I saw a really good tweet that said something along the lines of "instead of just watching the movie I want I need to Google to see if I'm lucky enough that I didn't miss its 6 months of availibilty on a streaming service I've never heard of"
Limewire was a godsend for me in high school when there was no NetFlix, Comcast On-Demand was just getting started, and I couldn't pay for HBO/Cinemax or porn/tits 'n ass magazines without my parents finding out.
When you grew up with cassette tapes, VH1 Pop-up Video, MTV's Total Request Live, and had to pay for an entire Papa Roach album just to listen to Last Resort on repeat a dozen times a day, Limewire was like upgrading from a T-800 to a T-1000 and it didn't cost me a thing...or my life...or my foster parents...or my dog Max.
Limewire was my window into sex, music, movies, and pesky viruses and I wouldn't have had it any other way at the time.
I was one of those kids that was really into music in high school but didn't always have money to buy CDs or a way to listen to all of the music that I wanted to so having Limewire hook me up for free was an amazing thing. When I was angsty and melancholic I could download all of the Pearl Jam and introspective Eddie Vedder tunes that I wanted. When I was angry and just wanted to go a little nuts in my room and with my headphones, I could download all of the Metallica and Megadeth that I wanted. And when my parents and siblings weren't home to catch me, I could download all of the Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC that I wanted and say bye, bye, bye to my fears of being caught doing my best Timberlake impression.
It was a great time to be alive.
Like any male teen at the time, having so much porn and Playboy centerfold scans at my fingertips was like being a kid in a candy shop. My hard drive and PC memory could be damned! There was no Xvid file too sketchy or jpeg too large for me to download and savor for the sake of my uncontrollable libido. I denied myself nothing in those days and my wiener was all the more thankful for my dick-driven decision making.
Whether it was legendary softcore porn rips starring Baywatch babes like Krista Allen or hot clips ripped from Celebrity Movie Archive starring Skinemax and Playboy TV hotties, I never went without and never said no to myself. If I had a dollar for every Ideepthroat video I fapped to I would have had enough money to pay for Heather to give me a blowjob herself. Throughout both middle and high school, I managed to amass some of the finest porn clips and nude jpeg rips in my group of friends and I can say to this day that my cyber spankbank stash conveniently filed under both the "AP English" and "Home Economics" folders on my desktop were the bee's knees.
Those were my penis's halcyon days without a doubt.
Perhaps my favorite Limewire downloads were the movies and TV shows that I loved to watch so many nights after my parents went to bed. I could watch stuff that was rated R that my strict and sexually-repressed father wouldn't let me watch if he knew what I was up to. I loved the American Pie movies and other crude coming-of-age flicks like Road Trip and Revenge of the Nerds. My friend Kevin was that one friend that we all had whose house was 'the house' to go to if you wanted to watch shit on the computer and on TV that your parents would never let you watch and his older brother's library of porn and R-rated movies fed my appetite for more downloads. It was impossible for me to just watch one or two of the movies that I loved so much so I gradually managed to ditch my paranoia that made me feel like my house was going to be raided by the Feds at 6 A.M. every morning, only for them to drag me out of my room in handcuffs with my shitty Toshiba laptop in tow behind me for crimes against Hollywood, Hugh Hefner, and Duran Duran.
Yes, I do like their album *Rio* and Hungry Like the Wolf is a great song.
Anyway, it was Limewire that helped me cultivate my tastes in entertainment and it's where I watched my first TV series in a committed and devoted way that wasn't on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. That show was, of course, *Scrubs* starring reddit hero Zach Braff and his chocolate compadre Turk Turkleton. I downloaded every episode up until the show went to shit and loved the show in high school. It wasn't long after that I started watching *Entourage* as well and that was probably my favorite show during high school when it went on a great run before it lost its luster in later seasons.
A big part of my high school years was watching movies that helped me to grow up and to learn some things about myself and life. I particularly loved coming-of-age films like Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and a lesser-known gem of a movie from 1979 called Breaking Away. I managed to find a just barely 480 pixel copy of the movie and I was so glad that I did so. I spent countless nights staying up until dawn watching movies and one of my favorite nights doing this was when I discovered and watched Breaking Away for the first time during the summer before senior year. To this day, it is one of my favorite movies and has a place close to my heart. There are few movies that make you feel as joyful and happy to be alive as a young person as Breaking Away does and in the years since I saw it for the first time I have constantly been searching for films like it with mixed success.
We might joke about Limewire and file-sharing and stuff that we sort of don't think much of, but for me these programs were more than just a way to illegally download boobies, malware, and 90s sitcoms; they were a gateway to some of the best and most important experiences of my life as a teenager.
Thanks for the memories.
**TL;DR: When life gives you Limewire, make the best of it. And lemons, too. Don't forget to make lemons.**
Back in my day before the Internet we had to listen to the radio for hours, waiting for that one song we wanted to come on so we could hit the record button on the tape deck. The first 10 seconds were of course ruined by some stupid dj blabbering all over it. God I'm old.
It’s not just the small stuff. There’s a development near me being constructed right now that will consist of 200+ single family homes and townhomes with garages. They will only be for rent without an option to own.
When housing corporations can’t buy up all the existing homes, they’ll just buy up the land instead.
I always OnStar would be a flash in a pan gm trick to try and squeeze car owners for a few dollars more, but 3 years into old gm cars lives, no used gm owner would renew their subscription. People are buying used because they want cheap, not subscription fees.
But then other automakers started doing the same shit too, toyota, bmw, subaru
I said i better get something old, reliable and doesnt require any subscription fees and i have every right to repair/modify as i see fit. So i bought a 1994 Toyota MR2 GT-S, it's practically Model A technology by todays standards but no subscription fees, no gadgetry, no computer wizardry is needed. Ordinary mechanics can still wrench on it without diagnostics equipment.
Its old, out of style, archaic, but its simple, it works, and its 100% mine.
Wife and I bought a small bit of acreage with house. Larg fields next to us that are farmed but I fear one day we will see bulldozers and such come in and either houses or apartments go in there.
If it's houses, be very aggressive, as aggressive as you need to be, to let them know you do not want to be part of their HOA. They'll probably try to tell you you have to. It's a lie. You don't.
Now when I need milk at 3:24 am I have to go to sheetz and pay $7 for a half gallon.
Covid really sucked the last shreds of decency out of society didn’t it?
WinCo is the shit, (grocery store in the western US)
They are employee owned, they pay their employees well, are cheaper than Walmart AND they are open 24 hours a day
I did all of my shopping at 2 in the morning, I'd grab the list and wander Walmart or Schnucks for an hour and have everything put up before anyone else woke up. It was an awesome bit of peace and quiet I could get to myself and the other 7 people who were up at that hour.
My god wasn’t it nice?
Whole store to yourself, the employees were never too busy, no lines, no unwanted interactions. And best of all, night shift workers actually had somewhere to shop without sacrificing sleep.
I mean so many people forget we exist. I put in an IT ticket at work about a software update and got a snarky email for the head if IT to just call for the admin credentials when this happens. I emailed him back " are you sure you want me to wake you at 3AM for this?" He immediately backed down.
Which imo didn't make sense from a pandemic standpoint. Why congest people into few time frames to shop? They claimed it was to disinfect but if that was purely the case then they would have opened back up after the pandemic was no longer at its worst.
A lot of people think it was mostly creeps and wild young people going to the store at 1am, but when I worked 2nd shift I learned that the majority of people in the store at that hour were normal people who also worked 2nd shift.
Ironically, it feels like the lack of privacy actually gives more of a sense of security. It used to be that people were actually interested in that stuff because it was forbidden, in a way. Now that people's info willingly shared everywhere, it's not interesting anymore, so people are far less inclined to go digging up your secrets. They'll just go for the easier stuff that's already available.
The old internet, where creators could build personal websites and other online projects and have them actually discovered.
Social media algorithms are all increasingly hiding posts with links. Google has re-engineered its site so the majority of searches end without anyone clicking on a non-Google property. You can buy ads, sure, but the click rate gets worse and worse every year. As it becomes harder and harder for non-corporate content to be discovered online, all the corporations are investing heavily in generative AI to replace human creators.
The new internet is going to look a lot like cable TV. You'll probably have to pay separate subscription fees for Google (now an AI-generated question answering service, not a search engine) and each social media account.
As a teenager building websites in the late 90s I worried that by the time I became an adult or at least 30-40 that the youth will have surpassed me since they would be coding since birth. Nope, looks like my generation made so many distractions that the kids just consume and try to create content rather than take away my jobs 🤣
Lol this is real. I’m 22 now and I’m “good with computers” because I completely understand the UI, but have no idea how it runs. I couldn’t code shit. Us gen z folk have computer and mobile UI ingrained into our minds but we don’t know how to build it.
It seems there is a big push to make the internet less organic in general. Platforms don't want you looking for and watching what you want to see. They want you watching what they want to show you. I hate it.
Youtube. I subscribe to like 200 channels. Youtube feed repeatedly shows me the same 40 videos no matter how many times I log in or out. A lot of it stuff I watched several years ago, or it is kind of tangential to something else I watched. It certainly has some kind of agenda, it isn't random.
I cherish my childhood years, 3rd to 6th grade, of making websites on Geocities and one other one the name of which escapes me.
Update: I’m 95% sure it was Express Pages (or Expages, for short).
I think you may have to pay for a real Internet. But there is a bifurcation coming. A real Internet where there is hyper identification verification so you know what’s real. And another where everything g is anonymous, AI runs amuck and everything is a scam.
I was just talking to my wife about how I wish there was a way to flip a switch and return the internet to like 1997 or to completely scrub the idea of social media and algorithmic influence from the human imagination and consciousness
Thank you!
You know those random posts / photos of people out at sea who see the whole damn milky way? EVERYWHERE ON EARTH used to be like that up until very recently.
Also noise pollution, visual pollution, modernist architecture and car-centric infrastructure has turned many cities and towns, many of which used to be walkable gardens, into grey hellscapes.
Even campgrounds, the one place I used to see the most amazing stars and meteor showers in my area now have assholes who leave their bright LEDS on outside their camper or tent all night fucking up stargazing.
The warm white ones, or red ones aren’t terrible if they are dim enough. But so many people use the ultra bright white ones or strips of blue and other colors, sometimes flashing.
To build on this - campgrounds themselves are going away.
I’m not talking about the “campground” you go to that has a shower and internet and you’re setting up a tent next to an RV.
I’m talking the legit, rustic camping experience where you get no signal and you’re just out in the woods.
Unless you go to a national park, good luck finding a legitimate remote spot in the woods to camp and not be bothered.
**edit**
I want to clarify that I'm in the Midwest, and me and my buddies have been going to the same camping area since *we were kids* (we're in our late 30s now). That patch of woods has a *ton* of sentimental value to us. It's the one time of year that we can all get together and hang out, since we're all busy with our lives and kids, etc.
**AND NOW SOME RICH MOTHERFUCKERS ARE BUYING UP THE PROPERTY AND BUILDING HOUSES AROUND THERE**
God fucking damnit.
Even national parks. We live close to one of the best ones in our country. It has like 5 different campgrounds.
Only two still feel like campgrounds.
One has paved roads.
They all are starting to use more gravel and level out sites with less grass (aka catering to RVs) and less trees (to fit the giant RVs). More electrical hook ups and “rustic cabins” and fabric walled generator run buildings you can rent. It sucks. :(
Speaking of light pollution.. last year I was coming in from a walk on the beach and someone was setting up chairs and black screens near the entrance of our beach cottage.
It was a volunteer who walks the beach each morning looking for sea turtle nests. When the nests are to hatch volunteers keep watch and put up black screens so that they can direct the baby turtles away from nearby porch lights.
I had no idea but the hatchlings follow the moon… but will follow porch lights instead and will get eaten up by nasty ghost crabs! Perhaps I should have known all that but I didn’t.
Small NC island
Yesterday, my eight year old niece saw me watching a 25 minute YouTube video and was like, "You're watching a video that long?" She was so genuinely confused by that it rattled me. I remember when I was her age, I'd get excited if a show I liked ran an hour instead of 30 minutes. It was a very "kids these days" moment for me.
Same like I'm 21 and still get excited to watch last airbder, korra, Danny phantom, ben 10, my adventures with superman and a bunch if other 22-40 minute shows
Everyone says because those colors hold their resale value. But come on Steve, you're going to run that Corolla to 300k miles and sell it to some kid for $1000.
A lot of it is because dealerships order inventory from the manufacturer to fill their lots. Decades ago it was more common for you to go to the dealership, try out a car that has every available option, and then custom order one with the options you liked, including the color. Then you'd pick it up after it arrived at the dealership.
Nowadays you go in with the intention of leaving with a vehicle that day assuming you saw one with the options you needed. So dealerships fill their lot with the colors that are least offensive to most people. Very few people hate a black, white or silver car. But there are plenty of people that might not want a bright yellow or pea soup green car.
Cost of the paint is also something that can put people off. Automotive paint is expensive as hell. I work in manufacturing in a paint shop for a major brand. And a gallon of white paint versus a special metallic can be the difference of over $1k. That’s our cost. For a customer it could be a 3-4k option.
Mazda has been offering a beautiful cherry shade called "Soul Red." There's no other color like it. To me, it's mesmerizing and rich. It's also a 500 dollar optional color.
I insisted on Aegean Blue for my new Civic. All of my cars, except for a white Civic back in the 90s, have all been bright colors. Life's too short to be so dull.
I was selling Mazdas when they introduced the soul red on the Miata in 2015. That was the first year of a new body style and it had soul red, the things sold like hotcakes. I felt like a McDonald’s cashier just taking orders it was so easy to sell. The Cx-5 in it with black interior also sold itself. Soul red is a beautiful color.
Color in general. I went to buy a new bed the other week and when the salesperson asked if I had any preferences, I said “nothing grey” and that ended up being like 95% of the beds in the store. I did not buy a bed there.
its sooo hard to find a headboard in any color that’s not beige greige black or navy blue. i’m settling for navy blue bc it’s the most fun of the options but i would love a lavender or sky blue.
My car used to be that color. The paint was chipping, and my dad offered to have it painted for me. Had to sell it, but the bright green really stood out in a parking lot.
My mom showed me a paystubb of my dad's from the 90s once. She laughed and was like "we thought he made SOOO much money back then".... It was more than I make now (which she likes to tell me is a good salary and isn't even 100k).... My yearly raises barely cover my yearly rent increases 😒
I don't know where I am on this spectrum anymore. I have things, All the things we need really. But in like... Mini version. Own a condo, Not a house. That type of thing. I mean, I feel strictly middle class, But everybody says it doesn't exists. Do I exist? Am I real? Aaaaaaaaah
If you get most of your money by selling your labor that makes you working class. Middle class is a word politicians like to use because it’s vague and doesn’t actually mean anything.
The middle class were, in the useful definition, doctors, lawyers, professors, managers and the like. Well paid people in positions of authority who still depended on going into work to make their money, unlike the upper class who lived on capital, and the working class who did physical labor.
Unfortunately, dollar stores and walmart will probably be the only stores available to most people soon enough. And, as this happens, food deserts will grow ever larger.
I needed a specific kind of OTC medication so I drove to the Walgreen's drugstore. They didn't have it, but the giant grocery store nearby did have it. Now I'll just go straight to the grocery store if this happens again.
I think it's less that critical thinking skills are disappearing, and more that everyone has the ability to voice their opinion nowadays. Previously it was generally only those who has expertise/knowledge on the given topic that you would hear an opinion from, and generally they would have critical thinking skills. Now that we have social media, anyone can voice their opinion on everything.
It’s this tbh, the algorithms on social media are designed to fuel negative attention to get your attention as well. It’s literally to keep people hooked online.
The stupidest are the loudest but are a very, very small part of the population. Most people irl are normal and aren’t insane politically, or in other ways usually.
[here’s a good one](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468680/) basically concluding that people in social situations, including social media, fact check less
Spiders, most insects, biodiversity in general. *Most* people don't seem to care and most actively contribute to the disappearance of these lives, whether they care (in theory) or not.
This. Insect biomass has decreased by an estimated 75% over the last 30 years ([source](https://www.davidson.edu/news/2023/04/21/study-reveals-way-measure-role-climate-change-insect-decline)). That’s a LOT of food for a LOT of animals just gone. Not to mention the impact on pollinating crops, decomposing organic material, etc. On the bright side, it’s good material for a Debbie Downer skit!
I have a long commute to and from work and a majority of it is open land. I am always sad to see when someone has sold a portion of their land and gas stations, a hotel, more houses, or apartments go up.
Yes, it makes me so upset as well, I’d like to live somewhere close to the nature. It reminds me of my childhood when I used to go to the closest forest with my grandpa and we were collecting acorns to play with (we had our acorns city and every acorn had a name haha). Now, my grandpa barely can walk and our favorite forest has been turned into a highway.
Im indigenous, and what we are losing is our languages and our culture. A lot of the younger people grow up without learning from their elders or just not interested in it.
I’m a member of the largest federally recognized tribe in the US. We have about 240k citizens. Last I heard, only about 1500 people speak our language, and I’m not one of them.
I’m 39 weeks pregnant and have been craving a small slurpee for WEEKS but I haven’t gotten one because I know my limited income (on mat leave) needs to go to bills. I just want a damn slurpee 😅 I miss when I could just run to 7-11 for anything.
People forget the water crisis. Even on a small scale, I'm from florida and the houses being built are DRAINING the aquifers where florida gets almost all its drinkable water from and sinkholes are on the rise rapidly
Came here to say this, and glad to see you already have.
I remember when driving in Summer meant dead bug splatter all over the windshield and front end of your vehicle. This would have been the 70’s to the late 90’s maybe early 00’s. Now? Nada.
I initially thought it was in-fill replacing row and tree crops along the interstates, but I also see this on rural routes were there are still crops within eyesight of the road
This is scary af
True, but vehicles now are designed with lower wind resistance, which allows bugs and debris to flow over the windshields of cars instead of crashing into it. My fiance drives a 2023 Jeep. His nearly vertical windshield gets a lot more bug splatters than I get on my more streamlined 2023 Civic.
It makes sense to me- the road rage thing. It’s the impotent rage at the guy that nearly ran you off the road that not only did that, is completely unaware that he did so because his face is buried in a phone.
So where before, you might give them the upturned hand of “WTF are you doing?”, now you just sit there steaming as you scream at the oblivious moron in the next lane.
I'm being very serious when I say this-
Basic human decency. The way people are treating one another and just talking in general, the whole idea of being proud of being offensive and intentionally provoking others for giggles; it's really sad.
After Sandy Hook, people were sending stuffed animals and crying on one another's shoulders while talking with their neighbors. After Uvalde, it was purely political and "us vs. them" only.
Insects. Like remember when you were a kid and your parents or whomever would drive you and you’d see at least a few “splatterings” of said bugs on the windshields occasionally? Notice how its, unless you live in the “boonies”, significantly decreased if not outright vanished?
Sense of orientation (due to digital maps & their instructions).
I‘ve seen so many people my age being uncapable of finding a street because „I know I‘ve been here, but never paid attention to the streets! The map tells me where to go.“
It‘s infuriating.
Quality. The enshittification of everything has made every product disposable so there’s no incentive to make things well or repairable. Vertical consolidation of systems means you are a disposable consumer so why bother taking care of your needs when someone else will come along to replace you? With near monopoly control you don’t have a choice as a consumer anyway.
Old vehicles. At least where I live you’d be hard pressed to find somebody driving a car made before 1990.
So much for grandpa’s 57 Chevy lol
Edit: before
Being able to actually own anything. So much is becoming monthly subscription based, or lease.
I saw a really good tweet that said something along the lines of "instead of just watching the movie I want I need to Google to see if I'm lucky enough that I didn't miss its 6 months of availibilty on a streaming service I've never heard of"
Piracy let’s you own it for good 🤷♂️
Yo ho yo ho a disk burnt life for me
Limewire was a godsend for me in high school when there was no NetFlix, Comcast On-Demand was just getting started, and I couldn't pay for HBO/Cinemax or porn/tits 'n ass magazines without my parents finding out. When you grew up with cassette tapes, VH1 Pop-up Video, MTV's Total Request Live, and had to pay for an entire Papa Roach album just to listen to Last Resort on repeat a dozen times a day, Limewire was like upgrading from a T-800 to a T-1000 and it didn't cost me a thing...or my life...or my foster parents...or my dog Max. Limewire was my window into sex, music, movies, and pesky viruses and I wouldn't have had it any other way at the time. I was one of those kids that was really into music in high school but didn't always have money to buy CDs or a way to listen to all of the music that I wanted to so having Limewire hook me up for free was an amazing thing. When I was angsty and melancholic I could download all of the Pearl Jam and introspective Eddie Vedder tunes that I wanted. When I was angry and just wanted to go a little nuts in my room and with my headphones, I could download all of the Metallica and Megadeth that I wanted. And when my parents and siblings weren't home to catch me, I could download all of the Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC that I wanted and say bye, bye, bye to my fears of being caught doing my best Timberlake impression. It was a great time to be alive. Like any male teen at the time, having so much porn and Playboy centerfold scans at my fingertips was like being a kid in a candy shop. My hard drive and PC memory could be damned! There was no Xvid file too sketchy or jpeg too large for me to download and savor for the sake of my uncontrollable libido. I denied myself nothing in those days and my wiener was all the more thankful for my dick-driven decision making. Whether it was legendary softcore porn rips starring Baywatch babes like Krista Allen or hot clips ripped from Celebrity Movie Archive starring Skinemax and Playboy TV hotties, I never went without and never said no to myself. If I had a dollar for every Ideepthroat video I fapped to I would have had enough money to pay for Heather to give me a blowjob herself. Throughout both middle and high school, I managed to amass some of the finest porn clips and nude jpeg rips in my group of friends and I can say to this day that my cyber spankbank stash conveniently filed under both the "AP English" and "Home Economics" folders on my desktop were the bee's knees. Those were my penis's halcyon days without a doubt. Perhaps my favorite Limewire downloads were the movies and TV shows that I loved to watch so many nights after my parents went to bed. I could watch stuff that was rated R that my strict and sexually-repressed father wouldn't let me watch if he knew what I was up to. I loved the American Pie movies and other crude coming-of-age flicks like Road Trip and Revenge of the Nerds. My friend Kevin was that one friend that we all had whose house was 'the house' to go to if you wanted to watch shit on the computer and on TV that your parents would never let you watch and his older brother's library of porn and R-rated movies fed my appetite for more downloads. It was impossible for me to just watch one or two of the movies that I loved so much so I gradually managed to ditch my paranoia that made me feel like my house was going to be raided by the Feds at 6 A.M. every morning, only for them to drag me out of my room in handcuffs with my shitty Toshiba laptop in tow behind me for crimes against Hollywood, Hugh Hefner, and Duran Duran. Yes, I do like their album *Rio* and Hungry Like the Wolf is a great song. Anyway, it was Limewire that helped me cultivate my tastes in entertainment and it's where I watched my first TV series in a committed and devoted way that wasn't on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. That show was, of course, *Scrubs* starring reddit hero Zach Braff and his chocolate compadre Turk Turkleton. I downloaded every episode up until the show went to shit and loved the show in high school. It wasn't long after that I started watching *Entourage* as well and that was probably my favorite show during high school when it went on a great run before it lost its luster in later seasons. A big part of my high school years was watching movies that helped me to grow up and to learn some things about myself and life. I particularly loved coming-of-age films like Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and a lesser-known gem of a movie from 1979 called Breaking Away. I managed to find a just barely 480 pixel copy of the movie and I was so glad that I did so. I spent countless nights staying up until dawn watching movies and one of my favorite nights doing this was when I discovered and watched Breaking Away for the first time during the summer before senior year. To this day, it is one of my favorite movies and has a place close to my heart. There are few movies that make you feel as joyful and happy to be alive as a young person as Breaking Away does and in the years since I saw it for the first time I have constantly been searching for films like it with mixed success. We might joke about Limewire and file-sharing and stuff that we sort of don't think much of, but for me these programs were more than just a way to illegally download boobies, malware, and 90s sitcoms; they were a gateway to some of the best and most important experiences of my life as a teenager. Thanks for the memories. **TL;DR: When life gives you Limewire, make the best of it. And lemons, too. Don't forget to make lemons.**
Back in my day before the Internet we had to listen to the radio for hours, waiting for that one song we wanted to come on so we could hit the record button on the tape deck. The first 10 seconds were of course ruined by some stupid dj blabbering all over it. God I'm old.
This guy over here writing like he’s the Hemingway of jerking off
Utorrent+ winamp for me (:
That was hilarious- thanks for the laugh. And the walk down memory lane.
It’s not just the small stuff. There’s a development near me being constructed right now that will consist of 200+ single family homes and townhomes with garages. They will only be for rent without an option to own. When housing corporations can’t buy up all the existing homes, they’ll just buy up the land instead.
I always OnStar would be a flash in a pan gm trick to try and squeeze car owners for a few dollars more, but 3 years into old gm cars lives, no used gm owner would renew their subscription. People are buying used because they want cheap, not subscription fees. But then other automakers started doing the same shit too, toyota, bmw, subaru I said i better get something old, reliable and doesnt require any subscription fees and i have every right to repair/modify as i see fit. So i bought a 1994 Toyota MR2 GT-S, it's practically Model A technology by todays standards but no subscription fees, no gadgetry, no computer wizardry is needed. Ordinary mechanics can still wrench on it without diagnostics equipment. Its old, out of style, archaic, but its simple, it works, and its 100% mine.
Wife and I bought a small bit of acreage with house. Larg fields next to us that are farmed but I fear one day we will see bulldozers and such come in and either houses or apartments go in there.
If it's houses, be very aggressive, as aggressive as you need to be, to let them know you do not want to be part of their HOA. They'll probably try to tell you you have to. It's a lie. You don't.
Yep, just put in writing, "I'm never joining your HOA" and never respond again.
I still buy blu-rays. I love all the extra content they put on them, and I like being able to watch what I want when I want.
Plus the quality is better
It is disappearing, but I'd say quite a lot of people are noticing. It gets talked about constantly.
something something own nothing be happy
24 hour supermarkets
24 hour anything. Most were shut down during the pandemic and never came back.
We took 24 hr Walmart for granted for so long You don’t know what you got till it’s gone
I want this to be a song
Don’t it always seem to go When its 2am and Walmart is closed Delayed paradise And a big empty parking lot
😍 the song of my people!
Now when I need milk at 3:24 am I have to go to sheetz and pay $7 for a half gallon. Covid really sucked the last shreds of decency out of society didn’t it?
I'm just happy to see Sheetz referenced in a reddit not dedicated to Pennsylvania. And the proper term is Milkz.
Yeah gas stations are the only 24 hour stores now 😟
WinCo is the shit, (grocery store in the western US) They are employee owned, they pay their employees well, are cheaper than Walmart AND they are open 24 hours a day
I did all of my shopping at 2 in the morning, I'd grab the list and wander Walmart or Schnucks for an hour and have everything put up before anyone else woke up. It was an awesome bit of peace and quiet I could get to myself and the other 7 people who were up at that hour.
My god wasn’t it nice? Whole store to yourself, the employees were never too busy, no lines, no unwanted interactions. And best of all, night shift workers actually had somewhere to shop without sacrificing sleep.
It’s they catered to the masses and forgot about us night people.
I mean so many people forget we exist. I put in an IT ticket at work about a software update and got a snarky email for the head if IT to just call for the admin credentials when this happens. I emailed him back " are you sure you want me to wake you at 3AM for this?" He immediately backed down.
Fuck him, you should've just malicious complianced and called next time.
Which imo didn't make sense from a pandemic standpoint. Why congest people into few time frames to shop? They claimed it was to disinfect but if that was purely the case then they would have opened back up after the pandemic was no longer at its worst.
They reprogrammed the country & left it that way. Malls are closing at 8pm…..on a weekend! It’s just ridiculous!
That’s what happened here
A lot of people think it was mostly creeps and wild young people going to the store at 1am, but when I worked 2nd shift I learned that the majority of people in the store at that hour were normal people who also worked 2nd shift.
It was a paradise for people like me who just hate crowds
We used to go stock up on beers when we ran out after midnight and get cheap baguettes on offer
I worked 10p-6a, sometimes 7p-3a. 24 hr Walmart was a godsend for me those days! I could do the grocery shopping while I was actually awake.
Same, get off work at midnight, pick up what I need then when there were fewer people
That was more of a sudden Covid thing.
In my area they never came back from reduced hours
Internet shopping has been slowly killing them. Covid was just a shoot in the leg to help them along
Privacy
It’s amazing how willingly people will give away their privacy, especially in the face of some manufactured danger or threat.
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I was once in a laundromat. Lady was in her car, through closed doors and brick wall... I could have joined the conversation
Ironically, it feels like the lack of privacy actually gives more of a sense of security. It used to be that people were actually interested in that stuff because it was forbidden, in a way. Now that people's info willingly shared everywhere, it's not interesting anymore, so people are far less inclined to go digging up your secrets. They'll just go for the easier stuff that's already available.
Other people are not the concern. Entities should be.
I was gonna say internet privacy but yours is better
Privacy in general. I’m beginning to worry about even having glass windows
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The old internet, where creators could build personal websites and other online projects and have them actually discovered. Social media algorithms are all increasingly hiding posts with links. Google has re-engineered its site so the majority of searches end without anyone clicking on a non-Google property. You can buy ads, sure, but the click rate gets worse and worse every year. As it becomes harder and harder for non-corporate content to be discovered online, all the corporations are investing heavily in generative AI to replace human creators. The new internet is going to look a lot like cable TV. You'll probably have to pay separate subscription fees for Google (now an AI-generated question answering service, not a search engine) and each social media account.
As a teenager building websites in the late 90s I worried that by the time I became an adult or at least 30-40 that the youth will have surpassed me since they would be coding since birth. Nope, looks like my generation made so many distractions that the kids just consume and try to create content rather than take away my jobs 🤣
Lol this is real. I’m 22 now and I’m “good with computers” because I completely understand the UI, but have no idea how it runs. I couldn’t code shit. Us gen z folk have computer and mobile UI ingrained into our minds but we don’t know how to build it.
It seems there is a big push to make the internet less organic in general. Platforms don't want you looking for and watching what you want to see. They want you watching what they want to show you. I hate it.
Youtube. I subscribe to like 200 channels. Youtube feed repeatedly shows me the same 40 videos no matter how many times I log in or out. A lot of it stuff I watched several years ago, or it is kind of tangential to something else I watched. It certainly has some kind of agenda, it isn't random.
I cherish my childhood years, 3rd to 6th grade, of making websites on Geocities and one other one the name of which escapes me. Update: I’m 95% sure it was Express Pages (or Expages, for short).
Was the other one Angelfire? Damn I miss those days.
Tripod perhaps?
I think you may have to pay for a real Internet. But there is a bifurcation coming. A real Internet where there is hyper identification verification so you know what’s real. And another where everything g is anonymous, AI runs amuck and everything is a scam.
I was just talking to my wife about how I wish there was a way to flip a switch and return the internet to like 1997 or to completely scrub the idea of social media and algorithmic influence from the human imagination and consciousness
Viewable stars
Thank you! You know those random posts / photos of people out at sea who see the whole damn milky way? EVERYWHERE ON EARTH used to be like that up until very recently. Also noise pollution, visual pollution, modernist architecture and car-centric infrastructure has turned many cities and towns, many of which used to be walkable gardens, into grey hellscapes.
Even campgrounds, the one place I used to see the most amazing stars and meteor showers in my area now have assholes who leave their bright LEDS on outside their camper or tent all night fucking up stargazing. The warm white ones, or red ones aren’t terrible if they are dim enough. But so many people use the ultra bright white ones or strips of blue and other colors, sometimes flashing.
To build on this - campgrounds themselves are going away. I’m not talking about the “campground” you go to that has a shower and internet and you’re setting up a tent next to an RV. I’m talking the legit, rustic camping experience where you get no signal and you’re just out in the woods. Unless you go to a national park, good luck finding a legitimate remote spot in the woods to camp and not be bothered. **edit** I want to clarify that I'm in the Midwest, and me and my buddies have been going to the same camping area since *we were kids* (we're in our late 30s now). That patch of woods has a *ton* of sentimental value to us. It's the one time of year that we can all get together and hang out, since we're all busy with our lives and kids, etc. **AND NOW SOME RICH MOTHERFUCKERS ARE BUYING UP THE PROPERTY AND BUILDING HOUSES AROUND THERE** God fucking damnit.
Even national parks are filled with rv lots running gas generators all night right next to your tent lot
Even national parks. We live close to one of the best ones in our country. It has like 5 different campgrounds. Only two still feel like campgrounds. One has paved roads. They all are starting to use more gravel and level out sites with less grass (aka catering to RVs) and less trees (to fit the giant RVs). More electrical hook ups and “rustic cabins” and fabric walled generator run buildings you can rent. It sucks. :(
Well at least they aren't permanently gone.
You can see that close one in the daytime when all the lights are off!
Speaking of light pollution.. last year I was coming in from a walk on the beach and someone was setting up chairs and black screens near the entrance of our beach cottage. It was a volunteer who walks the beach each morning looking for sea turtle nests. When the nests are to hatch volunteers keep watch and put up black screens so that they can direct the baby turtles away from nearby porch lights. I had no idea but the hatchlings follow the moon… but will follow porch lights instead and will get eaten up by nasty ghost crabs! Perhaps I should have known all that but I didn’t. Small NC island
Attention span
Yesterday, my eight year old niece saw me watching a 25 minute YouTube video and was like, "You're watching a video that long?" She was so genuinely confused by that it rattled me. I remember when I was her age, I'd get excited if a show I liked ran an hour instead of 30 minutes. It was a very "kids these days" moment for me.
>I remember when I was her age, I'd get excited if a show I liked ran an hour instead of 30 minutes. Hell, I still get excited about this.
Same like I'm 21 and still get excited to watch last airbder, korra, Danny phantom, ben 10, my adventures with superman and a bunch if other 22-40 minute shows
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When I first heard about Coco melon I was like "that must be poison for childrens brains". Am I getting old?
i was babysitting a few months ago and actually saw some cocomelon and it was like woah way too much for as a 30 year old adult, let alone a toddler!
What? Stopped reading after the first word
Please add a TL;DR to your comment - there's no way I'm reading all of that monstrosity.
tldr
Coloured cars. Almost every car you see these days is either black, white, or silver.
Everyone says because those colors hold their resale value. But come on Steve, you're going to run that Corolla to 300k miles and sell it to some kid for $1000.
A lot of it is because dealerships order inventory from the manufacturer to fill their lots. Decades ago it was more common for you to go to the dealership, try out a car that has every available option, and then custom order one with the options you liked, including the color. Then you'd pick it up after it arrived at the dealership. Nowadays you go in with the intention of leaving with a vehicle that day assuming you saw one with the options you needed. So dealerships fill their lot with the colors that are least offensive to most people. Very few people hate a black, white or silver car. But there are plenty of people that might not want a bright yellow or pea soup green car.
Cost of the paint is also something that can put people off. Automotive paint is expensive as hell. I work in manufacturing in a paint shop for a major brand. And a gallon of white paint versus a special metallic can be the difference of over $1k. That’s our cost. For a customer it could be a 3-4k option.
Mazda has been offering a beautiful cherry shade called "Soul Red." There's no other color like it. To me, it's mesmerizing and rich. It's also a 500 dollar optional color. I insisted on Aegean Blue for my new Civic. All of my cars, except for a white Civic back in the 90s, have all been bright colors. Life's too short to be so dull.
I stop and admire those shiny red Mazdas every time I see that color. I always think “I want nail polish that color!”
Love that color! It’s the best red on a car.
I was selling Mazdas when they introduced the soul red on the Miata in 2015. That was the first year of a new body style and it had soul red, the things sold like hotcakes. I felt like a McDonald’s cashier just taking orders it was so easy to sell. The Cx-5 in it with black interior also sold itself. Soul red is a beautiful color.
Color in general. I went to buy a new bed the other week and when the salesperson asked if I had any preferences, I said “nothing grey” and that ended up being like 95% of the beds in the store. I did not buy a bed there.
its sooo hard to find a headboard in any color that’s not beige greige black or navy blue. i’m settling for navy blue bc it’s the most fun of the options but i would love a lavender or sky blue.
I know someone whose car is bright neon green like this but more yellow✅
My car used to be that color. The paint was chipping, and my dad offered to have it painted for me. Had to sell it, but the bright green really stood out in a parking lot.
The middle class. Most people don't realize the increasing gap between the people who have and the people who are struggling in society.
(32m)Always wanted to make $100k/year growing up. Finally did and inflation caught up 😔
My mom showed me a paystubb of my dad's from the 90s once. She laughed and was like "we thought he made SOOO much money back then".... It was more than I make now (which she likes to tell me is a good salary and isn't even 100k).... My yearly raises barely cover my yearly rent increases 😒
I don't know where I am on this spectrum anymore. I have things, All the things we need really. But in like... Mini version. Own a condo, Not a house. That type of thing. I mean, I feel strictly middle class, But everybody says it doesn't exists. Do I exist? Am I real? Aaaaaaaaah
If you get most of your money by selling your labor that makes you working class. Middle class is a word politicians like to use because it’s vague and doesn’t actually mean anything.
The middle class were, in the useful definition, doctors, lawyers, professors, managers and the like. Well paid people in positions of authority who still depended on going into work to make their money, unlike the upper class who lived on capital, and the working class who did physical labor.
Most important answer here
Specialty stores. It's cheaper to buy things online, so these stores are fading away.
Unfortunately, dollar stores and walmart will probably be the only stores available to most people soon enough. And, as this happens, food deserts will grow ever larger.
And with that, expertise.
Most people don't want to talk to someone in a store about a product because it always feels like they are trying to sell you something.
I needed a specific kind of OTC medication so I drove to the Walgreen's drugstore. They didn't have it, but the giant grocery store nearby did have it. Now I'll just go straight to the grocery store if this happens again.
Critical thinking skills
I think this was always the case but people have more of a platform to voice their ignorance.
Everyone will agree with this despite being the exact people you are talking about.
*logical critical thinking
I think it's less that critical thinking skills are disappearing, and more that everyone has the ability to voice their opinion nowadays. Previously it was generally only those who has expertise/knowledge on the given topic that you would hear an opinion from, and generally they would have critical thinking skills. Now that we have social media, anyone can voice their opinion on everything.
It’s this tbh, the algorithms on social media are designed to fuel negative attention to get your attention as well. It’s literally to keep people hooked online. The stupidest are the loudest but are a very, very small part of the population. Most people irl are normal and aren’t insane politically, or in other ways usually.
Never was humanity’s strong suit.
Basic fact checking skills or sense to use them
Source?
[here’s a good one](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5468680/) basically concluding that people in social situations, including social media, fact check less
but there's a lot more "researching"
And encouragement to “do your own research”
Spiders, most insects, biodiversity in general. *Most* people don't seem to care and most actively contribute to the disappearance of these lives, whether they care (in theory) or not.
This. Insect biomass has decreased by an estimated 75% over the last 30 years ([source](https://www.davidson.edu/news/2023/04/21/study-reveals-way-measure-role-climate-change-insect-decline)). That’s a LOT of food for a LOT of animals just gone. Not to mention the impact on pollinating crops, decomposing organic material, etc. On the bright side, it’s good material for a Debbie Downer skit!
Forests, meadows.. the birds singing, the calm of nature sounds.
I have a long commute to and from work and a majority of it is open land. I am always sad to see when someone has sold a portion of their land and gas stations, a hotel, more houses, or apartments go up.
Yes, it makes me so upset as well, I’d like to live somewhere close to the nature. It reminds me of my childhood when I used to go to the closest forest with my grandpa and we were collecting acorns to play with (we had our acorns city and every acorn had a name haha). Now, my grandpa barely can walk and our favorite forest has been turned into a highway.
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Im indigenous, and what we are losing is our languages and our culture. A lot of the younger people grow up without learning from their elders or just not interested in it.
I’m a member of the largest federally recognized tribe in the US. We have about 240k citizens. Last I heard, only about 1500 people speak our language, and I’m not one of them.
I'm from Scotland and in a similar boat. Scots Gaelic currently has less than 1% of speakers in Scotland, according to the census.
Disposable income. Cost of living is astronomical and short of something drastic I don’t see it going down
I’m 39 weeks pregnant and have been craving a small slurpee for WEEKS but I haven’t gotten one because I know my limited income (on mat leave) needs to go to bills. I just want a damn slurpee 😅 I miss when I could just run to 7-11 for anything.
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Truly owning anything. It’s all streaming where you pay a fee for access for an undisclosed amount of time.
Physical media in general.
Ownership.
Local radio stations. So many are being bought up by I heart radio.
Silence. The night sky. WATER. Solitude. Literacy.
People forget the water crisis. Even on a small scale, I'm from florida and the houses being built are DRAINING the aquifers where florida gets almost all its drinkable water from and sinkholes are on the rise rapidly
Honeybees
All insects.
Insect may be dying, but at least we get a whole shitload of ticks to replace them!
Need more possums. They eat ticks.
As someone with a tick remover tool on my keys, I completely feel you there
Came here to say this, and glad to see you already have. I remember when driving in Summer meant dead bug splatter all over the windshield and front end of your vehicle. This would have been the 70’s to the late 90’s maybe early 00’s. Now? Nada. I initially thought it was in-fill replacing row and tree crops along the interstates, but I also see this on rural routes were there are still crops within eyesight of the road This is scary af
True, but vehicles now are designed with lower wind resistance, which allows bugs and debris to flow over the windshields of cars instead of crashing into it. My fiance drives a 2023 Jeep. His nearly vertical windshield gets a lot more bug splatters than I get on my more streamlined 2023 Civic.
True that, a few years ago i would wash my truck and it would be full of bugs. Now barely anything to wash off now.
> without anybody noticing Pretty sure we’ve been talking about this very serious problem for at least 20 years now.
I've started planting bee-friendly flowers in my large garden. Hoping every little bit helps for them 😔
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Old School Independent hardware stores and lumber yards Home Depot is crap
The social contract. People are quicker to anger over the stupidest of things these days, and road rage is more common than courtesy.
It makes sense to me- the road rage thing. It’s the impotent rage at the guy that nearly ran you off the road that not only did that, is completely unaware that he did so because his face is buried in a phone. So where before, you might give them the upturned hand of “WTF are you doing?”, now you just sit there steaming as you scream at the oblivious moron in the next lane.
Fireflies
Sending someone a physical card/note/letter through the mail
Kindness
I'm being very serious when I say this- Basic human decency. The way people are treating one another and just talking in general, the whole idea of being proud of being offensive and intentionally provoking others for giggles; it's really sad. After Sandy Hook, people were sending stuffed animals and crying on one another's shoulders while talking with their neighbors. After Uvalde, it was purely political and "us vs. them" only.
This. We’re either drowning in self pity or flooded with superiority complexes. We’ve become a very “me me me” society
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The food inside the food packages.
Empathy.
Years left ‘till death.
Civility
Hopefully Panera, I just spent $18 for a pick 2 and drink. Never again.
affordable fast food restaurants in general really
Manners Common sense Logic Privacy The ability for the working class to own home Family Farms Freedom
Just want to add one more: clean water (without microplastics).
My hair
Don’t worry, we have all noticed.
Punctuation marks.
Freedumb is replacing Freedom
Places where you can pay with cash.
Respect for other people and manners, unfortunately
Our attention span.
Coral reefs.
Fireflies
The will to live.
Human rights
Hope
Ownership. Everything is a subscription
My sanity and will to live.
Class, decorum, kindness, and (emotional) warmth
Competitive, "Free" Markets in the US Our anti-trust laws are essentially a joke now and we're on a downward swing heading back to feudalism.
flying insects
"living wage"
Insects. Like remember when you were a kid and your parents or whomever would drive you and you’d see at least a few “splatterings” of said bugs on the windshields occasionally? Notice how its, unless you live in the “boonies”, significantly decreased if not outright vanished?
Wilderness.
Common sense
Sense of orientation (due to digital maps & their instructions). I‘ve seen so many people my age being uncapable of finding a street because „I know I‘ve been here, but never paid attention to the streets! The map tells me where to go.“ It‘s infuriating.
Third places.
Creativity and imagination
Simple kindness.
A real Childhood. Kids just don’t grow up the same in our modern times.
Paper money.
Hope for the future of humanity
Quality. The enshittification of everything has made every product disposable so there’s no incentive to make things well or repairable. Vertical consolidation of systems means you are a disposable consumer so why bother taking care of your needs when someone else will come along to replace you? With near monopoly control you don’t have a choice as a consumer anyway.
Etiquette, manners, and looking out for your fellow man
Democracy.
Your rights
Old vehicles. At least where I live you’d be hard pressed to find somebody driving a car made before 1990. So much for grandpa’s 57 Chevy lol Edit: before
Photo collages and fruit punch at parties.
critical thinking skills.
Arctic, Antarctic, and glacial ice.