You must log in or # to comment.
It’s relentless. Every fucking thing is made wrong. Design, which is the practice of making things easy to use or understand, not look pretty, is dead.
Late stage capitalism
Also early stage capitalism as it happens. The middle period can go alright if they’re absolutely terrified of being guillotined.
That’s not just America
If any government had any god damn balls, advertising would be heavily regulated and your personal data would be wholly under your control.
Amen, brotha! I am so sick of being solicited, constantly.
…and your personal data would be wholly under your control.
But then, how can the IC spy on you without a warrant.
Capitalism
Innovation these days is just “what if I was able to somehow insert myself into this already functioning service and skim some money off it”.
And now AI is inserting itself in the insertion!
Just ask AI to make your Door Dash order for your Pizza delivery driver.
Using your Account® Account™ (one Account™ for all your accounts) in the App® App™ (one App™ for all your apps)!
Can you imagine if there was somebody out there so monumentally stupid that they thought that an app, let’s call it “X” hypothetically, that did everything was a good idea?
He got the idea from the Chinese. All you need is complete control by the government to force it upon everybody. So fascism, which is exactly what they are working towards.
Corporations don’t invent new products or improve existing ones anymore. The R&D needed costs too much along with creating the tooling to manufacture and distribute products. Usually quite the opposite, they look how to cheapen products’ construction and durability while charging more to increase the profit margin.
It’s far easier to make a product a subscription, or desirable features a subscription, sell commonly needed add-ons separately at ridiculously inflated costs (like printer ink or power tool batteries) or as you said, insert middle-men to extract fees for the convenience of their existing between the customer and the desired product.
Welcome to the world brought to you by corporations, who exist to extract wealth, for the owners, who do not have a limit to their desire for more power, to feed their malignant narcissism. Selfishness on a grand scale is the only reason for the enshitification of existence.
We let the MBAs take over. Our culture has been consumed by the idea that it’s ok to say and do absolutely anything in the pursuit of a dollar
Thank Reagan.
When he deregulated the banks he gave a blank check to a bunch of third raters who’d gone to small time banks because they knew they couldn’t cut it anywhere else.
Thank the people who vote for a piece of shit multiple times just to ‘own the libs’
If I ever invent a time machine, I’m making a few pit stops on my way back in time to cap Hitler, and Milton Friedman and his friends are on the list. He’s the misanthrope who popularized the idea that the only duty of a company’s leadership is to deliver profit, and any other pursuit is a disservice to the shareholders. This is known as the Friedman Doctrine.
i think you could make a case for Edward Bernays too
Added to the stops. This is going to be a busy fieldtrip through time.
I’ve ranted about this for years. I’ve had a bad streak of luck the past 8 years, and everything I’ve tried to do to improve my situation has just become an increasingly horrible cesspool of predatory horseshit. Every computer application, service, university, and social program is so much worse than they were 10-15 years ago, and I hate it.
“Enshittification” better be the word of the year.
Equally fitting if the word of the year is “Clauding™: to leverage Anthropic™ intelligence tooling to simplify your life and maximize you potential. Brought to you by Anthropic™! Get your free trial today!”
And now we have ten years of fucked up young adults who think this is how it’s always been.
It’s literally the bad future from BttF2
Complete with Trump-as-Biff-as-Trump.
Biff wasn’t a pedophile who murdered kids though.
He was literally ready to murder Marty
… that we know of.
I mean, Trump didn’t fuck or murder children onscreen either.
Or maybe he did and it’s not public.
I mean, Putin probably has those tapes to hang over his little puppet.
I have to say when the infamous Tucker Carlson and Shawn Ryan, spec ops guy, start saying what the public is thinking and start admitting their mistakes of who they endorsed and the error of their ways… then I think yeah we’re fucked.
I really liked Shawn Ryan’s interviews because he definitely has that read the room personality and matches it. It’s interesting to see him actually talk about what he actually thinks. In some of his recent videos he straight up said that yeah we’ve been lied to and everything is a scam. I think it shows how vulnerable we are as a society. We want to believe what these politicians are saying their going to do and in reality they don’t do anything or make it worse.
Capitalism bitch! Where the ONLY metric for anything or anyone is how much money it can make.
I love when people act like the alternative to capitalism is zero private business and full communism. It’s like, no, the thing before the -ism is simply the thing it centers. Capitalism, as you say, centers capital but after that it can take several forms, all of which suck major ass as they reward nearly any behaviour which makes more money. Even objectively awful shit can just be paid off, it’s insane.
Rent seeking behavior, the thing capitalism is best at :’)
Sure wish Americans would do something about this so the rest of the world doesn’t have to suffer.
Let’s not pretend the rest of the world is so much better. I’ll concede the US is winning the race to the bottom. This is the winning Trump was talking about.
The rest of the world is largely getting their cues from the US, though. I wish they wouldn’t, but with the massive presence of US media and popular culture, the propaganda hits more than just the US.
with the massive presence of US media and popular culture
Look to the billionaires, the Epstein class, for who’s to blame for that.
Almost a quarter of American adults have never traveled abroad. Only another quarter has been to 5 or more countries. Americans, by and large, only understand the world outside of their own country in the terms American media presents it to them.
A quarter going to 5 or more countries feels incredibly generous.
Hell a quarter never traveling also feels like a huge under estimate.
Granted, unlike, Europe, we aren’t all a 30 minute drive from another country.
It’s not a quarter of all people, just adults and Canada and Mexico are both pretty easy for a lot of Americans. Plus cruises and/or resort trips to the Caribbean and there’s plenty of people who have “been to another country” without ever having really experienced another country.
This is so true…so many have zero world view
I’d have to drive almost 1500 miles to reach a “foreign country” (I’m not counting Canada, which I’ve visited a bunch of times) and the structure of our government means all foreign relations goes through the Fed over which I have negligible influence. And that’s coming from someone with a dim view of patriotism. We are physically and geopolitically isolated in a lot of ways, not least of which is the cost (material and opportunity) of travel. It’s a lot of work for no obvious benefit to keep abreast of current affairs around the world.
We have a similar problem here in Australia. But because of our low population. And compulsory voting. It’s not able to manifest as much in the elected governments… Yet. There is definitely a push by outside groups and a few scallywags here trying to make it like the US.
But we continue to push back….Mostly.
AUKUS was the latest version of us failing in the pursuit of sense. Thankfully the US will fuck up the whole thing so bad it might just work out alright in a decade or two.
A criticism of “MAGA” I have made is, “why settle for great when we were amazing?”
Haha! Sure. You believe what you want to. But the fact is that there are countries in the world that are actively battling this scammy rubbish. Through governments and local leadership. What is concerning however, is the attitude that scams are just now a part of the accepted narrative. When they should be anything but.
Take the Nigerian scams of the early 2000’s. They were successfully fought against on all levels. And have now pretty much dropped off.
Just because your country has thrown in the metaphorical towel. Don’t lump the rest of us with you.
You’re allowed to do your own thing ya know.
Unless you do your own thing too much and the CIA takes interest.
Check out the UK.
It will get worse. And China will take advantage of it, they’re not stupid, it’s a no brainer when you have all of the manufacturing and industry and your competition has none.
We set a trap and fell in it
I’m hoping we get to see this taken to a peak of comic absurdity and historical irony. I’m hoping one day we see the Chinese Navy blockade and target London. Why? To force the UK to accept Chinese fentanyl imports.
