Iâm prepared for the downvotes knowing where Iâm posting.
If you hate it that much, why are you using it? Itâs a tool. Itâs useful. It also allows you to overindulge, but that says more about you than the tool.
I donât create posts claiming smart phones ruined every aspect of society dude
I donât use it. At all. But nevertheless I still have to deal with people constantly telling me that I need to use their âappâ, and or only giving information in the form of a QR code. I still have to navigate around zombie-people staring at their phones while they walk around. I still have to deal with the fall-out of bad online interactions that kids have had. and so on. The attention-span issue that the green-text mentions results in a dumbing-down of news and media and basically all kinds of information sharingâŚ
This stuff negatively affects me in obvious and measurable ways, even though I donât use any of the features of this âtoolâ.
knowing where Iâm posting.
a place where people call each other out for saying stupid shit?
I would say that it is also a fault of the device if it encourages this brain-dead overindulgence that is clearly of the interest of many big advertisement companies. You can choose a device and OS tho and install apps that lessen the effect, but an simpler phone might not have all the bells and whistles but can get you quite far without offering such a possibility to lose hours off your brain just turned off.
I just got a new phone and someone asked me âdo you like it?â I hesitated to answer and they assumed âthatâs a noâ. Well, not really, it works well and does what I need it to. But do I like it? Not really, its a tool of necessity for operating in modern society. I like my steam deck, I like my speakers, I like my bike, but liking my phone is sort of similar to liking my work laptop. Itâs just a thing I have to have or be really very inconvenienced.
I myself feel conditioned to have it over a dumb phone. Companies and people assume that you have one, and the thing I find the most offending is obsessive QR overusage. I hate that.
If itâs on a banner or in a document, it rarely ever have plain text address. They are on all of my bills, as mobile banking is popular and you are supposed to trust it and open it in your banking app lol (although itâs payment info in a specific format, not a web link). Itâs also used in 2FA\registration for apps and you canât login into popular messengers without scanning a pattern and my workplaces used some of them for all internal communications. And whenever I scan anything or refuse, I see them everywhere, this sharp b\w noise that is not a part of a human world, but rather meant for machines. These technological shenanigans occupying the visual landscape is probably why I can jump from not wanting a smartphone myself to disliking others having them. And with how it locks you from pretty essential things I can see the next step is having government services only availiable in Zuckerbergâs Metaverse. Thatâs when Iâd call quit on that fuckyverse.
/rant
I think QR codes are cool because itâs literal computer data in ink. You can draw a QR code with a pencil if you know how to encode the data. Itâs like a punch card, a physical manifestation of digital data.
However using a QR code is really freaking annoying, especially if you have a cheaper phone. I always configure my phone to only show the encoded string and not click the links because fuck normalizing blindly clicking links
I used one of those promos to get a bunch of free stickers made and I did a QR code to lemon party with my friendâs Instagram at the bottom. I travel a lot for work so I was going to post them up everywhere. Unfortunately I got them printed in yellow which made the QR code not work.
I find them really fascinating, especially their error-correcting, but I do find them weird occupying every banner without any alternative and trashing our human world with too much of them, outside of the discussion of them being too much needed for functioning in our society.
the guy exclusively lists cultural phenomena. how would not using a phone personaly solve any of these?
âItâs just a toolâ is such an ignorant statement in general. The tools we use have been shaping or culture for thousands of years. There is no choice not to take part in the current state of humanity. âItâs just a toolâ is what people who want to sell you their technology tell you to make you forget about the effects it can have on a bigger scale.
As someone who carries around a flip phone on purpose, itâs not impossible to live without a smartphone, but itâs getting more challenging.
Ticketmaster now requires a smartphone. You canât print tickets. Which means I can no longer go to baseball games.
So far, thatâs the only thing Iâve found thatâs a hard block, but many other things are certainly not designed for the phone impaired.
A lot of those are problems caused by phones regardless of whether one uses one themselves.
But for the personal ones, there are self aware addicts of all kinds. Smokers know cigarettes are killing them, complain about them, sometimes even hate them but canât stop.
Edit: pair o words
Thatâs a fair and well measured response. It begs the question of what we can do as individuals, and when it comes to smart phones I donât think thereâs much.
You donât hate smartphones; you hate capitalism.
none of those items listed are impossible communism. Its smartphones that suck. The difference is, with capitalism you have a choice not to use them.
Smartphones are a tool. They are inherently not bad nor good.
Social media ruined it by using algorithms to keep you glued to your phone as much as possible.
a lot of the issues listed are related to the impact of technology on our lives. not on the system that controls the means of the technologyâs production. unless youâre trying to say that smartphones are only possible under a capitalist society?? but im assuming youâre not saying something that ridiculous. or are you one of those freaks that thinks communism will solve all existential woes, even aging and mortality lol i hope not. because life is gonna have shit in it no matter what and being pampered to death is absolutely a thing. thatâs essentially the smart phone problem. thousands of potential dating partners a swipe away, hundreds of memes and videos constantly being uploaded to the brain, yeah itâs going to impact you. this is bigger than economics.
Ruined these things for you maybe. I still enjoy them. And donât use my phone for most. One of the things I live about the phone is being able to communicate with my friends and family I want. I also enjoy having the majority of the worlds information available to me. Ooooo and music. Soooo much music at my fingertips.
NO! You are not allowed to enjoy things, you must be sad, capitalism bad, communism is solution to all our problems. enshitification. enshitification. enshitification. đĄ
Thereâs no way you are having a good time with digital dating, there just isnât.
Well, not anymore no. Living with my bae. But I dipped my toe in that scene some years back, it was kinda fun. Setting up my own blind dates, occasionally meeting someone as thirsty as me. Iâm sure itâs changed. I meant more that the mobile versions of those things doent ruin the regular versions. Im sure the affect each other, but Normal dating is still a thing.
Even if your goal is to hit it and quit it like dating apps encourage, itâs still not a good time.
People either have forgotten or didnât live in the time before smart phones, but the world was fucking boring as, you HAD to talk to someone because you were so fucking bored, thatâs why we discovered shit, we were bored and had to do something, then turtle neck man gave us smartphones.
you HAD to talk to someone because you were so fucking bored
Yeah, nah, I just read one or two novels each day.
Not OP. I remember when I was little, playing computer games that were completely on the keyboard (we didnât even have a mouse.) They were stored on floppy disks and would start up by just inserting them into the computer. Iâm not sure if youâre asking as a fellow old-school gamer seeking nostalgic connections, or as someone whoâs never played old games and is simply curious, but I did find this list of early games pretty interesting.
There are a number of adaptations of classic arcade games, pop culture tie-ins, and even flight simulators. It amazes me how much floppy disks used to be able to accomplish.
Itâs really sad to me that people think that smartphones are the source of all entertainment now. Even today I use my phone very little on a daily basis. Youâre limiting your perspective to that little screen in your hand instead of exploring the real world.
Smartphones are what is fucking boring to me. I donât want to sit around and look at that shit.
ITT awful fucking reasons for âsmartphone goodâ. Fuck smartphones.
Yep. Ignore your downvotes. Theyâre just zoomers with Stockholm syndrome.
A standalone camera would be a better camera. A standalone media player would be a better media player. Emulation handhelds are better gaming systems.
Paper-weights donât even have batteries. Checkmate, phones.
Phones are useless for anything but making sure youâre abiding by your state-mandated privatized surveillance of choice and if I could carry around a tiny Linux laptop with cellular integration and use it instead, I probably would.
I get not everyone can use Linux, but I feel thatâs a misunderstood problem in that, it isnât my problem that you canât do something.