Ah, technology, the thing that was supposed to make our lives easier. Well, right up until we’re getting text messages that our fridge is too cold, our Roomba is trapped under the dog (again), and our vibrator has been hacked by Russians.
Some modern technology is amazeballs, like MRI scans and clean energy. I also love how AI can give me a recipe without telling me the chef’s life story first or how they first fell in love with rutabagas.
But much of it is pointless and only complicating our lives when its predecessor worked just fine. And here are 10 examples:
Stairs work great. Elevators are awesome. Escalators are dumb.
They’re moving stairs that look like a mobile jigsaw puzzle that you have to double-dutch yourself onto. They then move up slowly, giving you enough time to chug back a Pinky Berry juice and give a royal wave to the peasants below.
Well, right up until they break down, because escalators are about as reliable as your cousin Jimmy. They break quicker than an iPhone screen. Assumedly to keep the escalator-repair union in business.
It’s an escalator, but flat. Wonderfuckingful.
Decades ago, the escalator repair cartel must’ve joined forces with escalator salesmen. There was extra product that nobody wanted, so they decided to sell people on travelators. Their pitch wasn’t great: ‘Do you want to move a little faster for approximately 50 feet at a time?’ So they had their repair-men thugs muscle their way in. That’s the only explanation I can think of as to why these exist.
We didn’t need a slightly smaller fork.
It’s just a fork that doesn’t fork as forkily as other forks fork.
Oh, and it confuses our peasant asses about which one we should be using to scoop up our Grey Poupon.
Doors have been working fine since they put the first one on a cave dwelling. Open door, walk through, boom — you’re done. But we had to make it technoswishy by making it revolve instead. Now, you have to double-dutch your way in, but the timing of approximately half the population is off.
Once you’re in, you’re stuck in a tiny fish tank, on a moving platform, while strangers behind you push you ahead (at a different momentum than you’re going). Meanwhile you’re in nut-to-butt formation with a stranger who has smushed your face against the glass.
Have car alarms ever actually stopped a car from being stolen? I don’t think they have, or at least not often. Their main job seems to be being annoying, with their wee-woo-wee-woo-nee-naw-nee-naw-whoop-whoop-whop.
The thing is, you know who knows how to avoid and/or stop an annoying car alarm? Thieves. The people who don’t are the innocent-but-annoyed people who have to listen to them. And based on how long they squawk for, the other person who doesn’t know how to stop them is the owners of the cars.
The basic concept of this is flawed; they want to keep you from touching a dirty surface even though you’re about to wash your hands. But fine, we don’t get our hands slightly dirtier before cleaning them, cool.
Well, it would be if the things ever worked right. You have a 50% chance of it not recognizing your hands. Perhaps your hands don’t look handy enough; perhaps there’s a ghost behind you also trying to use the machine. Who knows; but now you’re pretending you’re Harry Potter waving a wand, trying to Avada Kedavra the machine to life.
I just wanted to wash my hands, not turn into a bathroom mime.
I never thought I’d miss having my order screwed up by an attitude-laden pimply-faced teenager who rolls their eyes at me ordering a Happy Meal. Sigh, now, the memory of that makes me nostalgic.
Now we have to use a touchscreen supercomputer to order a Big Mac. If there’s any time I want a touch-free experience, it’s not for the bathroom soap dispenser; it’s at McDicks. I’m about to eat my handheld fast food; I don’t want to touch the same screen that some kid just did after he fondled the balls in the McPlayPlace, then picked his nose (or worse).
Germs aside, you then have to sort through their digital menus to find what you want, while people behind you judge you for being a luddite. I don’t want to sort through a McLabyrinthine just to order a fistful of chicken nuggies.
If you don’t want to touch boogers and balls or figure out their digital maze complete with answering ‘these riddles three’, you can use their app. Now I have to download an app and do the same thing on my phone.
You know what was easier? Just telling the person there what you want to shove in your McPieHole.
My kingdom for tactile knobs. But now in cars we have screens more complicated than the McPlagueScreen above. So we’re supposed to stare at a screen, sorting through menus, just to figure out how to activate hands-free calling.
All the while we’re supposed to be paying attention to the road, but instead just ran over a pedestrian who was walking while staring at their own screen.
Ah, the internet porn age verification pop-up, the biggest farce on the internet. You definitely have to be 18 to enter. Or know how to click a button. At this point they might as well have some fun with it and change it to ‘I’m definitely, totally, like for sure 18+’ along with a winky face on the button.
Almost everything these days is Bluetooth-enabled, Wi-Fi-connected, and AI-empowered. Great, I always wanted a toaster that needs a satellite connection to burn my bread. But none of it seems very helpful. It’s awesome that fridges can now text you and tell you that the door is ajar; but what would be more helpful…is if it closed the door and kept its trap shut about it.
Now half of kitchen appliances have touchscreens, which could work great except for the fact that when you’re working in the kitchen, your hands are either wet or caked in cake batter.
It’s not just the touchscreens either; you go to use the AI air fryer, but you can’t because it needs to install an update first. Since when did air-frying crap need an update? It’s either airily fried, or it’s not.
When you finally prepare your food, you can eat it with an electronic fork that buzzes to tell you that you’re eating too fast. Pipe down, you judgmental prick, before I stick us both in a wall socket.
Even sneakers have Bluetooth now. Like the Nike Adapt BB, which can bluetoothedly adjust the fit of them. You know, like laces do. But now you can open an app on your phone and wait for the internal motor to get to tightening them. Ah yes, much easier. Well, until it gets hacked, then you’re trapped in shoes trying to suffocate your feet like footy quicksand.
While I click and swipe through modern technological dystopia, I miss the hopeful techno-future from The Jetsons (thanks David Perlmutter for reminding me of their gentler future). Its visions of robot maids and magical food generator machines would’ve made our lives easier. Instead of having app-powered fish tanks that can be hacked to steal from casinos.
The world is weird now.
But hey, at least we have automatic password managers so that I don’t have to remember that I changed my password from PasswordShmashword to IalreadyforgotThisPasswordFFS.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.