I don't want to have a subscription for everything. It used to be possible to pay a one-time fee for software and use it as long as I want. Now I have to pay a monthly fee and once I finish paying, I can't use the software anymore. And it's not like I constantly get updates for the software. Often it stays the same for months or years.
I understand that software has a price, but no way these prices are sometimes justified...
Sneaker culture is incredibly weird. Shoes made by children in China with a limited edition color are in such high demand that there are sites where people refresh F5 constantly hoping to have the honor to pay hundreds and hundreds for shoes that cost $7.50 to make. Then half of the time people won't even wear them outside, they'll put them in a bag and change shoes when they get to work or whatever. Or some might not even wear the shoes at all and just display them.
I'm an old soul in this sense. I love a quality goodyear welted shoe, and made in USA, UK, or Italy usually. An Allen Edmonds strandmok is a fantastic everyday shoe for me. I like to purchase nice things in general, use them, take care of them. I really hate throwaway culture as well.
Please nobody hate me for this, I'm a bit self conscious being an admin of my own instance and don't want to piss people off haha. If you're into gym shoe culture that's awesome. If I knew you in real life I'd probably make fun of you for a minute if I saw you walking outside in socks carrying your $400 limited edition sneakers, but then you can make fun of me for one of the thousands of things I do and it's all in good fun.
- The internet was way better before it became a giant shopping mall.
- Those cars that don't have the flecks in the paint look like children's toys.
Then, I have a couple that pre-date even boomers by many years 😅:
- Handkerchiefs kick the shit out of paper tissues.
- Cars have made the world a worse place.
Do not share your name online.
Not meeting up with friends at a loud venue, I like to talk to them not try to shout over the music.
When I was a kid, I could go out and play with other kids on the streets, without fear of being snatched or hit by a car or worse. We made Judas ragdolls before Easter just to burn them, and use them for practical jokes. We used to play some child version of cricket, I've even broke a window of a neighbour doing it.
Children nowadays do not do any of those things dammit. What the fuck? How exactly are you growing up without leaving home? For some it's lack of desire, but for most of them it's outright lack of possibility.
Screw this shit. The world is becoming worse.
As a person who works in tech and is an early adopter for almost every new gizmo out there, I feel that we were better off back in the day when stuff was all analog and things were done manually.
Sure it was inconvenient, but it made us experience the world more and actually interacted with real people. I have crappy social skills and I have seen the change in myself over the years. I get anxious when my phone rings now, as opposed to being excited back in the day.
Containerization seems overrated. I haven't really played with it much, but as far as I can tell, the way it's most commonly used is just static linking with extra steps and extra performance overhead. I can think of situations where containers would actually be useful, like running continuous integration builds for someone you don't entirely trust, but for just deploying a plain old application on a plain old server, I don't see the point of wrapping it in a container.
Mac OS 7 looked cool. So did Windows 95.
Phones are useful, but they're not a replacement for a PC.
I don't want to run everything in a web browser. Using a browser engine as a user interface (e.g. Electron) is fine, but don't make me log in to some web service just to make a blasted spreadsheet.
I want to store my files on my computer, not someone else's.
I don't like laptops. I'd much rather have a roomy PC case so I can easily open it up and change the components if I want. Easier to clean, too.
Nobody should be able to profit off boring industries. Utility (power, water, telephony (which includes internet), banking, insurance.
Cap the profits at an arbitrary number that keeps up with inflation and allows for expanding business basic needs like staffing and inventory. Large investments should be reviewed and approved by regulating bodies and monies allocated and investments must be met with progress goals that achieve the completion of the project in full. None of this "Thanks for the monies, lol bye" bullshit.
Every time a new technology comes out we think it's going to make our lives so much more simple, but what really happens is the expectations of what we should be capable of doing increase and as a result we take on more responsibilities. One example is cars. You can travel further now, right? Only, now it's normal to drive an hour to commute to work. Or now you have a wider area of travel you're expected to make to visit people you know.
My boomer opinion is that smartphones have done this in a big way. I'm expected now to be available 24/7 to respond to texts on a moments notice. Not responding looks rude. I've been in workplaces that had a culture of checking work messages on Teams on cellphones outside of hours (which I refuse to do). My friends will have long group messages that I'm expected to keep up with. All of this responsibility adds up to more stress than we had in a pre cellphone era. And that hasn't translated to better lives for us in the end. There are advantages and I appreciate many of the things our high tech era gives us. But part of me longs for that era where we just had to trust that people would show up to get togethers at the agreed upon times. When conversations were special because we didn't just have 24/7 access to each other. Where we had to decipher maps to take road trips. Where we were more present with each other. I was born in the 90's which puts me in a strange generation of people that only kind of remember what it was like before.
I use an iPod and physical media for most of my music
Phone bad.
Like they're objectively pretty useful but I find the experience of using one to just kinda suck and I avoid it as much as I can. I'd much much rather use a laptop or ideally my desktop if that's at all possible. No idea how some people manage so much time using their phones
Modern [insert any art style] has gotten worst and worse!
(although truth be told, it's more of a millennial "90s cartoons/music/films were so much better" opinion)
I don't think this is a boomer opinion but I got called a boomer for it once so maybe it is idk:
I think online dating is shit and I don't mean it in a "It doesn't work for me" kinda way but I believe it's objectively shit. In an ever faster world that demands more and more flexibility from people that also extends to dating. It introduces a certain arbitrariness to romantic and sexual relationships. We now have dating apps that you can use to scroll through potential partners like a furniture catalog. It reduces people to a commodity and I hate being confronted with that. I believe it could in combination with the realities of late stage combination harm our ability to establish deep and meaningful connections to people.
It's literally what my mom warned me off 20 years ago and now I believe she was right.
I feel like all fast food chain food has gone down hill from when a grew up. I remember Subway being pretty solid growing up, but now it's like a last resort road trip stop.
Making tech thinner and sleeker doesn't always make it better, I think devices that follow their function look great!
Doesn't mean there should be no product design, but don't try to hide things for the sake of hiding them, leave the screws visible, show off the internals, try to complement them!
I find incredibly strange that people think it's normal to walk around with earbuds in at all times. When did that become acceptable? (I know it's the release of the airpod, but still, wtf?)
I can't believe how many people I see with them in when they drive and ride their bikes.
Also looking at your phone while driving. How in the hell is that so common?
I know this opinion is wildly unpopular, but I think pirating is unethical. If you can’t afford something, or you disagree with spending money for it, then fine. Don’t watch that show/listen to that song/play that game. But the people who make things deserve to get paid. It’s not right to refuse to pay for something while also consuming that content. Many of the justifications for pirating just feel like entitlement to me.
"I grew up on this stuff." - any food that someone had as a child is now, likely, a bad thing.
I saw the new thing from Heinz which is like a Coke Remix machine but with dipping sauces, and the machine mixes it in front of you with a countdown and flashing lights. I envisioned a world where fast food places stop producing their own ketchup packets and just buy one of these giant machines because it's cheaper.
Hell no. I am not asking a robot to make me ketchup when you could just hand me ketchup packets.
There seems to have been a huge drop off and loss of knowledge related to retailer websites. For some reason if you want to buy something at all popular, you need to compete simply to get an order in. There is no longer the concept of back order or first-come first-serve, and it’s maddening. Discovering products has never been worse than it is now.
___Physical media is superior. Don't get me wrong, I love the convince of being able to stream any song I want, whenever, from my phone. But you don't actually own that music, not even the digital music you bought.
So having that physical backup is good. But also, it's just a fundamentally different experience, to have to put a record on a turntable, or a tape in a cassette deck, and listen to an album from back to front.
Netflix’s disc-by-mail service is better and more convenient than streaming in basically every way. Instead of having to look for the films/shows I want to watch on various streaming services only to find out they’re not streaming anywhere, or on some obscure/expensive service, I can be confident that if they’ve had a physical release, they’re probably in Netflix’s catalog of 100,000 titles on Blu-Ray or DVD. The I can just add it to my queue, and movies will show up. Then when it’s time to watch a movie, I don’t have to waste time mindlessly scrolling my trying to find something to watch, I just pop the disc in the player. Easy. It’s really a shame that it’s going away. My public library has a massive DVD collection that I’ll probably use, but they’re lacking in Blu-Ray discs, and nothing beats the convenience of having the discs come right to your home.
Boomer opinions:
- Stop being so loud.
- Get off my lawn and please leave me alone.
- I work in tech, but sometimes tech is added to things needlessly. I just want my washing machine to be a washing machine. I'm tired of being the product.
- Silicon valley's "disruptors" are usually full of shit. The vast majority of the time: it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- Don't tell me what to do with my land if you're not willing to pay my taxes (or if you don't have good ecological reasons). I'll paint my shudders whatever color I want to.
- Bring back the damn knobs, buttons, and switches in my car. I don't need more touchscreens.
On the other hand...
- I recognize that the way I feel and some of the opinions I have are based on a context I grew up with that may no longer exist - or at least it may not exist in the form it once did. I recognize how I see things may die with me and my peers, and that's ok. It's a sad truth, but truth, nonetheless.
On the gripping hand, they were right - the Ringworld would fall into the sun, but after books 3/4 of that series, it would have been a blessing if nobody ever brought a single one of its attitude jets back home.
Now, I fart in public and really don't care. It's liberating.
Notifications fucking suck, if it isn't either my alarm or my grandma's emergency button, my phone ain't gonna do a damn thing to alert me.
