>

We spent a summer outside catching Pokémon
The impact on mental health alone is insane. After doom scrolling I feel horrible about myself. It’s an onslaught of reading people argue over nothing, comparing myself to photoshopped women, feeling jealous that I don’t get to fuck around and travel, etc. It’s inescapable online. People are the worst version of themselves on the internet. 
The shitty thing is, I’ve tried to get rid of all social media but it makes me feel like a hermit when I do. I’m so conditioned to immediately go on my phone when I’m bored. >

I'm 30 and just got rid of everything in October except BeReal and Snapchat, as lame as that sounds. I like Snapchat because I can still keep in touch with people, post the things I want, and only check the stories I want. No other bullshit, long text posts, arguing, so on. BeReal is fun because it's new, and it's just a once a day prompt to post what I am doing right at the exact moment the notification goes off. 
Everything else was beginning to be exactly how you described it for me. It was just non-stop toxic trash. No more Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for me. I'm actually MUCH happier without them. You'll feel like a hermit but your mental health will thank you for dwindling down your connections to only those who truly want to connect with you, and not the filler garbage of everything else.
ETA- yeah, I didn't get rid of Reddit, because I don't use this like social media, nor does it feel that way to me. It's not a toxic space like the "big 3" are (FB, Insta, Twitter). Getting rid of things for me was getting rid of those 3 mainstream social media apps. Here I most times just see lots of memes and cat pics-its a happy space, not a toxic one like the others are. Sometimes I chime in on things on Reddit, but it's not very often, and admittedly, sometimes it's hard to fight the nature of being human and wanting to have something to say. Personal growth is a journey, and not a perfect one! So if you're out there looking to put yourself in a better headspace- don't give up, keep pushing on, and do what is best for you! >

I really quite like Reddit. It has a bad rep, but here I get to see strangers genuinely be happy, random cat pics, fun trivia and memes, and even some good life tips.
It’s the only social media(if it can even be called that) I’m active on >

This site is the only social media I bother with too because I like the anonymity of it. The stupid shit that gets posted on sites like Twitter and Facebook I can see on here as people will post it on certain subs. People are generally respectful here, obviously there are exceptions because trolls exist but on the whole I find reddit to be much more suited to how I want to interact online than the other available sites.
Also, as you pointed out, there are cat pics here. Enough cat pics to keep all of us cat lovers happy for as long as we wish to look at them. I don't know how many cat subs there are on here, I think the number is pretty high, it's never too many though, that's impossible. >

Never too many cat subreddits, lol. I think I follow 12 myself that are strictly cat related, and always finding new ones. >

Cats are better than a lot of people. Not all the time, there are still some decent people around. 
I don't ever see a cat and think, oh you've made my day worse. I do think that after seeing some people, or reading whatever hateful crap they've written. Then I go back to the cats. >

I like when certain websites keep their old versions available for 'fun' and all it ends up doing is proving the old one is actually the better version:


No perpetual scrolling to screw with your limited data on a metered connection.


It doesn't beg you to sign-in or install an app just to click on the little "Read More" buttons. Which is completely optional(and more importantly: DISCREET) on the old version.


Not designed by people who are totally blind and think that half-a-sentence should take up the entirety of a 1920x1200 display and have 200+ pixels worth of padding between elements.


Isn't a minefield of javascript popups trying to tell you about the 'sale going on' .... on every single page-load. Just remember me the first time and don't bother me again all day pleasse.


 
It just makes me miss the old age more. >

Yeah, it'll be a shame when Reddit finally deletes old.reddit.com >

I’ll stop using the web version if it does that. >

Right? Did not see this coming in the Xanga, AIM and MySpace days at all. The biggest contributing factors is that everyone has a smart phone now with cameras and the ability to post, look up and say literally anything they want to. I remember how in the 2000s being able to film yourself, put it onto a computer, edit it and post it online seemed like such a strange, magical and hard thing to do. Like “how the fuck do people do that”. Unless we have a huge shift in culture, I’m assuming we will probably see some strict regulations coming down the line if things get worse. It’s gunna get weird. >

The internet was a different thing when you could only access it at the school library, or at home, or office. The internet needed physical access at x locations. You weren't just on it 24/7 like with smartphones.
Fun statistic. 2012 was the year where, for the first time, over 50% of internet users came from a mobile device. You can quite clearly mark the decline around that time and after. >

Hey now, wasn't that the end of the Mayan long count? IE:
THE END OF THE WORLD?!?!
I kid, but I think it's kind of funny in a way. >

You’re not wrong >

This might be highly unpopular, but I miss the days when a computer was a thing only for "geeks".
The smartphone kinda ruined the silicon world because it became so mainstream that it got to the point of being a huge market, hence the ads, tracking, etc.
This kind of things only happen because basically everyone has a phone on their pocket. It's amazing having all the information any human couldn't even dream of knowing right on the palm of your hands. But it makes me miss the BASIC era (BASIC as in the programming language) >

and there was this wave when pcs became pretty affordable and there was msn messenger at all, all teens had one. and they went into higher education and could use a keyboard.
now, they spend 99% of that time on a bloody phone and don't even understand what the shift key is for (number of times i see teens hit 'caps lock' then type a key then hit caps lock again drives me mad.
no idea about files or folders or vaguely how things work.
all well and good if you're just going to be a couch cabbage reacting to the many bings your phone makes at you, not so much if you want a job in IT >

I work in IT and come into contact with younger people needing help every once in a while. It blew my mind when I had to explain what the shift key does to a grown ass person. It was then that I realized these people really only use mobile devices and can barely navigate a PC just like all the old people whose excuse is that they didn’t grow up with PCs. 
So I guess my hopes that tech illiteracy will die out with the boomers where a little optimistic. >

Millenials are the only real computer native generation >

I think the 90s to 2007 was the golden years of social media and tech. We are sort of in some kind of dystopia as far as I see things. >

I miss MySpace so much. No algorithm. No fake news. No politics. Just fun.
Fortunately, there’s SpaceHey, which is 2006 MySpace with a different name. >

MySpace sucked too. I just remember you could rank your friends and everyone's page just blasted shitty music >

The friend ranking I could do without, but I didn’t mind the music. >

I work in IT. I spend millions of dollars a year of enterprise grade stuff that is supposed to run reliably 24/7/365.
It is all half baked shit that never works and the vendors ship it out barely working and fix it on the go. >

But the sales rep assured us! And he had such a full head of hair! >

The Dark Age of Technology >

Blood for the blood god! >

skull for the skull throne! >

I compare this era of internet/tech/social media to a part of history where people thought cigarettes were either mostly harmless or even somewhat good for you. Then over time people started to become more and more aware of the harm cigarettes cause. Now it is a downright fact that cigarettes are bad. We’re at that apex point where more and more people are going to become aware of the negatives internet/tech/social media cause humans. >

The thing is, smoking is a just an action in itself, and nothing good comes from it. Internet is a platform where life itself transcurs, and has positive and negative aspects, but it's unavoidable. >

I understand they’re 2 very different things. I wasn’t trying to 100% directly compare the two. It’s the similarities as time progresses where people begin to figure out something that was originally believed to not be harmful, turns out to actually be harmful. >

True. I think this is like the gold rush of the internet since I hear the previous generation being called wild west of the internet alot. Since before it was all about exploring this new land now it's all about exploiting it and cutthroat profit. You even have the Rockefellers who are making the internet versions of big oil companies like Facebook, Twitter, etc haha. >

One thing that's kinda scary is how China weaponized this. 
Tiktok is literally the perfect social media for harming the youth, and it's exclusively aimed at the west. Kids in China are allowed 40 minutes of douyin time a day and they get recommended educational and inspirational content excluively. >

Singling out Tiktok for harmful content seems disingenuous when both Instagram and YouTube are literally copying them in the multi billion worth short video format. All this talk of regulating Tiktok is just for the benefit of the American tech corps rather than the general populace. >

well yeah tiktok is the step forward for social media as a conduit to prey on children. Once we ban tiktok we can talk about reigning in American tech corps, because they surely need to be smacked down a bit as well. >

The Google-Meta-Tok-Verse will find ways more to intrude more in your life and control even more of what you see and think. They're not done yet. Not even close. >

Say “more” again. >

I want to say the "dark age" of tech probably started with the proliferation of smartphones. That's probably about the time we kissed the last of our privacy goodbye, too.   We're probably 20 years in, living naked in glass houses.
Don't get me wrong- I love being able to bust out my phone and look up information when I need it, use it to stream whatever music my heart desires, and make handsfree calls from my vehicle. It's fun to go on Reddit and fuck with people when I'm bored, too.
Having grown up during the 1980s, I fondly remember life pre-tech. I could write a book on all the ways life was different, as could anyone from my generation. >

Since I’m a younger guy and only vaguely familiar with life before all this, at least as far as actually living it goes, would you say the “proliferation of smartphones” is a net positive or net negative to life? It feels like an unambiguous net negative to me, but maybe that also just comes with the angst of growing up. I’m interested to hear your perspective on it. >

It's such a massive net positive, honestly. Just a matter of people actively seeking out detrimental news and content and looping back into their perception of all that is bad now. That's before we're considering people actually and fully leveraging this stuff to live with disabilities of many, many colors, we're talking hundreds of millions of people who truly use their phones as prostheses. Google Lens for blind folks alone is such an inconceivable thing, we just magically put super intelligent agents into tiny boxes and make them spell out what we would be seeing.
There always are going to be drawbacks with anything novel, but man, you have to deliberately ignore all the good tech today does to think it is going for net negative. Not even remotely close, the Internet is a pretty good and needed equalizer, even before the great industrial revolution of the 2020s about to hit us like seven brick walls. 
Tech is barely to blame, it's bad policymaking and shitty assholes ruining it for everyone. Which intricately links into each other, of course, but that won't change the prospect of good, beneficial usecases, of which there are so very many.
A concept as old as time too, people always were skeptical about things that are unmitigated benefits for us. >

agreed, I don’t think people understand the sheer extent of the gas lighting or the role something as seemingly innocuous as internet karma plays in shaping society. We’re so far gone, the only thing that could save us would be draconian social media regulations that would probably just doom us in other ways >

I desperately wish I could get rid of my smart phone. But I can’t. It’s just too convenient. There is no way I’m going back to printing out directions on a computer >

The smartphone isn’t the main problem. You can turn off useless notifications and even delete apps that don’t make your life any better. Navigation apps, however, do make your life better. >


The smartphone isn’t the main problem. You can turn off useless notifications and even delete apps that don’t make your life any better. Navigation apps, however, do make your life better.

People don't understand that the concept of self-control doesn't have to literally be self-control in the sense of wrestling with your urges. You know how we constantly advise parents to install software to limit app use and screen time for their kids? Yeah, you can do that to yourself too, bros. Just make up a random password for the app locker and hide it in a lockbox or give it to a friend to keep.
I think the whole thing is a big excuse. I think people know they could limit themselves, but don't really want to change on a deeper level because they're scared of the ensuing silence after muting all of their socials. >

We only seen the beginning. This dystopia has just gotten started. >

The wealthy are creating a black mirror world and theres nothing you can do about it... >

It's a rollercoaster leaving the station and everyone is strapped in. >

Currently, the entire industry is tearing itself down. And it’s taking whole companies with it. I’m a cybersecurity analyst, and I’ve been tracking advertising fraud/crime. 
In order to understand where we are now, we must understand how we got here. 
2000-2009: The internet is for young people and college students. It’s largely seen as a vessel for truth. Most platform services are free, advertising is meta, running a website is low cost
2006-2010: User created content as a form of entertainment is born. Companies catch on that users are flocking to the internet to see this original content and they want to be part of the user experience. 
2010-2014: This the advertising boom era. Lots of orgs you know and trust have finally moved online and onboarded all their services to the digital marketplace. Advertising platforms spin up and organize their infrastructure.
This is also the era for the birth of affiliate marketing  aka influencers who seek to skim a little off the top. This industry is brand spanking new. Major brands onboard affiliates to sell their products. 
It is difficult to tell if you are watching a paid sponsorship or original content during this time. It’s like the golden age of television, part II. 
2014-2016: Ads become intrusive as your favorite platforms that used to be free are now cluttered with ads. People start low budget content for the sake of cashing in ad dollars. Where there’s dollars, there will be crime. This is also the dawn of organized e-crime. Ransomware, etc. The dark web is maturing. 
2016-2020: The US Election and covid help mature the disinformation age. Russia and China see the opportunity to sow dissent via online advertising and misleading content. They have never had such a window into American culture as they now have with the internet. Their campaigns are quite successful. 
2020-Current: Remember back in 2010, when all of those companies onboarded affiliates? Well during the chaos of the election, most of those affiliates were crowded out by the disinformation campaigns. No one wanted to read anonymous blogs or watch product demos on social media. They all wanted to have their brains washed. As a result, these affiliates and influencers are de-platformed. 
Now that’s all fine and good, but it’s a security nightmare. Ill explain with an example: 
The year is 2014. Sharon is an influencer. She tests cleaning products on Instagram. She has 200,000 subscribers and growing. Many big brand soap companies, like Soap Inc, have onboarded Sharon as their affiliate. In order to track the sales leads that Sharon drives to the Soap Inc. website, Sharon has bought a domain called “SharonLuvsSoap.com”. Soap Inc. whitelists sharonLuvsSoap.com on their network and pay her per customer click. Every time a customer buys soap through Sharon’s website, they can see Sharon referred them in the network traffic. Their network will never block traffic if it’s coming from SharonLuvsSoap.com. Sharon links her site in her insta posts and she’s doing quite well. She has also monetized the webisite and serves ads on it. It’s all automated so Sharon can run her business even while she’s doing soap demos in the Caribbean on vacation. Life is good. 
But in 2016, something is happening. People are unfollowing/not engaging Sharon’s content because they are only interested in watching political videos. Sharon realizes this and changes her content from cleaning products to “vaccines cause autism”. She now monetizes her content directly from the social media platform. 
As a result, in 2018, the website, SharonLuvsSoap.com is abandoned. And Soap Inc. has decided they no longer want to be affiliated with Sharon because her political views are damaging their brand so they stop paying her for traffic. 
There are a few scenarios for what happens next that I won’t dive into because it’s so complex but the important thing is that sharonluvssoap.com is no longer owned by Sharon. She does not renew the lease on the domain. So a domain parking service buys Sharonluvssoap.com and redirects ad traffic to it. They get paid for the traffic going to the site now. 
These parked domains look like this. We’ve all seen them. 
A parked domain is like a parked car. It can be vandalized. Many of these parked sites serve malicious ads. This is called malvertising. 
Remember how Soap Inc. gave Sharon’s site special privileges on their network, paid her for leads, but then quietly dropped her like a bad habit?  Well they forgot to remove her website from their affiliate program. They’ve actually never remove anyone from their affiliate program. As far as they are concerned, any traffic is “people who might buy soap”, so why would they shut the door? 
As a result of the door being left opened, cyber criminals are exploiting this. It’s too complex to get into details, but just know that this is becoming a huge vector for fraud and abuse right now. This ecosystem is exploiting affiliate/brand relationships and draining companies of ad revenue budgets. It’s driving customers away from brands. It’s deploying malware/ransomware. Soon it will drive companies out of business. And they will never know what hit them because affiliate programs are run by marketing teams, who don’t understand the technical intricacies of cyber fraud. They think the “post covid economy” is to blame, so this is the excuse they give as they lay off more workers. 
What happens when you abandon a whole town? Criminals move into to that existing infrastructure and exploit it. The ad infrastructure built in influencing is crumbling. 
We will see less misinformation and influencing. But more malicious for the time being. 
It’s fascinating to watch. >

Eternal September is still plaguing us >

Don’t forget: you must have an account and include a payment method to start the free trial for everything! Oh and you bet they’re selling that info to a million spam bots. >

If you have an old prepaid visa you can give them that info. They're not gonna try to charge anything, right?! /s >

I hate it that you are constantly getting content thrown in your face. Big franchises pump out content just to have content. Everywhere needs to be ads. Apps constantly push notifications about stuff I might be interested in. Clickbait title Battles just to get the extra click on your shitty written article. Quality drops.
Its just too much. But on the other hand I browse daily on reddit. >

This social media thing is truly as addictive as hard drugs. I have had people walk into me on the street because they can’t look up from their phone for 3 seconds! It seems to be worldwide. Just as bad in the US as in Europe and I would not be surprised to find that this is true in every part of the world where smart phones exist. And I doubt there is a solution. >

If I ever walk into you in the street, I’m really sorry, I’m on the third book in the Mistborn series after putting it off way too long. 😅 >

There's a reason things like Black Mirror and Blade Runner are considered predictions of the future. >

Well to be fair black mirror seems to be late in the game since other countless books came first  about this stuff >

I'm at the point now of not taking my phone into others homes when I visit. 
I just leave it in the car, come join me in this effort and change people who think they need there phone on them at all times. 
Happy holidays everyone! >

The only time I bring out my phone when I'm hanging out with others is to quickly look something up or to like add someone new I've met as a Facebook friend or whatever. And the people I hang out with have that same mindset. Just gotta find the right people, the ones you can sit around a campfire with and happily chat to for hours or simply enjoy the night sky in silence together. >

You sound like a great friend >

Hmm, the Dark Age of Technology.
For the Empruh! >

>online news that used to be free is now a subscription
FYI use archive.today to get around most news sites paywalls. Doing so is also extremely important for preserving stories. There have been many cases of news sites stealth editing their articles because they let the mask slip a little too far, if someone archives it before they edit though they'll never be able to get away with it. 
Another benefit is not giving them any advertising money when you click on an article or (more importantly) when you share. Sharing an archived article saves anyone that clicks on it from being assaulted by 20 ads at once. >

Ad block everything always. No exceptions no mercy.
It's armor for your mind, sure there's still cracks in it everywhere but it beats raw dogging the internet 100% of the time. >

I always liked to call it the "Misinformation Age" as opposed to the "Information Age." >

Oh aren't you so clever. >

Dark age of technology? I smell warhammer 40k >

FOR THE EMPEROR >

I don’t disagree with your assessment of the problems, but the “dark ages” were characterized by a lack of advancement and distribution of philosophy and art. It would be more accurate to say we are transitioning into the silver age of tech. The golden age saw the creation of the computer and the interconnected world, but it ended with the creation of social media and all the problems you mentioned. Once we figure out how to solve those problems we’ll enter a phase of rapid development tempered by a mistrust of corporate power. >

'We are now in the dark age of technology'
Me: Laughs in Warhammer 40k. >

to add:  one of the only good things about the internet, Google, is now virtually useless as SEO has completely obliterated any functionality it had in terms of presenting relevant search results >

Came here to say that… >

If someone spends all their day on social media, of course they will get this opinion. You can voluntary get off of it any moment but you know you’re addicted. Find some hobbies. The real world is still doing their regular chores. >

I agree.  Fucking passwords, ads, I check my phone every 10 fucking minutes.  What have we done!!??  It’s unstoppable.  Hopefully with any luck some awesome hacker will kibosh the entire system.  I would love that.  And you know what?  We wouldn’t know exactly what happened right away.  Because the internet would be fucked. >

Mute all your notifications and install an Ad blocker. You aren't powerless. >

I’ll have to look in to an ad blocker. I already turn off every notification. >


I’ll have to look in to an ad blocker. I already turn off every notification.

It makes an enormous difference! Every once in a while, I will have to disable it for a specific site and I forget to re-enable it. That lasts only until I go to a single website. Ads are so obtrusive that I don't know how people can even navigate websites without an ad blocker! It's crazy. >

It's all very frustrating. If I do business with a company ONE TIME they will send me 3000 ads per year for the rest of my life. Online or instore, it doesn't really matter, it's the same. Companies want to harass you with ads through every possible vector to the very edge of your tolerance and there's nothing you can do about it except check out of society completely. >

Just block ads, Jesus Christ this lack of self-accountability is the really weird part about all this
Blaming tech for detracting people from using tech for the benefit of making tech better is a really goddamn strange concepts, but it's not exactly obscure either. Literally all you have to do is ask google how to avoid ads and that'll be the end of it - which, to be fair, should always be an opt-in thing with tangible benefits as a reward, much like Brave's system. >

10 years ago a person who said our phones are listening to us would’ve been called a conspiracy theorist now it’s just kind of a thing everyone knows but doesn’t talk about. It’s unreal how blatant it is too. I was just talking to my mom on the phone last night about her needing a new laptop, I hadn’t looked one up online, just simply talked about it. No less than ten minutes after our conversation I go on YouTube and the first ad I get is one for some new Lenovo laptop coming out. Well fuck you Lenovo and fuck your laptops too. This isn’t the only example I have either. I was telling one of my friends about how I needed new brake pads for my car and I said I was gonna go to O’Reillys to get them. I get out to my car and as soon as my phone connects to my Bluetooth radio I get a small push notification from google maps that says, “you are 15 minutes away from O’Reillys auto parts” I didn’t look them up on google or on maps, simply talked about going there to get my brake pads. It’s so unbelievably blatant lol. It’s almost like I’m expected to say, “oh wow, how convenient”. Phones and the access to the world that we have today is a blessing and a curse. >

That's not how it works. You are under estimating the ad network. Your phone isn't constantly transmitting mic output and it certainly isn't listening for keywords like "O'Reilly".
However, the ad network does know your family, their searches, all previously purchased products, and so much more. It's not the fact that they couldn't listen to your mic. Surely, it's possible. It's the fact that they don't need to. >

I agree with most of what you said, but... the mic definitely does listen. I'm not saying there's a human being on the other end listening, but it is WAY too specific to not hear keywords. I mean, why wouldn't they implement that?
Everyone blindly (myself included) accepts microphone and camera access, and with how accurate speech to text software is, I'm sure it can absolutely detect certain brand names and the like. >

No, no it doesn’t. It would be trivially easy to prove this was happening by examining network traffic. We’re all genuinely just that predictable with the amount of data they have on us. That’s the real insidious part. 
Plus, I dunno about Android but iOS will tell you to the point of being annoying when an app is using the mic and/or camera. >

Well I guess I don't have proof of it, but I've specifically said words/brands that I would never buy, then shortly after been advertised those things. >

Hard agree with everything needing an app. I got a pair of bose qc 45s for Christmas, and to use them, you need an app? I tried to get around intalling it but couldn't figure out a way. They're literally headphones. Why would I need an app for them? >

I have an app for a meat thermometer. O.o >

Google changing from this amazing fucking tool, I can find anything, learn anything, etc. to a “here is a page to buy it”.  That was my final fucking line.  
Wikipedia.  You stay strong you sweet angel.  (I don’t donate because my ass is broke and I still donate to wiki). >

Lol wikipedia is so politicized it isn't good anything popular. Great for obscure stuff though mostly. >

'Wikipedia is politicized'
Brought to you by 'u/unions_are_bad'
Cant make this up >

Not unpopular >

Unpopular outside of Reddit imo >

I think we are riding the wave of a technological singularity. I'm relatively speaking not much older and I've seen several technologies born and die already. 
What came after the dark ages was the period of enlightenment, right?  Or am I just being hopeful? >

Historically yes. But IMO thr singularity could easily be terrifying and dystopian instead of a new golden age of enlightenment >

I agree especially on car tech. We don’t need features that will incentivize bad driving. People will become reliant on those auto brake, lane assist, adaptive cruise control, and the worst one, auto pilot. Then when one fails, they won’t know what to do and will kill somebody. 
I work in the auto industry and a customer was outraged that they hit a tree because their car didn’t stop for them and thought Ford had to pay for their repairs due to “faulty equipment”. >

I actually kinda disagree. We are actually loving I. The golden age of technology. There has never been a better time to be alive in the sense that we have more available to us then ever before. The negative side effects of this technology are born out of the shortcomings of human beings, not the technology itself. >

Is it me or is it getting really difficult to find shit on Amazon?
Just Wading through a mountain of cheap knockoffs and overpriced garbage to try and find Something specific.
Even when I know what I'm looking. Search for a brand name and a model number, nope, first page is junk and it's hiding on the second page. >

Another popular opinion!
This sub fucking sucks!! >

Fifteen million merits has never hit so hard. >

Eh, speak for yourself. I am increasingly pleased with how tech improves my daily life. Half the problems you listed are easily avoidable and the other half aren't even really issues, just boomer apprehension about tech that holds no weight in reality. >

You sound like you spend too much time on social media >

Not just that but tech has hit a plateau. Nothing is actually new anymore we are just making it a tiny bit faster. Every cpu, and gpu is just a tiny bit faster then the previous one, none of them bring actual new technology. >

Not even to mentioned everything getting automated. Hard enough with regular jobs getting taken but even creativity such as art, writing, and music with generating A.I...
I feel like I have no clue what to pursue in life anymore. >

Actual Art and actual creative ideas about a written stroy will not so soon be replaced by AI if at all. It's also often only a big buzzword in marketing, with no actual substance. Most advances that AI is responsible for is in highly specialized fields in science and industry.
If you want to become a writer or composer now, this will not at all be influenced by AI stealing your job inyour lifetime. I am 99.9% sure about that. >

Every issue mentioned here isn't really caused by tech. It's caused by people not having enough self control to not spend all day on social media and noone being bothered to check facts. Ads are annoying but it's a pretty small price to pay for basically every song ever or every video or thousands of hours of films and shows. People generally don't hate each other, they are just indifferent, but it's always been like that if you are outside of a person's "group" (for want of a better word). 
Idk if this is a golden age but it's pretty good compared to what it was before. >

The “self control” argument is dogshit. The point is that it’s literally designed by psychologists to be addictive and we should probably all have a problem with it. Not to mention when these things are being marketed and pedaled to kids, the self control argument falls even more flat. >


The “self control” argument is dogshit. The point is that it’s literally designed by psychologists to be addictive and we should probably all have a problem with it. Not to mention when these things are being marketed and pedaled to kids, the self control argument falls even more flat.

It's different from drugs because with drugs you can't just install something to prevent you from taking them with the click of a button... >

We are currently living in a « cyberpunk-type » era and we can’t do anything about it. >

And without any of the cool cyberpunk aesthetics smh >

That’s the most disappointing thing about that >

I really like to say, "We live in a modern society, but our body is the same as those a thousand or two years ago." As someone who enjoys archeology, it's crazy to find out just how similar we are and how little we psychologically evolved. Our species are very unused to living in such large societies and using such equipment.
Suicide rates are higher in large cities.
The rate of depression and other mental illnesses is higher in large cities.
The rate of violent crime is higher in large cities.
The rate of hate crimes is higher in large cities.
So on and so on. This observation came from a war veteran who explained this very primitive part of us. We were meant to be living in small populations of up to sixty or so individuals, living in hunter-gatherer lifestyles and in dangerous conditions. As horrible as this sounds, people will click and feel happiness and brotherhood beyond anything in groups like these. In fact, there was a problem with people integrating themselves into indigenous populations in the early stages of America and refusing to leave. This is my hypothesis as to why everyone is angry and hates each other, we're living in a world our bodies are literally not suited for and it's going to take a lot to find a way out of it.
Edit: Please note the fact that the sources of this may be very flawed as pointed out by one the replies. This again is just a hypothesis and not meant to protray any hate to cities. >

Oh... well thanks for the fact check. I guess I was wrong, I didn't mean to offend anyone if that's what it sounded like. I was really just picking out bits of information I remembered from a Ted Talk, but the internal validity isn't as strong as I thought. Again, it was just a hypothesis on the topic at hand, I wasn't trying to hate on cities. >

No, it didn't come off like you were aiming at people but that the basis for the idea was from a bad source.
It's a common trope in certain circles that cities are just cesspools where nothing good ever happens, so I just happened to have the counter-evidence on hand. >

I see, thank you for your valuable response. Do you think I should delete my original comment? I feel like it could mislead people considering my sources may have been wrong >

I don't usually recommend deleting comments - maybe add an edit? >

And Ai art. Remember AI art. >

I'll take the dark ages of tech and the asshole Elitists feeble minded attempt to control my mind, over those damn librarians, and their Dewey decimal system any day.
As far my addiction to technology goes, I'll kick it when, yall decide to do it too! >

Nah, it can (and will) get much, much worse. >

Agreed. I hope this opinion isn't unpopular because I'm tired of all the fooking bullshiet. >

I agree. A lot of this tech has also led to poor communication skills. I'm sorry, but if you're fluent in English, but intentionally use poor grammar, I won't take you seriously. >

The internet early years were amazing, the likes we will probably never experience again. It felt like we've reached the future and anything was possible with the world's knowledge at our fingertips. There's nothing wrong with the World wide web it's social media and greedy corporations that ruined it >

I agree with this message. Welcome to my hell. >

I agree. Can not determine if this is an unpopular opinion though. >

"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel" >

I think this is pretty accurate >

I fully agree with you. I downvoted because this is not an unpopular opinion. >

If might see one ad a week, if that, and I usually click on it on purpose to trigger a reward in a game that's not abusive about it.
If you're seeing ads on anything, you have the wrong version of the app installed. >

The increase in deaths related to distracted driving, or being on one’s phone while driving etc, is honestly horrifying. >

Perceived and planned obsolescence both work hand in hand with today's tech for sure. >

Accept cookies? Sign in with Google? Accept our privacy policy? Pop up ad, pop up ad, pop up ad, Do you want to chat to one of our chatbots? The internet is dying, certainly. >

The existence of a tech Dark Age implies the coming of a tech Renaissance.
Here's hoping! >

No, we are in the dark age of legislation.
Tech becoming insane is just another symptom. >

Ohhhh no, man, it’s gonna get so much worse. >

Needing a subscription in your $80K car so you can warm the seats. >

Not to mention the upcoming loss of knowledge with more and more info stored in servers and the cloud instead of physical media.
Not to mentions the loss of forum websites for knowledge about trivial stuff. Do you remember when youd have a question or problem and a 8 year old forum post sorted that out for you? Now all that same info is kept on discord servers that arent archived/can be deleted at the whim of a developer or community >

The appliance thing is a real problem. We have a 3 year old fridge that I ha e had to fix 3 times and a dryer that is 5 years old I've fixed 4 times. I remember things like that getting replaced because the outside was a little rusty but still worked fine after 20 years of service. 
Not to mention the new shit is 4 times the cost. >

Agree 100%. Not unpopular, but a good analysis of modern life. >

"Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time" >

My only argument would be that things arent lasting long because thats what the mfg's want, not because we're technically incapable of reliability/durability. >

fucking capitalism. >

+1000 >

Worst thing are smart TVs. Literally made for pushing even more ads and collecting data. Would buy a non smart TV if there would be one >

It’s the episode of black mirror where ads are on everything. >

I've definitely noticed how uncourteous people are these days. So much so, that I've thought about making a post here :(. People are so unhappy. >

It’ll get even worse in the future. >

I totally agree with this post. >

Seems like a popular opinion,  I read it all the time. >

My opinion on tech is that we should only use it for medical/construction purposes. Everything else is probably more than unnecessary, nay harmful. >

Man those ads about millennials who are making 200k a year and how glorious and smart they are, and like way at the bottom of the article it casually mentions an inheritance. It’s like no shit I’d be making 200k a year if I inherited 3 properties to rent in California and Colorado too… >

Let's see...

We got two Smart TVs in the house with a YouTube app that would happily crash after an ad. If you want to continue watching. You gotta quit the app, reopen, and find that video. Can't find it, fuck you I guess. I guess they shouldn't call it TVs anymore, call it Mini Billboard, because that's what it is now.
We have an electric stove that has a mind of its own. You'd put the power/intensity at number #3. You turn your back for like a minute, and after that, it has raised itself to the maximum (at #5. If I didn't see it coming, I'd already burnt whatever I was cooking. This wouldn't happen on a good old-fashioned one with knobs. 
Then we have a washing machine with touch sensitive controls. I'd find myself automatically turning off the damn thing, whenever I had to lean over the thing, just add/remove clothes in the middle of the cycle. Guess what? I had to set the damn thing again. Same thing with the last paragraph, this wouldn't happen with knobs. 
We had elections last year. Thanks to misinformation through social media. Instead of voting for someone whose competent, who actually knows what they're doing, they actually voted for some bozo to lead the country. And what's sad about our current leader, his father used to be this country's dictator. He stole a lot and killed a lot of innocent people during his time. 

So yeah, we're definitely on the dark times now. I wish I was born in the 40s up to the 60s. Sadly I was born in the 90s. >

Well you wouldn't want to born in the 40's if you were black, like Jesus Christ life is 1000% better nowadays >

Get an ad blocker, this is probably the only time you can do so much on the internet unfettered by pay walls and someone peaking in your asshole as long as you know how to protect yourself. Personally I have a VPN set up that connects any device I have to my home network so I can have safe encryption from anywhere, then I have a dns level adblocker set up to block ads on my devices that can't have their own adblocker like my phone, or my tablet. >

The internet sucks. Time to create the Next Big Thing. >

And we'll call it Outside™.