What's something you once had a lot of respect for but now have no respect for?
What's something you once had a lot of respect for but now have no respect for?
Original question by @zachimusprime44@lemmy.world
Police
Cops (1989) ruined america, taught us to trust these ass holes and they royally fucked us over.
Not making light of everything before 1989, but even after all that shit, the show painted them in a decent enough light to where people spill their guts and trust them, just because they have a uniform and they took full advantage of us.
Airbnb. I used to think they were a perfect business. Saw a gap in the market, created a decent product, invested in their users (back in the day they would even send a photographer to take good photos of your property).
Unfortunately the consequences turned out to be awful.AirBNB would work better if the owner was required to live in the property 160 days out of the year. Where it went wrong was in letting corporations buy up housing and use it to skirt hotel taxes and regulation.
🌈.°`E N S H I T I F I C A T I O N'°. 🌈
Yeah, I'm pretty torn. In my small community (on an island), housing and rent are insanely expensive, and also pretty scarce. There are people who have full time jobs living in tents in the woods or in their cars (in Alaska) not because they can't afford a place to stay, but because there are no places to rent.
It's also a major tourist spot, and the population more than doubles regularly on days during the summer, and for those that fly in, the hotels book up quick. So there's a huge AirBnB market. Which means houses are getting bought up and then set up as AirBnBs instead of renting to residents, so housing becomes even more scarce. So I hate AirBnB.
But.... I just bought a 4 bedroom house, where one of the beds is in a built in 1-bedroom apartment, with its own kitchen and everything. We wanted a 4bedroom house so we could have a guest room for people visiting, as well as just have extra space for us. Well, once I retire, one of our plans is to rent that out as an AirBnB during the times we don't have guests staying. It doesn't deplete housing in the area (we wouldn't be renting it out anyway), and it helps pay our ridiculous mortgage.
So I hate it... but if it's used properly/ethically, I feel like it could be pretty good.
This is actually I think how Airbnb was originally supposed to work... You rent out a room or an in law suite that you aren't otherwise using. Or maybe your condo in a resort town when you're not there. Unfortunately became so lucrative that you can make more money doing that than renting. I stayed in one in a ski town recently that was clearly at least two separate apartments before and had all been combined to house large groups. Felt kinda crappy about that, and it goes to show how it eats up the housing stock
Institutions. Courts. Media. Religion. Law Enforcement. Politicians.
The institutions are captured. The courts, media, and politicians are corrupt. Bought and paid for. Law Enforcement are just class traitors. The enforcement arm of Capital. Protecting the interests of the ruling class and taking a bludgeon to the people. Religion is a tool of control. Used to control the ignorant and guide their ire.
Idk I'm starting to think dystopia began when we figured out agriculture
Most life eats other life to live. It's been a bad time from the very beginning.
When aristocracy discovered mercantilism and mutilated it into capitalism.
Ironically this take is entirely self-validating, since this is the primary mechanism for that degradation.
Jk Rowling. She was (I think) the only billionaire to ever debillonaire themselves without dying (i.e., she donated so much wealth to charity that she was no longer a billionaire).
But then she decided to dedicate herself to making trans people's lives miserable...
I'm curious which charities she was donating to before she turned into a massive cunt. Cause all she donates to now are hate groups.
Good question, I never actually looked into it. According to her Wikipedia page:
She established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, and co-founded the charity Lumos in 2005. Rowling's philanthropy centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In 2025, Forbes estimated that Rowling's charitable giving exceeded US$200 million. She has also donated to Britain's Labour Party, and opposed Scottish independence and Brexit.
Can she just die already? I normally don't wish death on anyone. Just people that do extremely evil things.
Many moons ago I thought Israel was just defending itself. For two decades now I’ve come to believe they are the problem, and are now committing wanton genocide
what radicalized me was a postcard-sized graphic displaying the original borders vs the present borders at the time (~20 years ago). until then i thought it was mega complicated and hard to understand, but it's really quite simple.
The US. Believed in the "American Dream", but the more I learned about the country, the more I grew to dislike it. It's all a facade.
And I used to have a lot of respect for old people, but that also changed. They are just as flawed as the rest of us.
Old people who are assholes were probably always assholes. They were once young assholes and got older. Conversely, old people who are good, were probably good people when they were younger, they just got old.
Most people don't stray far from their roots. Few are those who make a meaningful change. Some choose goodness as a goal, some get their asses kicked by life and turn bitter.
I guess the lesson is don't be an asshole. if you are one, work toward being less of one until you aren't one anymore. Try not to let life get you down. If all else fails, drugs.
I disagree with this as it's a prejudgement with little to no knowledge about anybody's roots, circumstances, history, etc. It categorically puts people into boxes and is the flawed reasoning of racists, anti-semites, homophobes, and so on.
For example, Islamic terrorists aren't born terrorists. Some of them are born into the wrong family and fed hatred all their lives. Some had to live through hardships you and I can't even begin to imagine surviving. Others are bullied, ostracised, and made feel worthless only to find belonging and recognition in the only group that would listen to them and make them feel seen.
Ask yourself, if you grew up and had to go through the same things as some people, would you still be the you that typed what you typed?
Yes, some people have always been assholes and never changed, they do exist. I'm not denying that.
I would have to say organized religion. I grew up in a pretty strict christian home, but as I grew older I began to see how much of what I had been told was just patently false and designed to manipulate and control. I have done a lot (decades worth) of studying and reading and I'm confident that the conclusions I have arrived at are correct. Of course, your mileage may vary.
The Internet. Social media in particular.
I used to be a "information wants to be free" pure techno-optimist who thought the availability of data at all times would immediately cause a massive boost in awareness, education and intelligence worldwide.
I was super wrong. It was all a mistake and it should be burnt to the ground. Yes, including this place.
I mean, in a lot of ways the social media takeover is the antithesis to freedom of information. It's all siloed off echo chambers where it used to be free flowing, publicly available, indexable and searchable.
I still believe in the freedom of information goal more than ever, but fighting for it in the post information era is increasingly difficult (and important)
It's the Web 2.0 model of corralling people into walled garden platforms, where they're driven insane. One day people will look back at this time and wonder what we were thinking.
I was having good time until Smartphones got invented. Letting the masses (morons) get access to instant communication effortlessly and cheap fucked us.
A certain elongated muskrat comes to mind. I love space so the thought of a reusable rocket to make space affordable was awesome. I also believe that electric cars are the future, and tesla did make pretty good charging standard and help to "prove" the concept. But now I just hope he somehow winds up dirt poor, and irrelevant. Just oh, my, god
thing is he bought those companies and has little to do with what they actually make, those things are to the credit of the brilliant engineers who made them, not that idiotic failson. the only thing he accomplished was failing upwards because born rich.
And you are absolutely right, at the time I ofc did not realize that. Hence why I once had respect for him, but now have none.
The video game industry. (Indie games are on fire lately, though.)
AA is where it's at now. There's still insanely good games coming out, there just not by companies like EA and Activision anymore.
In some ways I think the good development studios are the same size they've always been, it's just that a new class of mainstream games has risen to profit on the masses. If you ignore those, it's not so bad. At least not until one of the AAA publishers gets their hands on them to ruin the IP and layoff the original devs
A lot of AA studios have been cramming in a ton of microtransactions still, whereas indie is mostly devoid of it, but it definitely gets a lot better the more A's you remove.
I am screaming at this sentence both internally and externally.
Google. Do no evil
The worshipping of the self-made man and entrepreneurship in popular American culture
I think I was just too young and fashionable, maybe I was one of those guys that saw themselves as a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire"... then got old enough to see through the nonsense
Google. It was once a good search engine. Now I find myself getting only the most irrelevant results based on my keywords and more often than not an advanced search turns up nothing of value
Corey Doctorow's podcast Understood: Who broke the internet? does an amazing job of explaining this. It's only like 5 episodes and worth everyone's time.
Nintendo.
Things got worse once Bowser got ahold of the American castle.
The fun dissolved with Iwata and Reggie gone.
The line to far for me was their retroactive bs patents used to attack Palworld. It's one thing to be strict on your own systems, but another to do it to others. 80s Nintendo is back and possibly worse than before.
It wasn't Bowser, it was the finance guys that were placed at the head of the company after Satoru Iwata's death.
I haven't played with a switch very much but I think the joysticks are worse than what they made for GameCube. I am under the impression that switch has what amounts to a directional pad underneath a joystick. Like that Gameboy peripheral with the lights, magnifier, and joystick that clips over the D pad. The joystick is there on the switch but output is only an analog 8 directions.
Pardon me if I'm wrong here but what I see with Nintendo is them making bad hardware. I know it's made for kids but even they deserve better. The switch version of any big AAA game that got a switch port is generally really really dumbed down and looks and runs like garbage. I can't wait to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 looking and running like garbage again. 5 years after it came out.
The joy cons are legitimately awful to use. The buttons are like needles after a while and the sticks just feel weird on my thumbs. What's weird is that the switch lite fixed both of those problems. (None of this is about drift lol which is awful and another problem)
None of this is about switch 2. Idk anything about it.
Republicans. When I was a child, slogans like “fiscally responsible”, “family values”, “smaller government “ sounded like good things. Republicans always claimed the moral high ground. But they’ve spent my entire adult life proving it as manipulative bullshit for personal greed and power, holding themselves above the law, the worst in humanity, rising to our current flirt with fascism.
Christianity and the Democratic Party.
Elon. Turns out he was always a conman and liar.
At one point, between 2021-2022 I had thought absolutely nothing of him and just thought of him as an eccentric rich person. Even wanted one of his "The Boring Company" flamethrowers because who wouldn't want a flamethrower? Then comes the election and out comes his true colours. Now there's no change in hell I'd support him.
So many people sabotage themselves by being bad people and going mask off.
I thought he was a great guy when he loaned those solar panels to the hospital in Puerto Rico. Then he bought Twitter and started firing employees, banning reporters, blocking the api so researchers couldn't have access. This was the start for me. Jerk has only gotten worse.
Grown ups.
In the past I liked how easy it is when one company offer products to basically everything (i.e. Google), but now that I see the consequences, I'm somewhat disturbed.
vaguely gesturing at everything
America.
And my dad.
Parents (my own)
This was my first thought as soon as I read the question.
Religion
Western psychology, and I say this as a former psychologist.
Like so much else, any potential at being a science was bastardized long ago in order to make it an industry focused on getting people productive again instead of focusing on their wellbeing which usually has an inverse relationship to getting them back to work in the short and medium term.
Meanwhile the small population of people that can afford actual psychoanalytic therapy that isn't throwing pills at them and teaching them coping strategies within 3 covered sessions tend to be the reason so many others are miserable.
For the non-wealthy, mental healthcare in the US is a complete and utter scam that is geared to serve others at your expense and shoehorn you right back into the stressors that got you into therapy. If you need help, you're out of luck.
Liberalism
As in like you support absolute monarchy or dislike neo liberals?
Capitalism.
Hulk Hogan
Law. I was pretty hyped up when i went to university to study it, but the more i learnt on the foundations of it and discovered the people it created, the more i hated it. Now I'm doing completely different things, and i'm glad my parents didn't force me to keep doing it.
Aaron Rogers.
This is something that bothers me. Every time something like this come up, there is a non-trivial crowd of people saying things like "no shit. In the right circle, everyone known for a long time". Often they come with specific anecdotes that should raise all the red flags.
Well, I had no idea. Not a clue. And it's not like I was not interested. I was fallowing his work, social media... live in general. He was a very close friend with a woman who was vocal about being an abuse victim. Nobody told her?
Even in the power of hindsight, when I was looking for articles or comments from the past, there was not a lot. I found like one, "there is nothing he wouldn't do to lure a goth girl" (paraphrased), that got zero traction.
If there were signs, why did we let that happen? What can I do, not to fall for something like this again?
I took to kindly, although I was not entirely onboard with, the idea of American exceptionalism.
Ur m0m.