221125 - I HATE TODAYS CAPITALISM

recently i watched benoftheweeks youtube video about how everything that costs money is getting worse, and also jaidenanimations youtube video about the same topic. i want to rant about my wholehearted agreement!

i imagine, 20 years ago, buying something went a little like this:

you go to a store, ask for a product, they will give it to you after paying for it, you go home, set it up in 10 minutes, and there are little to no problems from that moment forward.

today, if you want to buy something, it goes like this:

go to a store, ask for a product, the underpaid 16 yr old cashier tells you its only available online. you go home, waste 10 minutes making an account, scroll through the website past the millions of ads and pop ups, order your product, it arrives a week later, you spend an hour trying to get it working, then you have to get an app to keep working it, connect it to bluetooth and wifi, pay a subscription, update it 100 times, just for the product to be mediocre at best.

karl marx is rolling in his grave. how did we get to this? let me tell you about my 20 year old ipod. my dad bought it in 2005, its been sitting in our storage shed for about 3 years, my dad found it and let me have it. in order to get this device working, i have to charge it up, connect it to my computer to remove my dads stuff and then put some of my songs in it, and thats pretty much it. i dont have to subscribe to it, i dont have to update it every month, theres no one in my ipod trying to sell me things, all i have to do is connect it to my computer so i can put music on it and then after disconnecting it will play my music perfectly! the performance is flawless and the screen is never damaged even though i drop it all the time.

my iphone 12 on the other hand is the most useless piece of junk ever. “you have low storage!” okay, ill open my music app and see what songs i can get rid of! nope, my music app kicks me out. ill go delete some photos then! it doesnt let me do that. ill just back up my phone to icloud and see if that helps. “you cannot back up your iphone because you do not have enough storage”…. OK?? literally what am i meant to do? ive deleted every app that isn’t essential. i just need it to google things, play music, message people and take pictures. at this point, it only needs to message people, and it cant even be competent in doing that. it also has random cracks all over the screen that i have no idea where they came from.

tell me why an ipod from 2005 that hasnt been touched for probably over a decade works flawlessly, but my iphone that is hardly 5 years old implodes after the smallest demand? im not sure about how stuff inflation works, but im sure the price of the ipod wouldve been much less than the iphone 12. what are we doing? we are being charged more for companies to make their products worse!

lets turn back the clock… there are little to no objects that require an ai-powered app thats connected to the internet. when i buy a toaster, all it needs to do is toast my bread. we shouldnt be able to buy subscriptions and have an app for simple devices like toasters. the only thing that needs to connect to the internet is a phone/ipad/computer. i should be able to buy something and think “i really got my bang for my buck” without needing to pay a mega corporation 8 dollars every month.

NO i dont wanna sign in NO i dont wanna buy pro NO i dont wanna give you 8 bucks a month for no ads NO i dont want to update NO i dont want to download the app just let me use your service!

its not just technology, it feels like everything is getting worse. we get charged 35 dollars for a product that is worth 5 and the workers in the sweatshop that made the product get paid a couple of cents, if they get paid at all. the people who make all the money are the CEOs who sit around all day making billions without having to lift a finger. meanwhile their workers bust their ass for 12 hours working and can barely scrape together enough money to feed themselves for a week. not to mention they will probably be replaced by an incompetent AI system in a year. 

anyways thats my rant over ^3^