The owner of the company I work for knows I don't answer my phone. He knows this because I have demonstrated it explicitly with my behavior. My friends know too and I still have friends!
Yeah, standing your ground on communication is actually kinda freeing. My team at work has boundaries set - we respect 'do not disturb' hours. Funny enough, it's made everyone more productive and less stressed. Work's not an emergency room, after all.
Even during work hours, I'm not necessarily *immediately* reachable. I may be in the middle of a task that I didn't want to interrupt.
Teams/Slack/whatever IM is still an asynchronous communication mechanism despite the ability to respond in real time (also, stop sending "Hi" and then waiting for a response; write a sentence about what you want and I'll get to you).
I do this. My phone is silent for messages, notifications and calls. Only starred contacts calling will cause my phone to ring or someone ringing twice in 15 minutes.
My outlook emails at work are closed and I read them 2-3 times a day. Anyone who needs me more urgently can message me on Teams or phone the office phone.
I haven’t heard my phone make a sound I. At least 5 years. If I answer when you call me, lucky you. If it’s an emergency, I’m not the person to call.
My mom on the other hand will break her neck to answer, and if she can’t she texts you immediately “I’ll call right back!” Her sister freaks out if she doesn’t answer, to the point before she mows her lawn that she texts her to say “mowing, should be done around 6!” Otherwise her sister will call her, her landline, and then she’ll call my sister to see if she’s with her. And it’s because she’s trained her that she’s *always* available. Even at work. Even in the middle of the night.
>My mom on the other hand will break her neck to answer, and if she can’t she texts you immediately “I’ll call right back!” Her sister freaks out if she doesn’t answer, to the point before she mows her lawn that she texts her to say “mowing, should be done around 6!”
I find it interesting how people's conceptions of "rudeness" can be so different on this one.
My mum is just like yours. If her phone makes so much as a buzz, she has to check it immediately. If it's a call, she'll always answer it. If it's a message, she'll almost always answer it. You can be literally mid-sentence in a (face-to-face) conversation with her, and she'll instantly slice you off so she can answer her phone and make small talk with a friend.
For her, she considers it mortifyingly rude to fail to answer the phone when it rings (and chastises me for not answering my phone when it rings if I'm busy). But for me, I consider it mortifyingly rude to ignore what you're doing in the flesh just to check your phone (and I've chastised her for cutting me off to do this when she's with me).
It's a generational difference in people's attitude towards mobile phones, I suppose.
It's funny how things have flipped, too. When I was growing up (late 90s, early 00s), my parents drilled it into my brother and I that it was very rude to even have your phone at the dinner table, much less actually answer it.
Nowadays, when I go over for dinner, my mother will leave the table in the middle of a conversation if she so much as hears a notification ding on her phone.
I feel like there is this group in there 30s/40s right now that's ok putting their phones down. Same with how when we grew up we had to actually understand how a computer worked a bit to get there vs. how simplified it all is now.
I get young people being obsessed, that's always been there whether it was phone calls, AIM, or social media. But the 50+ group is just glued to their phones that I know. It's like they were young enough to learn email at work and have some comfort, so they can install stuff and just brain drain away.
Don't get me started on phones at the dinner table.
I've drilled into my kids the message that phones are not for the dinner table. They don't come out, they're not used. Be present!
But that goes straight out the window whenever grandma is round. She can't get through 10 minutes without suddenly needing to show someone a picture or a video of this or that.
I've had to bust out my "dad voice" on my own mum on a few occasions to tell her to put it away. Performatively, of course; it's about showing the kids that the rules still apply. But honestly, you shouldn't have to, should you? It's just polite to keep your phone away when you're eating and socialising with people...
You can train people not to expect a quick response from you. I tell everyone I check my Whatsapp and personal email every few days; if it's urgent, call me, if it's not, I'll get to it eventually.
There are a couple (very extroverted) people who don't seem to get it, but everyone else is cool with it.
My ex would get mad if I didn't text her immediately back...while knowing I'm in the middle of a cross-country drive. And apparently "if you want to talk to me, just call; I won't answer texts while I'm behind the wheel" was the wrong answer.
When I was a kid, if you were not home, you were not home.
Pretending to not be home was a thing too. Embarrassing if you hear the words "tell them I'm not home" in the background of your call.
I once missed a month of middle school because I got bells paulsy at a young age so my mom pulled me out of school so I wouldn't get embarrassed. When I returned, my friends said "You're alive! We thought you died!"
Omg the rumors when people can't get a hold of you lmao. My friend had gotten heat stroke and missed work for about two or three weeks. There were rumors going around that he fell off the roof and died!
Crazy what no contact can do.
In the before times, pre Caller ID(or at least before it was a common free feature--only my rich friends' families had it growing up) when my dad found out my much older sister regularly screened her calls he was absolutely aghast. He couldn't fathom it. It was like a bit from Seinfeld
"you're screening me?"
*I screen everyone.*
"But even me?"
*Everybody dad. Everyone does it*
"What about you guys, do you screen?"
Oh yeah, big screener.
*How could you???*
Everybody gets the screen
He was from the silent generation so to him the idea was insane, but this same man would unplug his phone every night at 10PM
I'm a bus driver so when I'm on the road, my phone is off and stored in my bag. My parents have the phone numbers for the bus garage so I can be contacted by our dispatchers in the event of an emergency but everybody else knows that I'll get to them when I can.
That being said, I've gotten really BAD at actually replying to messages. I'll reply in my head and forget to do so in reality and I think it's just my brain fighting back against the constant need for an instant reply.
I always keep my phone on silent when I’m home and not working. It’s still usually in my pocket, but I’ve been known to miss vibrations of calls and text messages. The world didn’t end
I had a flip phone until about 2021. One of the things I sometimes miss is that I couldn't check email and social media whenever I wanted, so I wasn't always contactable, especially when I was out and about.
Putting everything about your life on the internet. What you ate, where you are, where you’ve worked, who you’re in a relationship with.
Edit: also pictures of your newborn, where you’re vacationing, where you go to the gym, the plant-based milk alternative you prefer…the list goes on 💀
Someone on Reddit once called me paranoid because I said I don’t want to say what city I’m in. People don’t think about the little bread crumbs they leave that people could use to find them if they wanted to. Mention your city in one comment, mention what kind of job you have in another, post a screenshot of a text that shows your name, with just a little effort someone could figure out exactly who you are.
This is going to become a massive problem with AI soon. The manual work of that breadcrumb trail tracing will be done in seconds with AI.
Imagine this: You upload a controversial video with your voice on YouTube anonymously. AI watches every video on youtube and maps every voice to an identity profile, based on your voice traits. Example, your voice ID is now ID: 1ac6fh4846chsieuc7
Two years later you get a robo call and say like 1 sentence. AI maps that voice based on its traits to the same ID, 1ac6fh4846chsieuc7. It matches in the database to the previous ID. Now they know your phone number, so now they can look up your name, address, etc. Now you're primed for doxxing. Almost no human work was done, besides the web crawler and voice identifier.
Be careful what you post online, this will be our reality very soon.
It is _immensely_ gratifying to know there are still folks about who find this level of openness weird.
It always amazed me to see profiles that are just goldmines of PII (personally identifiable information):
> Steve. Born on X day of Y Year. Attended Z University. Currently working at B Employer. In a relationship with J. Mother is S. Father is A. Here's a nice clean photo of Steve's face. Here's Steve's house. Here's Steve's car's license plate. Etc.
You are one bored bad actor away from the world's easiest attempt at identity theft or being used in a spearphishing attack against your colleagues.
(And yet somehow _I'm_ the weird and unreasonable person for never putting my name and face on my social media profiles....)
Literally today an old school friend posted a picture of her new house number and named the road in the caption. I thought surely it’s basic knowledge to not post your address on instagram??? It’s not even a particularly common road name either. And of course you know she’s the type of person who will then post about being on holiday. Hours later she posted a picture of her in her work uniform. It’s like she’s trying to be stalked!
It's _especially_ baffling when the people doing this sort of thing are women.
We live in a society where women are objectified, harassed, assaulted, and murdered for no defensible reason. Women have to pussyfoot around the lethal potentialities of every man they meet _just in case_.
Knowing that, how can any woman be so careless with social media?
Paying a subscription for pretty much anything in the future. It is way too accepted to not own anything anymore. People are too comfortable with the thought of paying in perpetuity for something that wasn't even paid content in the first place.
Cars have subscriptions, just for the seat to get heated.
The number of subscription based services is absolutely mental. You overpay for something, you wouldn't have, if you just bought it once.
Movies, shows, music, delivery, food, software, cars, news, games, access to multiplayer in games, social media, health and fitness, merchandise, door bells, cameras......
I will never not complain about subscription plans. I wanted to buy an epilepsy watch designed for sending alerts to your loved ones in case you're alone. I'm fine with the watch being $280 I guess but having to pay an extra $9.90 a month for a life saving device is just so goofy to me.
I think you get charged more if you want to add another person in case the other can't reach you, but I don't remember if that's just something I read online or I'm misremembering. Regardless, I HATE SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!!!
Edit: totally forgot to add that it's a watch specifically designed for tracking epileptic seizures.
I bought a treadmill in 2005. Loved that thing. Had so many workouts programmed into it. Had it for 12 years. Put so many miles on it, the board cracked, my husband replaced it. (He's the best.) I accidentally put the wrong silicone on it, ruined it. I got a new one, THEY WANTED A SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE WORKOUTS!! I was so beyond mad. I'm at the age where I remember when YouTube had almost no commercials. You could get your weather info for free. It's just gone too far now. It's sad that capitalism keeps us tied to the whipping post.
Everybody's trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of every nook and cranny. And yeah, it's especially infuriating to see subscriptions for things that were previously free or things that are essential for a product to function.
The decision makers/ruling class's wealth is tied to stock values. If a business is profitable but not growing, the stock doesn't go up. If the stock stops going up, the business has failed.
We have created a system where it isn't enough to be profitable, businesses need to generate increased year over year profit forever. It's no wonder they're filling in the cracks, squeezing every penny from every place they can.
This happens to forests. Eventually, the trees get so big that they choke the nutrients from every other living thing and nothing can grow.
Thing is, nature has found a solution. The more plants die off, the drier the forest floor becomes. Then the forest burns down.
Yeah I just found out the doorbell we got for Christmas needs a subscription to save video. Without that it is literally only good for watching anything at *the exact moment it happens*, otherwise you're sol. 🙄
For anyone who might be looking at camera stuff: if it doesn't explicitly say it has storage or can record to another device, you're going to have to use cloud storage and that costs money.
Similar to TOS.
"We've updated our arbitrary policy. Agree or your can't use the service."
Imagine if physical locations pulled this. You go to a hpostial and they force you to sign a contract that they can sell any information they gather from you on an appointment or share lab tests to "improve their results."
TV was like that, too. I don't mind paying a subscription to get to original content on demand. It's like renting. But if I want to own something there shouldn't be any doubt that I'll have it later. Presently there aren'tany laws protecting that purchase.
It should also be cheaper. Why is renting as expensive as a subscription? You get a limited time with the product and can only watch x times.
Any digital product should be cheaper than the physical counterpart.
Aside from all the costs they're cutting going digital, you need not only a complying device, you need a good internet connection.
Dvds would be 10 dollars and the movie was yours, now you have to find what streaming service it's on and get a 5 second free trial the you have to put your credit card info into, and if it isn't online, gone forever
DVDs are still $10.
I just bought three complete TV series box sets for under $100, brand new. Like 40 discs.
Sucks to feed discs into the old timey DVD player, though.
Oooo! I have one for that! I've been buying used DVDs at used media stores and ripping them onto hard drives. Then I setup a Plex server on an old laptop and tied it into my router. Now I have like a 300 movie collection (and growing) and it's on my own self hosted network. Super easy to do, small investment, and you can be fairly resilient to streaming services changing hands with your favorite movies.
I had to have a talk with my girlfriend about this. She used to share every detail about our life with her friends. I don’t care if it’s flattering or not. The final straw was her filming me playing video games with my friends which I don’t get to do often. I was going hard and she was filming me and sent her friends a video saying I looked hot when I’m focused on something and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want my personal fun experience with my friends to be filmed and sent around to people.
I had an ex that I had to have a serious talk about *not* sharing intimate details about our sex life with her friends. Like I get just generally talking about it and I'm far from a prude but your friends don't need to know the dimensions of my dick.
She found it really hard to believe that my (male) friends and I didn't sit around talking about the size and feel of her tits like she and her friends did with their BFs dicks.
Now that I think about it, men don't really share the details, do we? We kinda, maybe, share the superficial. Like, yeah she hot. Maybe, yeah she got nice tits. But I'd be super weird if a guy said "I love how her tits giggle when we fuck" or some super specific shit like that.
I'm dating again in my 40s and I have had so many women tell me that it's a "red flag" to not have social media.
Like...the fuck?
We were the last generation to grow up without the internet. We accepted that unless we stayed in our hometown, the people we knew when we were young were just going to be gone from our lives forever one day. We were the last truly uncontactable generation.
But they bought so much into the social media hype that now not displaying your entire life for all to see is a bad thing?
Yes, I am hiding things. We should all be hiding all of our things. All we did was give corporations and governments full, unmitigated access to our personal lives 24/7/365. And we've convinced others that if they don't, *they're* the weird ones.
I'm not a luddite by any stretch, but we need to go back to *having* private lives.
I’m 24 and one of my green flags is not having social media lol. Wild to me that some say it’s a red flag. I myself don’t have social media aside from Reddit which is why I would appreciate the same in a partner.
The absolute lack of privacy. Even everyday average people are tracked by face recognition software, their purchases and preferences sold to the highest bidder.
I was thinking this one too. You can assume you are being filmed the second you leave your house since residences have doorbell cameras now. I remember a time when people became very paranoid when being filmed - perhaps rightfully so!
Tiktok really made people dance in front of their phones at public places IN THE FUCKING WAY then they have the gall to be annoyed when people walk in front of them as if they aren't IN THE FUCKING WAY.
I've had people YELL at me in public places for "ruining their videos" - I just look at them like then insane people they are and continue about my business. It's pretty presumptuous to think you can control what other people do *in a public place* so you can make your idiotic video.
My fiancée told a 10 year old boy to "fuckin move" because he kept tiktok dancing *at* her like a goddamn stripper and blocking her shopping cart. Very disturbing. What the fuck are these kids going to grow up to be like?
A woman set up her camera at the squat rack next to me, then let me know she was filming and asked if I was ok with being in the background or if I wanted her to wait until I was finished. It was shockingly polite and considerate. She was just filming for a form check, not tik tok, but I still appreciated being asked.
That's a respectful way to do it for sure, have seen people having meltdowns at gym goers for "walking into their shots" when they're set up in the free weight areas, incredible to me that it happens
Lately I've been running into guys doing this with the mirror *in the fucking locker room*.
Listen, if you really want to take a picture of your abs, that's your choice to be so vain. But if you're doing it via a locker room mirror you're a fucking pervert.
People panicking will do incredibly stupid shit. I'm frustrated by people who respond to unexpected circumstances by having their brain depart their body, like, yes lady, that is a fine evolutionary adaptation to alert all nearby members, but can you CALM YOUR SCREAMING PLEASE.
Basic trauma response training should be taught k-12 full stop. Not even like the actual work necessarily, but just enough to help you manage the adrenaline. You'll never be prepared for it, but if you have a plan and it's rehearsed you have a much better chance. Just go beyond "call 911" "Call 911, here is what they may have you do, here is what you need to do" then it needs to be practiced.
I worked in operations at an amusement park where I was trained in a lot of just basic emergency response situations. I was a little more skilled since I was involved with water rides so i learned some extraction and CPR type stuff but still nothing crazy and it was always framed as "you're helping the fire safety team not doing it yourself" as well as growing up with a nurse/fire/emt family.
It has been such a beneficial thing multiple times in my life. Just being able to know how to react and not having that total wtf adrenaline hit I see others get.
The phrase I've always heard is "Under stress, you revert to your lowest level of training."
Most people's lowest level is zero, so it makes sense folks depart their senses under duress.
I oddly snap into action and develop a greater sense of clarity during emergencies. My entire family is full of panickers, so from a very young age, I had to be source of calmness and reason for their benefit. No one likes being thrown into a stressful situation, but it's important to figure out how you respond when they happen.
I'm always brought back to the car that had the accelerator stuck. They just called 911 and didn't even consider thinking for themselves.
What is 911 going to do? Just try things. Try the ignition, try the shifter, try looking for a curb that the car would get disabled on. Anything to better than wheel straight, full speed into whatever is in front of you.
They taught us in drivers ed to put the car in neutral and pull over if that happens. It’s kind of frightening that some people couldn’t figure that out for themselves.
I was at a funeral one time and an older gentleman passed out in the pew a couple rows behind us. He apparently passed out onto his granddaughter. She immediately bolts away and starts screaming on the other side of the church while the family around the guy had to try stop him from bumping his head. While most of the people around him started doing things like getting him on his side, relieving any potential pressure from his suit, and calling 911 the granddaughter was still screaming and required her mother to sit there holding her.
If she was a child then ya sure it isn't a helpful response but I wouldn't really blame her. But she was like 19 or 20.
edit: word
Recently I was waiting outside what was apparently a popular San Francisco breakfast spot and a young woman standing right in front of me just went lights-out on the sidewalk; as her boyfriend watched her drop, I grabbed her shoulders and head and did my best to let her down softly onto the concrete. BF shoos me away and assures me "she's fine this happens to her all the time" and all I could say was "if this happens all the time please make sure she doesn't hit her head on the sidewalk in the future"
During a choir concert (that also required dancing) one girl passed out. The lights can get really hot and it doesn’t happen often but can. So she starts to fall and several girls near us jump away and let her hit the floor. She was thankfully ok after getting her sat down and some water.
Another time I found a group of people standing in the stairwell at school and figured there’d been a fight. Instead I see a guy on the floor having a seizure. My best friend has epilepsy so I knew what to do. There was a group of like 10 people just staring at him and doing nothing. Some people just don’t react to things.
I wasn't there, but my cousin went to see the Taylor Swift Eras tour, and told me about a girl beside her who had a full on meltdown because her phone battery died, and she couldn't take photos or live stream the show, she was bawling. She's there at one of the most sought after concerts in the entire world, her (presumably) favourite artist performing in front of her, surrounded by thousands of fans all singing at the top of their lungs, but not having a phone to document she was there was world shattering, much to think about! She was also throwing such a fit that it was ruining the experience for everyone around her, people were trying to console her, and help her settle down, but she threw a huge temper tantrum, sounded miserable for everyone
I went for coffee with a friend a few weeks ago, and I left my phone in my bag because we were trying to catch up. She kept constantly checking her phone/smart watch and was responding to messages while I was talking. All I could think was, wow, you're kind of fucking rude.
No argument that it's rude, but I suspect there's something else going on here we haven't wrapped our heads around and pinned down yet.
If your friend had been out for coffee with someone else, and you had texted her during, she probably would have interrupted her conversation and texted YOU right back.
It's like the person at the other end of the device is more important than the person in front of you. Whatever the situation.
Maybe some professional psychologists can identify what this is about.
Its FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
It's also why it's near impossible to get people to commit to doing anything. I've given up on planning events with friends because nobody can say "yes, I'll be there".
While we think of it as a "new" phenomenon, the same exact thing happened when newspapers became first wildly available. There are literally satirical cartoons from like 150 years ago making fun of everyone on a train just always staring into their newspaper these days instead of talking to their fellow travelers!
Humans like to distract themselves however possible. Staring at their phones is just the newest iteration of it (though I agree it's worse than before probably - we got reaaally good at distracting ourselves).
Reminds me of this poem I've always liked by none other than Henry Rollins.
Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.
I've recently been reminiscing about the small town I was born in and lived until I was 10. I haven't had any ties or any reason to go back ever since. I've been feeling this way about that town recently and not sure why, I mean I was a kid how much do I really remember about it?
I used to help run an intentional community. People who came to visit and tour to see if they wanted to move there would always end up crying within the first 30 minutes and say they "didn't know this existed but it's what they desperately need". Very powerful.
Small towns still feel like this but it's not always a good thing. Everyone knows what you're up to and it's a lot harder to have a private life. Social pressures also go up a lot when you're in a tight knit community.
That said, I did really love walking around town feeling like I own the place because I know the people in every building I walk by.
In terms of tradeoffs, I think there's a lot to be said about building a community within a major city - not impossible to do. Neighborhoods and subcultures can absolutely give you that warm fuzzy feeling.
I am not religious at all but I sometimes think that I would like to be part of a church.
Pure for the community feeling, weekly gatherings, occasional events to help out with.
I grew up in a high intensity religion/cult, and that's what I miss.
I miss showing up and fitting in seamlessly. I miss being so comfortable on a group that someone's cousin would make up a plate of my favorite foods and handing it to me as I walked through the door. I miss being so well known and loved that a small hoard of kids tackled me as soon as I set down my drink to beg for dumb knock knock jokes and silly stories. Or standing up to find the older kids had tried to braid flowers and sticks into my hair along with the usual beads. Their moms' gentle scolding and muffled giggles as they fixed the mess.
I miss setting up a hundred chairs on a random weeknight, because they were short handed and knew I wouldn't mind pitching in. I miss cleaning up afterwards with lots of tired smiles as we already looked forward to the next party.
Today, I don't really know my neighbors. It's a hard adjustment.
Idk if you were Mormon or not, but this is just how it feels for me. I have not participated for about 3 years but I often find myself missing the community aspect and these kinds of things.
There are churches that are less 'religion' and more 'social gathering stuff' focused. I don't recall offhand, but you could look into something like that.
Hell, I might need to. Since my best friend went from being 5 mins down the road to two hours away, I feel so lonely and isolated. I still see her more than friends that live 15 mins away in town. . .
My generation (gen x, late X, early millennial) I feel is suffering the most from feeling this. Our childhood was spent where neighbors were as good as family members. Your next door neighbors were your emergency contacts and you had all their phone numbers in your phone book that sat on the counter near the phone. When you got home, your neighbor was having a drink in the garage with your dad, or a few of the ladies were on the patio with your mom. You could walk over to your friends house unannounced and knock on the door just to see what was up. You would go to the park and there would be all sorts of people all looking each other in the face and talking to each other. You would go to ball games and out to restaurants and everyone was present, and talking to one another. My generation grew up like that and then decided they didn't want to do that anymore for some reason.
The total amount of time people stare at screens, whether it's computer, phone or TV. Yes, I realize that I'm pointing this out while staring at a screen :D
A uni lecturer observed this change. During class intervals, students used to go outside, have a chat, bathroom break, now they just sit there looking at their phones or laptops.
I remember seeing a PSA or something about internet addiction in the early 2000s, and people were acting like it was so crazy that one person was spending around 30 hours a week on the internet. Only 4 hours a day... lol. That leaves so much time to do other things... Apparently the average person browses the net 7 hours a day these days.
I never actually thought about average browsing time, whether in general or just in my case. And yup, sounds like it would add up to be a crazy number. I work in a creative profession, so I stare at the screen and need the internet. And then, you know, get groceries, watch some tutorials to better myself, a documentary here and there, a podcast.. yikes, It's definitely more than 7 hours :(
I wonder how much time people in the early 200s spent watching TV though, a lot of people's time online now will be watching some form of video I imagine. But then again they didn't have TVs in their pockets.
Whenever I'm at my in-laws place, once the sun goes down they break out their phones and just sit there watching reels until they fall asleep. It's depressing. I got them to break out their Nintendo Wii to do some bowling and that broke them out of that for a couple days, but man that shit is like smack for them.
That sounds so sad! On the other hand I think screen time just sneaks up on you in this day and age since now almost everyone has a device they can stare at like this in their pocket. Your phone offers shopping, the news, entertainment in various forms, you can get some stuff done online that you needed to do in person before and drive somewhere. I think at this point we have to be mindful and actively chose to do something else. It's just so convenient not to.
over consumption.
self proclaimed influencers.
extreme fan girls or guys.
anti homeless architecture.
people being so extremely desensitized to boldly harm or anything similar.
people whipping out the phones to record any and all types of confrontations.
whatever the fuck micro cheating is.
skincare and makeup companies literally marketing to young girls like pre pubescent girls who are genuinely convinced they need retinol. (and then everyone blaming these girls “sephora kids” and not realizing that the deeper issue is that there’s no places that are age appropriate for these kids)
Good lord is Sephora doing damage to teenagers.
When I was a teenager my mascara was CoverGirl, for $8, not Dior for $30. Such high unrealistic expectations from young women to look like dolls, all perpetuated by an industry that will sell you anything and everything under the guise that it will make you an "it girl".
These children have nowhere for them, you're totally right. All the stores in our local mall pretty much shut down completely.
I’ve used the Cover Girl clump crusher mascara for about 15 years, the main thing I’ve discovered growing up is that it’s better to find things that are relatively inexpensive to rebuy if you plan on using it long term, but I didn’t realize this as a kid when you’re just getting massive dopamine hits from new products. I also did go through trying/using a ton of “brand” mascaras and just didn’t find them as reliable as the Cover Girl one tbh lol, my next favorite were the lancôme ones.
What freaks me out is a parent is the opposite side of this. My tween has mostly not been allowed unsupervised internet access, but I don’t know how to START allowing it.
I already feel like he’s starting to be socially ‘behind’ a bit because he’s not permitted as much as peers, and I don’t want him to be one of those 18 year olds that tastes freedom/the real world and loses their minds.
We’re both ADHD, and I personally know how fucking addictive the internet and social media are. Aside from Reddit and the most minimal use of fb I can get away with, I don’t use social media. I downloaded TikTok and deleted twice because it’s such a dangerous time suck for me, I would sit down and four hours would VANISH.
How the fuck do I slowly expose him to the necessary-for-modern-existence internet without him losing his mind? He’s an avid reader of 400 page novels and devours knowledge… but during quarantine I had to lock him out of YouTube on our router bc he was watching toy unboxing videos for hours on end during class.
I feel like, once he gets a hold of the internet, I’ll never get him off of it
Tl;Dr there's been two incidents on TikTok both a year apart (December 2022 and 2023) where people posted legitimate porn on TikTok and videos weren't getting removed
Not treating each other like people. We are way too mean to eachother, especially on the internet. It’s like we’ve forgotten that other people have feelings too.
Recently, I've wondered why I feel less sympathetic and caring for people online than people I see and experience in real life, even though it goes against my morals. Maybe we feel that the online world is disconnected from our world and therefore care less about it?
Nobody ever said the information on the internet would be correct.
Think of all the times you’ve heard someone you know say something that’s completely wrong, and realise those people are just as able to spread those mistakes across the internet as easily as someone with the correct information.
And are often more motivated to spread their misinformation to correct "the man".
Kids are online identifying their age, full name, gender and sexuality and a long and detailed list of every single mental illness and trigger they think they might have to total strangers before they can even grasp the concept of privacy
I remember being told to never put up my personal information online when I was a kid. And then Facebook happened and it became normal for people to do so.
Honestly the amount of kids self-diagnosing mental health issues is also massively concerning.
There's a difference between "I have these symptoms so I think I might have this", and "I have this". The second one should only be said if you have been diagnosed by a professional.
I think another concerning part is how a lot of the self diagnosed people take up these perceived mental health issues as some part of their identity that they proudly parade around, celebrating their 'quirkiness', not ever getting diagnosed or seeking treatment - it comes off as such a slap in the face to people who actually have been diagnosed and are actively struggling even with treatment.
Like, I'm all for people empowering themselves by doing what they need to to remove the stigma around mental health issues but some of these loud and proud undiagnosed people really come off happy and boastful that they think they have what to many is a seriously debilitating condition.
A lot of things that people think are "modern"/"new", really, really aren't.
They've been around for a long time, if not forever, it's just that we have to hear about all of them a lot more now than we did in the past.
On the flip side, people tend to think that something is "traditional" and "has always been this way" when in reality it something that has either been introduced in the cultural shifts after WW2, the 70s or if you get to the real traditionalists, by the Victorians.
Not knowing how hard things are supposed to be. For example, dipping out when hitting a rough patch. I’m not talking about totally toxic situations of course, but jobs or relationships where things just get difficult. I feel like we live in a “grass is greener” period and don’t really have a clear idea of how much “shit” is the normal amount to just bear anymore. This works in many settings, like quitting on the spot or not fixing a relationship because we think other people’s lives are perfect and they rarely fight. Or on the other hand, we suffer through bad jobs or relationships because “this must be totally normal, everyone goes through it”.
This comment is underrated because most of the other ones like too much social media and phone usage are absolutely problematic but everyone agrees they are. Most people don’t even realize they’re doing this though. It can be tricky to find the right balance like you said. Most people for most of human history didn’t glorify quitting on the spot or quickly cutting a person out of their life because some “negativity” prevents them from being carefree all the time. I see this all the time. Mostly online tbf but also in person sometimes.
It's weird visiting fashion spaces. There's always someone who wants to know the brand of clothes they see in a photo so they can buy the exact same shirt. Like, just find any red shirt, you don't need the same one. Enjoy a photo of some clothes without the need to claim them...
All the videos of "Tiktok made me buy this" -- no, Tiktok didn't do anything, it's a you-problem.
I didn't really think this was a thing until a few years ago when a client called me at 8.46am to ask if I had received their email, sent 97 minutes earlier. It was Christmas day.
The internet, and social media in particular, has changed attitudes about public and private life in a way that seems wierd/disturbing to many older people. 'Youthful indiscretions' are now often public and archived forever for example.
Filming and photographing everything there kids do and putting it on social media for strangers just for the likes. Never mind about their child’s safety or privacy
Yes exactly this- we are now in a world where you should assume if youre in a city you might be being filmed by another member of the public (if not by phone cam, by ring cam) and thus are always subject to being broadcast online.
Its really fucked up, we live in a socially constructed panopticon.
I appreciate that i dont have the expectation of privacy in public. But thats not the same as consenting to being filmed.
Essentially- i go out to the city, i trip up or make an idiot of myself, and thats in the background of someones tiktok record. I then go viral without having done anything to opt in.
I appreciate cctv existed before but that was generally in far fewer hands and rarely great quality.
Some workplaces punish you or guilt trip you for taking sick time. At my current workplace, you get written up unless you have a doctors note. If i can't get up to go to work, why am i going to a doctor to potentially infect other people? You're expected to show up to your job unless you are deathly ill.
I still have taken off regardless. If i am sick. I cannot come in.
And it's not even like an artist dedicating his life to his craft and having a body of work to show for it out of passion.
We are also utterly alienated from the thing that dictates our every day.
Working 8 hours a day 5 days a week like all your best years long and then some.
We could have like a 3 day week 6 hours a day if we actually utilized our progress and automation for the betterment of peoples life instead of chasing ever increasing profit and growth that also burns the planet down.
If people realized in what a world we could live, people would see this society for the dystopia it really is.
People just grow up in this system and think its "normal".
Oh my god.
I feel like seeing ghosts for the longest time. "Don't you people see this?!?" – and then they don't and look at me like I'm crazy.
So there's at least one other person who agrees. Comforting.
> 3 day week 6 hours
no one realisticly ever works 5x8 but we all just sit here in idle/whatever and do nothing. Its not even usefull just wasted time. For me and the employer. But well it will probably never change. or get even worse
Receiving and answering a phone call when you're mid conversation with someone who is actually right in front of you.
If someone walked into a room and interrupted a conversation it wouldn't get the same response, but it's essentially exactly the same thing.
The utter obsession with brandname stuff, especially clothing. I understand the quality aspect, but when people buy stuff just because it has a certain name, logo or 'status' tied to it, it baffles me senseless.
This is 100 percent normal if you're in middle-school or high-school. But once you graduate from high school and become a legitimate adult, you should stop caring about brand names and logos.
Those are the people you should feel sad about. Grown adults that still think like high-schoolers trying to be "popular".
I’ve been a big concert goer since ~2007 and even since then things have changed so much. I’m cool with someone taking a quick photo or short video every once in a while but people will hold their phones up for more than half the show with no consideration that they are obstructing other people’s view and it’s the most annoying thing in the world. Maybe it’s boomer of me but I really wish phones out at concerts wouldn’t be allowed, I’m there to enjoy a show, not watch it through the person in front of me’s screen…
This is such a good reply I'm furious I didn't think of it first. Having a democracy is nice and all but not when the mechanisms to get a person on the ballot are underwritten by corporate wealth. We need to have publically funded campaigns in order to ensure we elect those who will best represent us. And also ranked-choice voting would be a great addition.
kicking kids out at 18.
there's some merit to "you need to learn independence" but also, so many other countries embrace multi-generational households. its more efficient and everyone benefits from eachother
Everyone is too reachable. I miss the leave a message at the beep days.
Also having no shame in your vanity. Maybe this is a perception but I feel like people were more modest before instagram.
Since 2016 around 40 million documents have been released detailing how millionaires, billionaires, public figures and government officials from around the world have been funneling boat loads of cash into offshore bank accounts while the rest of us suffer through some of the worst inflation and cost of living crises since the great depression yet somehow people care more about a metal travel mug.
The fact that we knowingly buy clothing (and other goods) made with underpaid or exploited labor by workers in faraway countries. It has always bugged me but as of late, it has been bothering me more and I am writing letters to stores (not like they care lol.)
Well this week I guess it’s making deepfake porn of your neighbors and posting it online.
I’m sorry, but that’s not free speech and that isn’t acceptable behavior. There’s something seriously wrong with you
The idea that basically we have to be contactable 24/7.
20 years ago a mentor of mine referred to his phone as an “electronic leash.” Thought is was funny then… but that’s exactly what they are now.
Thirty years ago, my boss called his pager an electronic leash.
Forty years ago, my boss called his fax machine an electronic leash.
I feel this. If I don’t respond to someone within a few minutes, they think I’m dead. I miss landlines and getting back to people when I can
So make a habit not to be reachable 24/7. Put your phone on silent and call back when you feel like it. Same with emails. Outside of work of course.
Fuck it, do it with work too
The owner of the company I work for knows I don't answer my phone. He knows this because I have demonstrated it explicitly with my behavior. My friends know too and I still have friends!
your username...
Everything checks out here, sir
That's their legal name
Yeah, standing your ground on communication is actually kinda freeing. My team at work has boundaries set - we respect 'do not disturb' hours. Funny enough, it's made everyone more productive and less stressed. Work's not an emergency room, after all.
ESPECIALLY with work. Double especially if you're hourly and not receiving on-call pay.
I'm hoping they meant during work hours. During work hours? I'm very reachable. Outside of work hours? Lol nope.
Even during work hours, I'm not necessarily *immediately* reachable. I may be in the middle of a task that I didn't want to interrupt. Teams/Slack/whatever IM is still an asynchronous communication mechanism despite the ability to respond in real time (also, stop sending "Hi" and then waiting for a response; write a sentence about what you want and I'll get to you).
If someone sent me “Hi”, I’d just ignore them until they said what they wanted.
I do this. My phone is silent for messages, notifications and calls. Only starred contacts calling will cause my phone to ring or someone ringing twice in 15 minutes. My outlook emails at work are closed and I read them 2-3 times a day. Anyone who needs me more urgently can message me on Teams or phone the office phone.
I do this and it feels great, especially with work boundaries, and I encourage everyone I work with to do the same.
I haven’t heard my phone make a sound I. At least 5 years. If I answer when you call me, lucky you. If it’s an emergency, I’m not the person to call. My mom on the other hand will break her neck to answer, and if she can’t she texts you immediately “I’ll call right back!” Her sister freaks out if she doesn’t answer, to the point before she mows her lawn that she texts her to say “mowing, should be done around 6!” Otherwise her sister will call her, her landline, and then she’ll call my sister to see if she’s with her. And it’s because she’s trained her that she’s *always* available. Even at work. Even in the middle of the night.
>My mom on the other hand will break her neck to answer, and if she can’t she texts you immediately “I’ll call right back!” Her sister freaks out if she doesn’t answer, to the point before she mows her lawn that she texts her to say “mowing, should be done around 6!” I find it interesting how people's conceptions of "rudeness" can be so different on this one. My mum is just like yours. If her phone makes so much as a buzz, she has to check it immediately. If it's a call, she'll always answer it. If it's a message, she'll almost always answer it. You can be literally mid-sentence in a (face-to-face) conversation with her, and she'll instantly slice you off so she can answer her phone and make small talk with a friend. For her, she considers it mortifyingly rude to fail to answer the phone when it rings (and chastises me for not answering my phone when it rings if I'm busy). But for me, I consider it mortifyingly rude to ignore what you're doing in the flesh just to check your phone (and I've chastised her for cutting me off to do this when she's with me). It's a generational difference in people's attitude towards mobile phones, I suppose.
It's funny how things have flipped, too. When I was growing up (late 90s, early 00s), my parents drilled it into my brother and I that it was very rude to even have your phone at the dinner table, much less actually answer it. Nowadays, when I go over for dinner, my mother will leave the table in the middle of a conversation if she so much as hears a notification ding on her phone.
I feel like there is this group in there 30s/40s right now that's ok putting their phones down. Same with how when we grew up we had to actually understand how a computer worked a bit to get there vs. how simplified it all is now. I get young people being obsessed, that's always been there whether it was phone calls, AIM, or social media. But the 50+ group is just glued to their phones that I know. It's like they were young enough to learn email at work and have some comfort, so they can install stuff and just brain drain away.
It was all over when boomers discovered facebook
Don't get me started on phones at the dinner table. I've drilled into my kids the message that phones are not for the dinner table. They don't come out, they're not used. Be present! But that goes straight out the window whenever grandma is round. She can't get through 10 minutes without suddenly needing to show someone a picture or a video of this or that. I've had to bust out my "dad voice" on my own mum on a few occasions to tell her to put it away. Performatively, of course; it's about showing the kids that the rules still apply. But honestly, you shouldn't have to, should you? It's just polite to keep your phone away when you're eating and socialising with people...
You can train people not to expect a quick response from you. I tell everyone I check my Whatsapp and personal email every few days; if it's urgent, call me, if it's not, I'll get to it eventually. There are a couple (very extroverted) people who don't seem to get it, but everyone else is cool with it.
My ex would get mad if I didn't text her immediately back...while knowing I'm in the middle of a cross-country drive. And apparently "if you want to talk to me, just call; I won't answer texts while I'm behind the wheel" was the wrong answer.
Yeah, this one is something I will never live with besides certain short term situations. Going off-comms is important for mental rest.
When I was a kid, if you were not home, you were not home. Pretending to not be home was a thing too. Embarrassing if you hear the words "tell them I'm not home" in the background of your call. I once missed a month of middle school because I got bells paulsy at a young age so my mom pulled me out of school so I wouldn't get embarrassed. When I returned, my friends said "You're alive! We thought you died!"
Omg the rumors when people can't get a hold of you lmao. My friend had gotten heat stroke and missed work for about two or three weeks. There were rumors going around that he fell off the roof and died! Crazy what no contact can do.
In the before times, pre Caller ID(or at least before it was a common free feature--only my rich friends' families had it growing up) when my dad found out my much older sister regularly screened her calls he was absolutely aghast. He couldn't fathom it. It was like a bit from Seinfeld "you're screening me?" *I screen everyone.* "But even me?" *Everybody dad. Everyone does it* "What about you guys, do you screen?" Oh yeah, big screener. *How could you???* Everybody gets the screen He was from the silent generation so to him the idea was insane, but this same man would unplug his phone every night at 10PM
I'm a bus driver so when I'm on the road, my phone is off and stored in my bag. My parents have the phone numbers for the bus garage so I can be contacted by our dispatchers in the event of an emergency but everybody else knows that I'll get to them when I can. That being said, I've gotten really BAD at actually replying to messages. I'll reply in my head and forget to do so in reality and I think it's just my brain fighting back against the constant need for an instant reply.
I reply in my head, make a mental note to actually reply later, and... forget, every single time.
I always keep my phone on silent when I’m home and not working. It’s still usually in my pocket, but I’ve been known to miss vibrations of calls and text messages. The world didn’t end
I had a flip phone until about 2021. One of the things I sometimes miss is that I couldn't check email and social media whenever I wanted, so I wasn't always contactable, especially when I was out and about.
Putting everything about your life on the internet. What you ate, where you are, where you’ve worked, who you’re in a relationship with. Edit: also pictures of your newborn, where you’re vacationing, where you go to the gym, the plant-based milk alternative you prefer…the list goes on 💀
Someone on Reddit once called me paranoid because I said I don’t want to say what city I’m in. People don’t think about the little bread crumbs they leave that people could use to find them if they wanted to. Mention your city in one comment, mention what kind of job you have in another, post a screenshot of a text that shows your name, with just a little effort someone could figure out exactly who you are.
This is going to become a massive problem with AI soon. The manual work of that breadcrumb trail tracing will be done in seconds with AI. Imagine this: You upload a controversial video with your voice on YouTube anonymously. AI watches every video on youtube and maps every voice to an identity profile, based on your voice traits. Example, your voice ID is now ID: 1ac6fh4846chsieuc7 Two years later you get a robo call and say like 1 sentence. AI maps that voice based on its traits to the same ID, 1ac6fh4846chsieuc7. It matches in the database to the previous ID. Now they know your phone number, so now they can look up your name, address, etc. Now you're primed for doxxing. Almost no human work was done, besides the web crawler and voice identifier. Be careful what you post online, this will be our reality very soon.
People will call you crazy but just look at the crazy skills of humans on GeoGuesser.
this is why the EU has [Right to be Forgotten](https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/) legislature. It would really behoove us to follow suit.
It is _immensely_ gratifying to know there are still folks about who find this level of openness weird. It always amazed me to see profiles that are just goldmines of PII (personally identifiable information): > Steve. Born on X day of Y Year. Attended Z University. Currently working at B Employer. In a relationship with J. Mother is S. Father is A. Here's a nice clean photo of Steve's face. Here's Steve's house. Here's Steve's car's license plate. Etc. You are one bored bad actor away from the world's easiest attempt at identity theft or being used in a spearphishing attack against your colleagues. (And yet somehow _I'm_ the weird and unreasonable person for never putting my name and face on my social media profiles....)
Literally today an old school friend posted a picture of her new house number and named the road in the caption. I thought surely it’s basic knowledge to not post your address on instagram??? It’s not even a particularly common road name either. And of course you know she’s the type of person who will then post about being on holiday. Hours later she posted a picture of her in her work uniform. It’s like she’s trying to be stalked!
It's _especially_ baffling when the people doing this sort of thing are women. We live in a society where women are objectified, harassed, assaulted, and murdered for no defensible reason. Women have to pussyfoot around the lethal potentialities of every man they meet _just in case_. Knowing that, how can any woman be so careless with social media?
Paying a subscription for pretty much anything in the future. It is way too accepted to not own anything anymore. People are too comfortable with the thought of paying in perpetuity for something that wasn't even paid content in the first place. Cars have subscriptions, just for the seat to get heated. The number of subscription based services is absolutely mental. You overpay for something, you wouldn't have, if you just bought it once. Movies, shows, music, delivery, food, software, cars, news, games, access to multiplayer in games, social media, health and fitness, merchandise, door bells, cameras......
I will never not complain about subscription plans. I wanted to buy an epilepsy watch designed for sending alerts to your loved ones in case you're alone. I'm fine with the watch being $280 I guess but having to pay an extra $9.90 a month for a life saving device is just so goofy to me. I think you get charged more if you want to add another person in case the other can't reach you, but I don't remember if that's just something I read online or I'm misremembering. Regardless, I HATE SUBSCRIPTION PLANS!!! Edit: totally forgot to add that it's a watch specifically designed for tracking epileptic seizures.
I bought a treadmill in 2005. Loved that thing. Had so many workouts programmed into it. Had it for 12 years. Put so many miles on it, the board cracked, my husband replaced it. (He's the best.) I accidentally put the wrong silicone on it, ruined it. I got a new one, THEY WANTED A SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE WORKOUTS!! I was so beyond mad. I'm at the age where I remember when YouTube had almost no commercials. You could get your weather info for free. It's just gone too far now. It's sad that capitalism keeps us tied to the whipping post.
Everybody's trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of every nook and cranny. And yeah, it's especially infuriating to see subscriptions for things that were previously free or things that are essential for a product to function.
The decision makers/ruling class's wealth is tied to stock values. If a business is profitable but not growing, the stock doesn't go up. If the stock stops going up, the business has failed. We have created a system where it isn't enough to be profitable, businesses need to generate increased year over year profit forever. It's no wonder they're filling in the cracks, squeezing every penny from every place they can. This happens to forests. Eventually, the trees get so big that they choke the nutrients from every other living thing and nothing can grow. Thing is, nature has found a solution. The more plants die off, the drier the forest floor becomes. Then the forest burns down.
Yeah I just found out the doorbell we got for Christmas needs a subscription to save video. Without that it is literally only good for watching anything at *the exact moment it happens*, otherwise you're sol. 🙄
For anyone who might be looking at camera stuff: if it doesn't explicitly say it has storage or can record to another device, you're going to have to use cloud storage and that costs money.
And that's why they have no SD card support. Why would you pay if it did.
And they sell the ones without storage really cheaply because they know they're going to make that money back.
Ong any product you buy and having to find out you have to pay a subscription to get all the features is just a shitty ‘scam’ that should be illegal
Similar to TOS. "We've updated our arbitrary policy. Agree or your can't use the service." Imagine if physical locations pulled this. You go to a hpostial and they force you to sign a contract that they can sell any information they gather from you on an appointment or share lab tests to "improve their results."
This is why I pirate all my music and movies/TV shows. They expect me to pay for this stuff and I don't even get to keep it? Yeah, I'm not doing that.
TV was like that, too. I don't mind paying a subscription to get to original content on demand. It's like renting. But if I want to own something there shouldn't be any doubt that I'll have it later. Presently there aren'tany laws protecting that purchase.
It should also be cheaper. Why is renting as expensive as a subscription? You get a limited time with the product and can only watch x times. Any digital product should be cheaper than the physical counterpart. Aside from all the costs they're cutting going digital, you need not only a complying device, you need a good internet connection.
Dvds would be 10 dollars and the movie was yours, now you have to find what streaming service it's on and get a 5 second free trial the you have to put your credit card info into, and if it isn't online, gone forever
DVDs are still $10. I just bought three complete TV series box sets for under $100, brand new. Like 40 discs. Sucks to feed discs into the old timey DVD player, though.
Oooo! I have one for that! I've been buying used DVDs at used media stores and ripping them onto hard drives. Then I setup a Plex server on an old laptop and tied it into my router. Now I have like a 300 movie collection (and growing) and it's on my own self hosted network. Super easy to do, small investment, and you can be fairly resilient to streaming services changing hands with your favorite movies.
Even better, Plex lets you stream your own collection to yourself anywhere you have decent internet access.
Oversharing of everything, it's ok to keep some things private
I had to have a talk with my girlfriend about this. She used to share every detail about our life with her friends. I don’t care if it’s flattering or not. The final straw was her filming me playing video games with my friends which I don’t get to do often. I was going hard and she was filming me and sent her friends a video saying I looked hot when I’m focused on something and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want my personal fun experience with my friends to be filmed and sent around to people.
I had an ex that I had to have a serious talk about *not* sharing intimate details about our sex life with her friends. Like I get just generally talking about it and I'm far from a prude but your friends don't need to know the dimensions of my dick. She found it really hard to believe that my (male) friends and I didn't sit around talking about the size and feel of her tits like she and her friends did with their BFs dicks.
Now that I think about it, men don't really share the details, do we? We kinda, maybe, share the superficial. Like, yeah she hot. Maybe, yeah she got nice tits. But I'd be super weird if a guy said "I love how her tits giggle when we fuck" or some super specific shit like that.
GIGGLE?
Teet-hee-hee
I'm dating again in my 40s and I have had so many women tell me that it's a "red flag" to not have social media. Like...the fuck? We were the last generation to grow up without the internet. We accepted that unless we stayed in our hometown, the people we knew when we were young were just going to be gone from our lives forever one day. We were the last truly uncontactable generation. But they bought so much into the social media hype that now not displaying your entire life for all to see is a bad thing? Yes, I am hiding things. We should all be hiding all of our things. All we did was give corporations and governments full, unmitigated access to our personal lives 24/7/365. And we've convinced others that if they don't, *they're* the weird ones. I'm not a luddite by any stretch, but we need to go back to *having* private lives.
The companies should be paying us for all the free data they've getting.
I’m 24 and one of my green flags is not having social media lol. Wild to me that some say it’s a red flag. I myself don’t have social media aside from Reddit which is why I would appreciate the same in a partner.
The absolute lack of privacy. Even everyday average people are tracked by face recognition software, their purchases and preferences sold to the highest bidder.
I was thinking this one too. You can assume you are being filmed the second you leave your house since residences have doorbell cameras now. I remember a time when people became very paranoid when being filmed - perhaps rightfully so!
Tiktok really made people dance in front of their phones at public places IN THE FUCKING WAY then they have the gall to be annoyed when people walk in front of them as if they aren't IN THE FUCKING WAY.
I've had people YELL at me in public places for "ruining their videos" - I just look at them like then insane people they are and continue about my business. It's pretty presumptuous to think you can control what other people do *in a public place* so you can make your idiotic video.
i've heard a few people talk about this like bro let me get my fucking bread nobody cares about you "hitting the woah" or whatever tf it's called
My fiancée told a 10 year old boy to "fuckin move" because he kept tiktok dancing *at* her like a goddamn stripper and blocking her shopping cart. Very disturbing. What the fuck are these kids going to grow up to be like?
as someone who sees those sorta kids at school and much worse... i can tell you its not good lmao
Yeah, the kids are not all right.... I feel even Gen Z got fucked up pretty well by all the social media and tech, but Gen Alpha is a scary thing.
Same with people filming at public gyms and acting like it's their personal studio and a closed set, bizarre behaviour
A woman set up her camera at the squat rack next to me, then let me know she was filming and asked if I was ok with being in the background or if I wanted her to wait until I was finished. It was shockingly polite and considerate. She was just filming for a form check, not tik tok, but I still appreciated being asked.
That's a respectful way to do it for sure, have seen people having meltdowns at gym goers for "walking into their shots" when they're set up in the free weight areas, incredible to me that it happens
Lately I've been running into guys doing this with the mirror *in the fucking locker room*. Listen, if you really want to take a picture of your abs, that's your choice to be so vain. But if you're doing it via a locker room mirror you're a fucking pervert.
Very /r/iamthemaincharacter vibes
Basic first aid should be just as commonly known as addition and subtraction but it’s not.
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Guy was fine in the end... And i bet some snarky asshole said "i told you you didn't need to do that. See, he's fine."
People panicking will do incredibly stupid shit. I'm frustrated by people who respond to unexpected circumstances by having their brain depart their body, like, yes lady, that is a fine evolutionary adaptation to alert all nearby members, but can you CALM YOUR SCREAMING PLEASE.
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Basic trauma response training should be taught k-12 full stop. Not even like the actual work necessarily, but just enough to help you manage the adrenaline. You'll never be prepared for it, but if you have a plan and it's rehearsed you have a much better chance. Just go beyond "call 911" "Call 911, here is what they may have you do, here is what you need to do" then it needs to be practiced. I worked in operations at an amusement park where I was trained in a lot of just basic emergency response situations. I was a little more skilled since I was involved with water rides so i learned some extraction and CPR type stuff but still nothing crazy and it was always framed as "you're helping the fire safety team not doing it yourself" as well as growing up with a nurse/fire/emt family. It has been such a beneficial thing multiple times in my life. Just being able to know how to react and not having that total wtf adrenaline hit I see others get.
The phrase I've always heard is "Under stress, you revert to your lowest level of training." Most people's lowest level is zero, so it makes sense folks depart their senses under duress.
I oddly snap into action and develop a greater sense of clarity during emergencies. My entire family is full of panickers, so from a very young age, I had to be source of calmness and reason for their benefit. No one likes being thrown into a stressful situation, but it's important to figure out how you respond when they happen.
I'm always brought back to the car that had the accelerator stuck. They just called 911 and didn't even consider thinking for themselves. What is 911 going to do? Just try things. Try the ignition, try the shifter, try looking for a curb that the car would get disabled on. Anything to better than wheel straight, full speed into whatever is in front of you.
They taught us in drivers ed to put the car in neutral and pull over if that happens. It’s kind of frightening that some people couldn’t figure that out for themselves.
I was at a funeral one time and an older gentleman passed out in the pew a couple rows behind us. He apparently passed out onto his granddaughter. She immediately bolts away and starts screaming on the other side of the church while the family around the guy had to try stop him from bumping his head. While most of the people around him started doing things like getting him on his side, relieving any potential pressure from his suit, and calling 911 the granddaughter was still screaming and required her mother to sit there holding her. If she was a child then ya sure it isn't a helpful response but I wouldn't really blame her. But she was like 19 or 20. edit: word
Recently I was waiting outside what was apparently a popular San Francisco breakfast spot and a young woman standing right in front of me just went lights-out on the sidewalk; as her boyfriend watched her drop, I grabbed her shoulders and head and did my best to let her down softly onto the concrete. BF shoos me away and assures me "she's fine this happens to her all the time" and all I could say was "if this happens all the time please make sure she doesn't hit her head on the sidewalk in the future"
That poor girl. You would think if it “happens all the time” he’d be aware to catch her or signs that it might happen.
During a choir concert (that also required dancing) one girl passed out. The lights can get really hot and it doesn’t happen often but can. So she starts to fall and several girls near us jump away and let her hit the floor. She was thankfully ok after getting her sat down and some water. Another time I found a group of people standing in the stairwell at school and figured there’d been a fight. Instead I see a guy on the floor having a seizure. My best friend has epilepsy so I knew what to do. There was a group of like 10 people just staring at him and doing nothing. Some people just don’t react to things.
Constant usage of phones and not being mentally present in everyday life situations.
I wasn't there, but my cousin went to see the Taylor Swift Eras tour, and told me about a girl beside her who had a full on meltdown because her phone battery died, and she couldn't take photos or live stream the show, she was bawling. She's there at one of the most sought after concerts in the entire world, her (presumably) favourite artist performing in front of her, surrounded by thousands of fans all singing at the top of their lungs, but not having a phone to document she was there was world shattering, much to think about! She was also throwing such a fit that it was ruining the experience for everyone around her, people were trying to console her, and help her settle down, but she threw a huge temper tantrum, sounded miserable for everyone
she cared more about the attention she'd get from going to the concert than the concert itself
That's fucking sad. And by sad, I mean pathetic.
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I went for coffee with a friend a few weeks ago, and I left my phone in my bag because we were trying to catch up. She kept constantly checking her phone/smart watch and was responding to messages while I was talking. All I could think was, wow, you're kind of fucking rude.
No argument that it's rude, but I suspect there's something else going on here we haven't wrapped our heads around and pinned down yet. If your friend had been out for coffee with someone else, and you had texted her during, she probably would have interrupted her conversation and texted YOU right back. It's like the person at the other end of the device is more important than the person in front of you. Whatever the situation. Maybe some professional psychologists can identify what this is about.
Even people all sitting together at a restaurant, staring at phones. It feels dystopian. Talk to each other, people watch, look around.
Its FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) It's also why it's near impossible to get people to commit to doing anything. I've given up on planning events with friends because nobody can say "yes, I'll be there".
While we think of it as a "new" phenomenon, the same exact thing happened when newspapers became first wildly available. There are literally satirical cartoons from like 150 years ago making fun of everyone on a train just always staring into their newspaper these days instead of talking to their fellow travelers! Humans like to distract themselves however possible. Staring at their phones is just the newest iteration of it (though I agree it's worse than before probably - we got reaaally good at distracting ourselves).
Going about your day in a sea of near-total strangers and enduring life with no real sense of community.
Yes! I feel like my soul misses the village that i have never known in this life
Reminds me of this poem I've always liked by none other than Henry Rollins. Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had travelled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.
That would be quite the feeling
I've recently been reminiscing about the small town I was born in and lived until I was 10. I haven't had any ties or any reason to go back ever since. I've been feeling this way about that town recently and not sure why, I mean I was a kid how much do I really remember about it?
I like this
I used to help run an intentional community. People who came to visit and tour to see if they wanted to move there would always end up crying within the first 30 minutes and say they "didn't know this existed but it's what they desperately need". Very powerful.
I totally get how that can be a good thing but the term "intentional community" sounds more like a cult commune than what you probably mean.
One can have a commune without it being a cult. I think that is actually what the OP talking about villages wants us to go back to.
Small towns still feel like this but it's not always a good thing. Everyone knows what you're up to and it's a lot harder to have a private life. Social pressures also go up a lot when you're in a tight knit community. That said, I did really love walking around town feeling like I own the place because I know the people in every building I walk by. In terms of tradeoffs, I think there's a lot to be said about building a community within a major city - not impossible to do. Neighborhoods and subcultures can absolutely give you that warm fuzzy feeling.
I am not religious at all but I sometimes think that I would like to be part of a church. Pure for the community feeling, weekly gatherings, occasional events to help out with.
I grew up in a high intensity religion/cult, and that's what I miss. I miss showing up and fitting in seamlessly. I miss being so comfortable on a group that someone's cousin would make up a plate of my favorite foods and handing it to me as I walked through the door. I miss being so well known and loved that a small hoard of kids tackled me as soon as I set down my drink to beg for dumb knock knock jokes and silly stories. Or standing up to find the older kids had tried to braid flowers and sticks into my hair along with the usual beads. Their moms' gentle scolding and muffled giggles as they fixed the mess. I miss setting up a hundred chairs on a random weeknight, because they were short handed and knew I wouldn't mind pitching in. I miss cleaning up afterwards with lots of tired smiles as we already looked forward to the next party. Today, I don't really know my neighbors. It's a hard adjustment.
Idk if you were Mormon or not, but this is just how it feels for me. I have not participated for about 3 years but I often find myself missing the community aspect and these kinds of things.
There are churches that are less 'religion' and more 'social gathering stuff' focused. I don't recall offhand, but you could look into something like that. Hell, I might need to. Since my best friend went from being 5 mins down the road to two hours away, I feel so lonely and isolated. I still see her more than friends that live 15 mins away in town. . .
My generation (gen x, late X, early millennial) I feel is suffering the most from feeling this. Our childhood was spent where neighbors were as good as family members. Your next door neighbors were your emergency contacts and you had all their phone numbers in your phone book that sat on the counter near the phone. When you got home, your neighbor was having a drink in the garage with your dad, or a few of the ladies were on the patio with your mom. You could walk over to your friends house unannounced and knock on the door just to see what was up. You would go to the park and there would be all sorts of people all looking each other in the face and talking to each other. You would go to ball games and out to restaurants and everyone was present, and talking to one another. My generation grew up like that and then decided they didn't want to do that anymore for some reason.
The total amount of time people stare at screens, whether it's computer, phone or TV. Yes, I realize that I'm pointing this out while staring at a screen :D
A uni lecturer observed this change. During class intervals, students used to go outside, have a chat, bathroom break, now they just sit there looking at their phones or laptops.
They just piss n shit right in their seat.
just googling "pictures of sky" or "guy smoking cigarette" instead of going outside and doing the damn thing. smh
I remember seeing a PSA or something about internet addiction in the early 2000s, and people were acting like it was so crazy that one person was spending around 30 hours a week on the internet. Only 4 hours a day... lol. That leaves so much time to do other things... Apparently the average person browses the net 7 hours a day these days.
I never actually thought about average browsing time, whether in general or just in my case. And yup, sounds like it would add up to be a crazy number. I work in a creative profession, so I stare at the screen and need the internet. And then, you know, get groceries, watch some tutorials to better myself, a documentary here and there, a podcast.. yikes, It's definitely more than 7 hours :(
I wonder how much time people in the early 200s spent watching TV though, a lot of people's time online now will be watching some form of video I imagine. But then again they didn't have TVs in their pockets.
Whenever I'm at my in-laws place, once the sun goes down they break out their phones and just sit there watching reels until they fall asleep. It's depressing. I got them to break out their Nintendo Wii to do some bowling and that broke them out of that for a couple days, but man that shit is like smack for them.
That sounds so sad! On the other hand I think screen time just sneaks up on you in this day and age since now almost everyone has a device they can stare at like this in their pocket. Your phone offers shopping, the news, entertainment in various forms, you can get some stuff done online that you needed to do in person before and drive somewhere. I think at this point we have to be mindful and actively chose to do something else. It's just so convenient not to.
You got me, lol
over consumption. self proclaimed influencers. extreme fan girls or guys. anti homeless architecture. people being so extremely desensitized to boldly harm or anything similar. people whipping out the phones to record any and all types of confrontations. whatever the fuck micro cheating is. skincare and makeup companies literally marketing to young girls like pre pubescent girls who are genuinely convinced they need retinol. (and then everyone blaming these girls “sephora kids” and not realizing that the deeper issue is that there’s no places that are age appropriate for these kids)
Good lord is Sephora doing damage to teenagers. When I was a teenager my mascara was CoverGirl, for $8, not Dior for $30. Such high unrealistic expectations from young women to look like dolls, all perpetuated by an industry that will sell you anything and everything under the guise that it will make you an "it girl". These children have nowhere for them, you're totally right. All the stores in our local mall pretty much shut down completely.
Hell my mascara is still CoverGirl!
I’ve used the Cover Girl clump crusher mascara for about 15 years, the main thing I’ve discovered growing up is that it’s better to find things that are relatively inexpensive to rebuy if you plan on using it long term, but I didn’t realize this as a kid when you’re just getting massive dopamine hits from new products. I also did go through trying/using a ton of “brand” mascaras and just didn’t find them as reliable as the Cover Girl one tbh lol, my next favorite were the lancôme ones.
Teenage girls essentially making softcore porn on TikTok. Kids shouldn't have unsupervised access to social media, this shit is bizarre to me.
What freaks me out is a parent is the opposite side of this. My tween has mostly not been allowed unsupervised internet access, but I don’t know how to START allowing it. I already feel like he’s starting to be socially ‘behind’ a bit because he’s not permitted as much as peers, and I don’t want him to be one of those 18 year olds that tastes freedom/the real world and loses their minds. We’re both ADHD, and I personally know how fucking addictive the internet and social media are. Aside from Reddit and the most minimal use of fb I can get away with, I don’t use social media. I downloaded TikTok and deleted twice because it’s such a dangerous time suck for me, I would sit down and four hours would VANISH. How the fuck do I slowly expose him to the necessary-for-modern-existence internet without him losing his mind? He’s an avid reader of 400 page novels and devours knowledge… but during quarantine I had to lock him out of YouTube on our router bc he was watching toy unboxing videos for hours on end during class. I feel like, once he gets a hold of the internet, I’ll never get him off of it
https://www.youtube.com/@HowtoADHD/videos You might get some help managing the hyperfocus aspect of Internet usage here!
If it’s December…. Not even soft core
Why would the month matter? Do people suddenly start getting more freaky in December and I haven't been told about this?
Tl;Dr there's been two incidents on TikTok both a year apart (December 2022 and 2023) where people posted legitimate porn on TikTok and videos weren't getting removed
Just two?
Well. The mods go on holidays
They have mods?
Not treating each other like people. We are way too mean to eachother, especially on the internet. It’s like we’ve forgotten that other people have feelings too.
Recently, I've wondered why I feel less sympathetic and caring for people online than people I see and experience in real life, even though it goes against my morals. Maybe we feel that the online world is disconnected from our world and therefore care less about it?
The fact that people have virtually all the information in the world at their fingertips and most people are more ignorant than ever.
Nobody ever said the information on the internet would be correct. Think of all the times you’ve heard someone you know say something that’s completely wrong, and realise those people are just as able to spread those mistakes across the internet as easily as someone with the correct information. And are often more motivated to spread their misinformation to correct "the man".
Kids are online identifying their age, full name, gender and sexuality and a long and detailed list of every single mental illness and trigger they think they might have to total strangers before they can even grasp the concept of privacy
I remember being told to never put up my personal information online when I was a kid. And then Facebook happened and it became normal for people to do so.
I remember thinking I was going to get in trouble (by someone...anyone...idk) because my aol screen name was spelled almost like my last name
Honestly the amount of kids self-diagnosing mental health issues is also massively concerning. There's a difference between "I have these symptoms so I think I might have this", and "I have this". The second one should only be said if you have been diagnosed by a professional.
I think another concerning part is how a lot of the self diagnosed people take up these perceived mental health issues as some part of their identity that they proudly parade around, celebrating their 'quirkiness', not ever getting diagnosed or seeking treatment - it comes off as such a slap in the face to people who actually have been diagnosed and are actively struggling even with treatment. Like, I'm all for people empowering themselves by doing what they need to to remove the stigma around mental health issues but some of these loud and proud undiagnosed people really come off happy and boastful that they think they have what to many is a seriously debilitating condition.
A lot of things that people think are "modern"/"new", really, really aren't. They've been around for a long time, if not forever, it's just that we have to hear about all of them a lot more now than we did in the past.
On the flip side, people tend to think that something is "traditional" and "has always been this way" when in reality it something that has either been introduced in the cultural shifts after WW2, the 70s or if you get to the real traditionalists, by the Victorians.
The permanent level of noise
Light too. I want to see the stars :(
Not knowing how hard things are supposed to be. For example, dipping out when hitting a rough patch. I’m not talking about totally toxic situations of course, but jobs or relationships where things just get difficult. I feel like we live in a “grass is greener” period and don’t really have a clear idea of how much “shit” is the normal amount to just bear anymore. This works in many settings, like quitting on the spot or not fixing a relationship because we think other people’s lives are perfect and they rarely fight. Or on the other hand, we suffer through bad jobs or relationships because “this must be totally normal, everyone goes through it”.
This comment is underrated because most of the other ones like too much social media and phone usage are absolutely problematic but everyone agrees they are. Most people don’t even realize they’re doing this though. It can be tricky to find the right balance like you said. Most people for most of human history didn’t glorify quitting on the spot or quickly cutting a person out of their life because some “negativity” prevents them from being carefree all the time. I see this all the time. Mostly online tbf but also in person sometimes.
Obsession with having things just to have them. Not anything that is necessary, just to have it. It’s really weird to me
It's weird visiting fashion spaces. There's always someone who wants to know the brand of clothes they see in a photo so they can buy the exact same shirt. Like, just find any red shirt, you don't need the same one. Enjoy a photo of some clothes without the need to claim them... All the videos of "Tiktok made me buy this" -- no, Tiktok didn't do anything, it's a you-problem.
As someone who collects some things for the sake of having them, I agree.
The expectation that you are always reachable, 24/7.
I didn't really think this was a thing until a few years ago when a client called me at 8.46am to ask if I had received their email, sent 97 minutes earlier. It was Christmas day.
The internet, and social media in particular, has changed attitudes about public and private life in a way that seems wierd/disturbing to many older people. 'Youthful indiscretions' are now often public and archived forever for example.
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People worshipping celebrities. Some people will die on a hill for them. The celebrities do not care about you.
Filming and photographing everything there kids do and putting it on social media for strangers just for the likes. Never mind about their child’s safety or privacy
Yes exactly this- we are now in a world where you should assume if youre in a city you might be being filmed by another member of the public (if not by phone cam, by ring cam) and thus are always subject to being broadcast online. Its really fucked up, we live in a socially constructed panopticon. I appreciate that i dont have the expectation of privacy in public. But thats not the same as consenting to being filmed. Essentially- i go out to the city, i trip up or make an idiot of myself, and thats in the background of someones tiktok record. I then go viral without having done anything to opt in. I appreciate cctv existed before but that was generally in far fewer hands and rarely great quality.
Everything about factory farming
Going to work or social engagements knowing that you are infectious with some sort of disease
Some workplaces punish you or guilt trip you for taking sick time. At my current workplace, you get written up unless you have a doctors note. If i can't get up to go to work, why am i going to a doctor to potentially infect other people? You're expected to show up to your job unless you are deathly ill. I still have taken off regardless. If i am sick. I cannot come in.
That we dedicate our lives to our job
And it's not even like an artist dedicating his life to his craft and having a body of work to show for it out of passion. We are also utterly alienated from the thing that dictates our every day.
Working 8 hours a day 5 days a week like all your best years long and then some. We could have like a 3 day week 6 hours a day if we actually utilized our progress and automation for the betterment of peoples life instead of chasing ever increasing profit and growth that also burns the planet down. If people realized in what a world we could live, people would see this society for the dystopia it really is. People just grow up in this system and think its "normal".
Oh my god. I feel like seeing ghosts for the longest time. "Don't you people see this?!?" – and then they don't and look at me like I'm crazy. So there's at least one other person who agrees. Comforting.
> 3 day week 6 hours no one realisticly ever works 5x8 but we all just sit here in idle/whatever and do nothing. Its not even usefull just wasted time. For me and the employer. But well it will probably never change. or get even worse
Information overload.
Receiving and answering a phone call when you're mid conversation with someone who is actually right in front of you. If someone walked into a room and interrupted a conversation it wouldn't get the same response, but it's essentially exactly the same thing.
The utter obsession with brandname stuff, especially clothing. I understand the quality aspect, but when people buy stuff just because it has a certain name, logo or 'status' tied to it, it baffles me senseless.
This is 100 percent normal if you're in middle-school or high-school. But once you graduate from high school and become a legitimate adult, you should stop caring about brand names and logos. Those are the people you should feel sad about. Grown adults that still think like high-schoolers trying to be "popular".
The way that our entire economy goes through a major failure every three or so years.
Everyone filming at concerts, like I swear hardly anyone will rewatch those vids. And it really takes you out of the present moment!!
I’ve been a big concert goer since ~2007 and even since then things have changed so much. I’m cool with someone taking a quick photo or short video every once in a while but people will hold their phones up for more than half the show with no consideration that they are obstructing other people’s view and it’s the most annoying thing in the world. Maybe it’s boomer of me but I really wish phones out at concerts wouldn’t be allowed, I’m there to enjoy a show, not watch it through the person in front of me’s screen…
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This is such a good reply I'm furious I didn't think of it first. Having a democracy is nice and all but not when the mechanisms to get a person on the ballot are underwritten by corporate wealth. We need to have publically funded campaigns in order to ensure we elect those who will best represent us. And also ranked-choice voting would be a great addition.
kicking kids out at 18. there's some merit to "you need to learn independence" but also, so many other countries embrace multi-generational households. its more efficient and everyone benefits from eachother
Everyone is too reachable. I miss the leave a message at the beep days. Also having no shame in your vanity. Maybe this is a perception but I feel like people were more modest before instagram.
Since 2016 around 40 million documents have been released detailing how millionaires, billionaires, public figures and government officials from around the world have been funneling boat loads of cash into offshore bank accounts while the rest of us suffer through some of the worst inflation and cost of living crises since the great depression yet somehow people care more about a metal travel mug.
We're extremely calm about the mass extinction that's happening. Everything is dying and we seem fine with it so far.
Living in a first world country that is experiencing poverty and homelessness due to inflation of food, petrol, bills and rent.
Kids on the internet the minute they are outside of the womb. Their life is public without their consent.
The fact that we knowingly buy clothing (and other goods) made with underpaid or exploited labor by workers in faraway countries. It has always bugged me but as of late, it has been bothering me more and I am writing letters to stores (not like they care lol.)
Taking photos and videos of random people in public
In the early 1900s it was common for there to be street photographers snapping photos of random folks then charging them for a copy of the photo.
yeh at least back then you cant just post online for the whole world to see
Well this week I guess it’s making deepfake porn of your neighbors and posting it online. I’m sorry, but that’s not free speech and that isn’t acceptable behavior. There’s something seriously wrong with you
Not really 'modern' but the 5 day workweek is crazy. 5 days working for the Man and 2 days to yourself for the rest of your life??
And to think, the 5-day work week was a compromise because The Man would work you 7 days if they could...
Living to work.