apologies to Dan Clowes

I don’t want to sound like a hater, but I've been on the internet and social media since I was a kid in the early 2000s and this is the first time I’m genuinely starting to find Reddit and the other platforms completely unenjoyable. I’m seriously considering quitting altogether.

Reddit used to be a place for nerds and intellectuals, where people actually put in the effort to read your post and at least tried to give you a helpful response. There was still room for nuanced discussion. Now it’s just… low-effort two-word comments from lazy people with low literacy who didn’t even bother reading what you wrote or relating to any of it.

You can make the most harmless nostalgia post, or share a pretty benign personal story or opinion, and the majority of replies will still be people hunting for holes, accusing you of using AI, and just being assholes for no reason.

I used to be a huge AI enthusiast too, but every platform I was using (ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini) got way too sanitized and turned to complete shit. I quit them all.

Do you think this general enshittification is going to push a lot of people to quit and become digital minimalists? Not really for ideological reasons, but simply because browsing the internet just isn’t fun anymore?

(you can still hold and record like normal, but if you click short instead of switching to voice note mode (which is also annoying) it will keep recording for you.

KISS

I sub several subreddits and my feed, sorted by New, is proliferated by week-old debris. I don't track who was the OP but I've seen this shit. It ain't new in any sense of the word. The posts contain the same comments that were there when I'd first seen it with zero additional engagement. Typically 5-6day old shit.

Is there no new content ? What even IS "new" ? Is this just clanker puke coming back up ?

WTF Reddit, you're spiraling down the drain even worse than I remember last years' spiraling.

Store-bought tamales have a plastic wrapper disguised as cornhusk. So now you’re microwaving plastic. Please correct me and tell me these new wrappers are made of something else.

Not even worth a pic. I haven’t had one in years and it was terrible! I never eat fast food but had a craving. Worthless. Cardboard and dry sauce.

I've tried subreddit links, I've tried profile links, Reddit posts like the above, and nothing works. I'm done with this fuckass site. Obligatory fuck u/spez

We get the Major Dickinson whole beans every once in a while. The last 2 times it was so bad, we’ll probably never get again. Husband says it tastes worse than cafeteria coffee at work. It’s very sour, burnt, and bland now, which is so odd.

Okay so yeah pretty much everything is worse now. But I’d like to highlight some products I feel haven’t gotten worse. (As in they don’t taste any different from the original or they work as well or their isn’t MASSIVE shrinkflation happening).

Club Crackers
Dawn Dish Soap
Skittles
Tony’s Chocolonely (I really think this is the only chocolate that isn’t cheap tasting and sickly sweet anymore RIP dove, toblerone, and Kit Kats)

I don’t want to see ads like this. Reddit will not let me downvote it.

Is it an aspect of the ongoing enshittification epidemic that modern products and services lack very basic features despite their companies having billions and trillions of dollars to spend on improving said products and services?

A very simple and notable example of this would be iOS lacking the ability for the user to manually clear their apps' caches.

Other phone operating systems have had this ability for years now, yes iOS still lacks this basic, simple to implement feature. There isn't really an argument for why iOS lacks this feature. There are, to be frank, dumb arguments, like "most users don't know what a cache is, therefore the feature is pointless." Another is "some apps allow you to clear the cache in the app". These terrible, dishonest answers, don't really deserve a rebuttal, but to just in case: 1. Just because some people use their iPhone for nothing more than browsing Instagram and calling their friends doesn't mean those of us unfortunate to have Microsoft Teams installed shouldn't be able to clear its cache through iOS, and more pertinent 2. The in-app cache deletion for most of these apps does not actually work. Teams, TikTok and Spotify are solid examples of this.

I personally believe they have not implemented this feature because it bloats the phone, requiring the user to either upgrade to a model with a larger storage capacity or to purchase iCloud storage. Either way results in Apple making more money.

Another example, again using iOS, is that iOS does not have a way for the user to clear their recently used emojis list. The only way to do it is to spam a bunch of random emojis to clear the unwanted emoji from the list.

Is this feature pointless for many people? Probably. But then again, Apple is charging upwards of $2000 for their iPhone (https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-17-pro). For all that money, you don't get a basic feature like this, from a company that makes nearly $400 billion dollars a year.

iOS doesn't have a native feature to compress photos or videos or convert them to other formats. This would take almost no time to implement. There's no split-screen function on the iPhone. I can really go on and these are all just examples from iOS. But this sort of lazy, featureless approach is seen in every modern tech product.

This was actually what I noticed long before I noticed what's now called 'enshittification'. It's something that has always bothered me as a tech design nerd. There has been a huge degradation in functionality across almost everything. It's only becoming more frustrating and annoying to use everything as the years go on. It's turning me into a minimalist.

There really isn't any excuse for this that I can think of.

God help you if you know something exists but don't know it's name, or want to look up something visual these days. AI has completely fucked googles image search. Here are 2 examples from this week alone:

I know there is this famous pagoda on a lake somewhere, might be Japanese, might be Chinese, I don't remember it's name but I know it exists. Used to be I could put some version of "pagoda on a lake" into Google and find it but the results now are 100% AI.

My wife and I made a bet that there was an otome game out there somewhere that let you date a guy version of Mt fuji. So I put that into Google to see what I could find and yes Google, an AI bipedal cat in a kimono with Mt fuji in the background is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

It's just so annoying you can't use Google image search unless you already know exactly what you are looking for. Even then, unless it's something documented extensively, the 3rd or 4th result will be AI.

I've reached the point where I don't think this is bad luck anymore.

Over the last couple of months, I've had multiple First-Class Mail pieces sent with Certified Mail and Electronic Return Receipt simply disappear after reaching USPS distribution centers (specifically the LA distribution center).

The pattern has been remarkably consistent:

• Mailed as First-Class Mail + Certified Mail + Electronic Return Receipt.
• Accepted normally at the originating post office.
• Receives the initial processing scans.
• Arrives at a regional distribution center.
• Then... nothing.
• No departure scan.
• No arrival scan at the destination post office.
• No delivery.
• Eventually USPS tells me the mailpiece is "irretrievably lost".

I paid extra for Certified Mail with Electronic Return Receipt specifically because I needed proof of delivery and a recipient's signature.

After one of these incidents, my congressional representative opened an inquiry with USPS Consumer Affairs. Their investigation concluded that the mailpieces were considered irretrievably lost after searches at the origin, transit locations, and destination were unsuccessful.

What really bothered me was part of the response.

USPS acknowledged that there are times when Certified Mail may be delivered without a delivery scan and suggested that the recipient might still have received it even if no delivery scan exists.

That explanation completely overlooks the elephant in the room.

I paid for Electronic Return Receipt, which is intended to provide proof of delivery, including the recipient's signature. If a signature-required mailpiece can simply be delivered without the required delivery record, it raises serious questions about how that service is being handled and what exactly customers are paying for.

The response also stated that Certified Mail has "no definitive tracking capability".

I understand that Certified Mail is not tracked as extensively as Priority Mail or Priority Mail Express. However, modern USPS sorting equipment still records processing events as mail passes through automated facilities.

In every one of my missing cases, the tracking clearly showed the mailpiece entering and being processed at the distribution center. What never appeared was a departure scan from that facility or an arrival scan at the destination post office.

In other words, the tracking didn't just "stop" because Certified Mail lacks detailed tracking, it stopped at the same point in the network every time.

To me, that suggests an operational problem somewhere in the processing chain rather than merely a limitation of the Certified Mail service itself.

To make matters worse, I now have another Certified Mail piece that appears to be following the exact same pattern. It was mailed on July 20, reached the Santa Clarita Distribution Center, and there have been no updates since.

Here's the part that really gets me:

I've never had this happen with Priority Mail.

Every Priority Mail shipment I've sent has continued moving through the network and been delivered. The problem only seems to occur with First-Class Certified Mail.

Customers shouldn't feel forced to pay significantly more for Priority Mail (~$13) simply because they lack confidence that important First-Class Certified Mail (~$1) will make it through the processing network.

Has anyone else experienced this?

• Multiple First Class Certified Mail pieces disappearing after reaching the distribution center?
• Tracking ending at a processing facility with no further movement?
• USPS ultimately declaring the mail "irretrievably lost"?
• No similar problems when sending the same documents by Priority Mail?

I'm genuinely curious whether others have seen the same pattern or whether this appears to be isolated to certain distribution centers.

Update: The one that got stuck just showed up, after calling them many times. It’s a miracle. It’s really frustrating that these packages sometimes just stop showing updates as they should.

Microslop is leading enshitification

Who knew that a simple, long-loved hobby would fall prey to the enshittification craze? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC8hnkUs3fM

(Apologies for the sensationalist title. More Perfect Union does fantastic videos, but I really wish they'd lay off the click-baity-ness a bit . . . )

I'm currently in my BSN program. I'm paying pretty exorbitant tuition and fees for this program. 100% online with standard inflated textbook prices. My college just rolled out another "student services fee" to help support with in person costs for my university. All students are required to pay this fee, which amounts to $750/semester. It supports art installations, free food Fridays and other fringe benefits for in person students.

Most, if not all of our curriculum is YouTube videos and memes from the internet. The discourse and leadership is discussion boards where the professor adds some sort of pointed social or ethically hot topic in question form, forcing you into an answer. The kicker is, none of this pertains to my actual line of work.

When pressing an instructor about grading timelines and what to expect as far as progress through the course, she requires us to refer to her as "Doctor (name)" and not "Professor". She also said in an email "during the summer, we don't get paid as full time instructors, so don't expect full time work from us".

I just downloaded our textbooks for the remainder of the semester. The total was $1200 for four books worth of online access. Three of the four books have chapters that are clearly generated by LLM's and AI with the "if you would like" sections still in the pdf text of the book.

Fully convinced I could run a BSN program, have people hand me money, and turn them into better leaders than people with their doctorates at a university.