Yahoo Lifestyle "They Are Just Dumb And Unusable": 19 Modern Inventions That Were Supposed To Make Our Lives Easier, But Ended Making Them WAY Harder
Sometimes, new technology is great. Other times, I just want my old flip phone with 500 texts a month back, and I'm not alone. Recently, redditor BisonNo9004 asked the r/AskReddit community to share the "modern convenience" that's made their lives harder, and they did not hold back. Here are some of the inventions they believe are actually pretty inconvenient.
1."Just let me use the website! I hate having to download a damn app for everything."
2."Why do I need an account to use your website? It's just a one-time service. Also, I called customer service because your website is not user-friendly and does not have the services I am calling about. Stop asking me to hang up and go to the website."
"I refuse to use websites that make me sign up for an account to see what's on them. Fuck you, Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook (and probably TikTok, but I've never even tried that site). Shakes fist at cloud."
3."Touch screen devices everywhere. Many people with tremor disorders (like me, with two) can barely use them or can't use them at all."
"This is especially annoying for cars. After driving a friend's car with a touchscreen for radio and volume control, I decided that I would NEVER buy a car that doesn't at least use physical buttons for volume control.
If I'm driving 60 mph on the freeway, I AIN'T GOT NO TIME TO BE FIDDLING WITH A TOUCHSCREEN TO ADJUST THE VOLUME."
4."Subscription-based payments."
"Those were never intended to be convenient or better. They were always just to make the company substantially more money."
5."Scanning QR code to access the menu and order the food."
"I don't carry my phone with me, and some places are so flummoxed by this. Like, bruh, even the youths' phones run out of battery sometimes. Why is it weird that I, an OLD, am phone-less? JUST GET ME A PAPER MENU AND IT WILL BE FINE."
6."Everything being 'smart.' Things have become so smart that they've gone full circle and are now just dumb and unusable."
"Appliances that are so smart that using the app to set them up is mandatory, and then the app becomes abandonware. As a rule, I don't purchase products with a mandatory app to use them. Smart lights and a Google Home mini used to be my only exception, but they have become outdated and are falling back into line with the rule as the problems crop up. "
7."My tumble dryer has a dozen presets for every kind of clothing, but absolutely nothing on the machine or in the manual indicates temperature, which is literally a universal pictograph written on every item to tell you how to dry it."
"Our 'smart dryer' measures the dryness of the clothes and stops when they're dry, except no matter the cycle you choose, it stops when they're still a bit wet. Best to just put it on timed dry."
8."Today, I had to go to the urgent care. I was the only one there. They could have just taken my ID and insurance and had a practitioner see me. However, the only way to claim an appointment, even by walk-in, was by scanning a QR to register. Except that they were on the first floor of a big building, and mobile service wasn't great. So I went on their Wi-Fi, but their website was down. So they had to print out paper forms that they had done away with, except their Internet was also down. So they had me write my information on the back of some receipt paper and finally saw me."
"But they couldn't bill my insurance because their system was down.
And then they knew they had to send my prescription to Walgreens, but they couldn't because their system was down. So they called the closest Walgreens they could find for my prescription, but it was actually 30 minutes away because their system was down.
So I asked for a paper prescription order and went to the Walgreens next door, who had to contact a Walgreens 30 minutes away to get the prescription transferred because the system was down at the urgent care.
But they couldn't verify the prescription being transferred because the system was down at the urgent care."
9."The whole online application for jobs situation. I only work in hospitality and low-wage jobs. I miss the days of walking around town with my CV printed out, where I could talk to a manager about a vacancy, instead of wasting endless time filling out the same details for jobs and often silly questionnaires when I'd often hear nothing back at all."
"I honestly think this has serious repercussions for the state of employment. There's such a disconnect between employers and job seekers."
10."Social media. The (dis)information and entertainment overabundance is dangerous and rots our brains. It has immense potential for good, but, as always, some bad actors spoiled the whole thing."
"I used Facebook for years to keep in touch with friends. But many fell for disinformation and stopped talking to me when I tried to reason with them. Now, it feels like nobody has seen a recent post about a big life event, and I don't see many of my old friends' similar posts without going to their profiles. But you know what's really easy to see in my feed? Propaganda posted by groups or pages I don't even follow.
I'm deleting Facebook after I make sure I have the phone numbers of old friends I want to stay in touch with."
11."Car park apps. Just let me pay without downloading an app, creating an account, and trying to figure out what code this car park is. And no, I'm not going to let you use my location."
"So many of those are just straight-up scams. They're trying to collect your email address and information to sell to marketers."
12."Automated bill pay when you have to navigate a labyrinth of pages just to update your credit card number or email."
"Automated bill pay when they don't let you select the pay date before the due date, so you have to remember to go in every month and pay it, or else you'll have the extra money sitting around in your account for a week or two with the possibility of being spent."
13."Cloud services. I have my own portable drives. Not every free version of a cloud service has limited cloud storage, so it fills up, and they can compel you to pay. Less tech-savvy people just bite the bullet often. But I had iCloud tell me that my solution was to copy it to my PC and clear it out. Then I go to my phone, and my photos are all gone. I never asked to delete them from my phone!"
14."Bluetooth headphones — they took our headphone jacks."
"I'm still so bitter about this. When I complain about it, people often tell me that Bluetooth is much better than it used to be, but that's just not my experience. To this day, I have problems with my phone deciding whether to pair to my headphones or my car radio, and it constantly gets broken because my wife also pairs to our car radio.
I think Bluetooth must work better for other people when they have literally one phone pairing only to one device or something."
15."Not being able to physically own a copy of a video game anymore. Even if you have the disc, you still have to download the game. You're paying for the privilege to play the game, not the actual game itself."
16."AI. No, I don't want whatever your pollution-powered disinformation machine 'thinks' the information should be. I want the actual information. Get the fuck out of my face and leave me alone, you overhyped autocorrect function."
"Thank you for burning down a small rainforest to give me the wrong answer, Google AI. I mentally scroll right past you. Hell, now, with Google, you need to add 'Reddit' to the end of your search to read something on the first page written by a human."
17."Two-factor authentication."
"I understand why it has become necessary, but I wish it weren't. I have three layers of two-factor authentication to get into my work applications on my work computer."
18."Dating apps. They've made my life significantly harder in so many more ways and given me so much more anxiety than just bumping into someone randomly at the store, etc."
"I would rather die alone than use a dating app again."
19."Keurig or other single-serve coffee machines. Absolutely not more convenient, and the coffee isn't any better than regular cheap drip coffeemakers. Also, it creates way more waste, and the reusable pods make the shittiest coffee and are a bitch to clean. My cheap, programmable coffeemaker is more convenient. I'm so glad I went back."
"I was never even tempted after doing some basic math. I drink two to three cups of coffee each morning. I can get 24 K-cups or make 24 pots of coffee for the same price. No contest."
What other modern inventions do you believe make your life harder? Tell us in the comments or fill out this anonymous form!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
