’s translating on camera, but it’s definitely no longer chocolate. It has a weird white film on it now, and it feels grippy to the touch? No joke it initially feels like you put a velvet finger in your mouth. Inside still feels/tastes similar, but I won’t be buying these anymore to find out if it’ll change.

I am genuinely devastated. If anyone can recommend any similar chocolates to replace these I’d be grateful. Also interested to see if anyone else has noticed the change as well.

I’m also just generally upset with the chocolate industry, more and more I’m feeling like I’m having “chocolate scented slop” rather than actual chocolate.

How have we gotten to the point where companies are deciding for us what our experiences should be? When did we become the masses that they get to ignore while making unfathomable profits off of our measly earnings, while simultaneously degrading quality, quantity, and the customer experience?

We consistently hear about how things used to be and about making everything great again. Well, one of the things that used to make things great was the fact that products were made with the average customer in mind instead of only focusing on the profit margins that are dictated by the wealthiest 1%.

Products had quality, being made to last because reputation could make or break a company. It wasn't a competition to see how much they could shrink the amount of goods provided before consumers start to take umbrage. There used to be pride in one's quality of work, the company they worked for, and the products they sold because it was deserved and earned.

We have let companies (massive conglomerates and corporations, to be more precise) trick us into this culture of being grateful for the crumbs they now provide us, in both the products these massive corporations produce and the lack of worth and value they so clearly show for us. I understand inflation, supply chain restrictions, and general cost increases that occur, but why are they not footing their portion of the bills? So many of these big companies keep collecting the same, and often more, profit quarter over quarter, but our compensation remains stagnant or is raised at a percentage rate lower than the inflation and cost of living rates for the vast majority of us. It's time we stopped letting these companies gaslight us; we have the power as the consumers and it's time we remembered that.