There’s (mostly) nothing wrong with the technology. It’s the enshittification and profit motive behind nearly everything that’s the real problem.
How do you separate the two? To me smartphones seem like the sort of thing that was always headed in a bad direction. It's inherently a tracking device. Touchscreens are easy to use and intuitive but really slow and inefficient for most things that go beyond browsing/viewing content. It pushes you to get all your software from a centralized walled garden. If it weren't for smartphones, the people who mostly only use smartphones probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time on the internet, and that would be for the best.
If it weren't for smartphones, the people who mostly only use smartphones probably wouldn't be spending a lot of time on the internet, and that would be for the best.
Exactly. Eternal September was peanuts compared to smartphone connectivity.
How do you separate the two?
A major change in how our economy works. No, I don’t expect this to actually happen in my lifetime.
I think that having the convenience of an easy-to-use, always-online device in your pocket at all times is inherently addicive. The profit motive just compounds this issue on purpose to extract wealth, but it is more of a symptom of a larger issue.
Humans, nor any other animal on this planet have ever existed in an era that they can be always connected to everyone in their species at all times; even having that ability at all is revolutionary and unprecidented.
It used to be that the only people you talk to would be people in your local area, but now a significant portion of the percentage of people that an average person is likely to encounter on a daily basis is via means where their real character is hidden behind a carefully curated mask.
Yes, but you can’t discount the human affects that ease the transition. Smartphones made bite sized pieces of attention way more accessible. And ease of access to distraction/dreams away from the reality we all live in is what I mean, I guess, by accessibility.
Disregarding or summarizing the above: Why can’t there be an objective reality each of us can depend on to relate to eachother with?
The smartphone didn't ruin those things. Capitalism did.
The problem isn't smartphones, it's capitalism.
All of those things would have happened anyway in a different form factor because capitalism is just a race to the bottom.
Except maybe UI design. That has been special in its enshittification.
UI design too. Making a good UI means putting some effort into it, hiring devs native to each platform. But that costs money, so they do the minimum with the cheapest frontend devs they can find using some cross platform html ui technology like electron.
bad UI design is also because of capitalism, because the software companies can't stand just having a working software, they must make some changes in some way and UI is a low hanging fruit.
I don't see how we would have smartphones without capitalism. We'd still all be farmers.
Without capitalism, we'd all have the ability to swap out parts and create a phone for the purposes that we need. Some people want the best while others want the minimum, and most want something in between. Every part would be replaceable.
With capitalism, we have planned obsolescence without the ability to repair or replace parts and every conceivable thing to reap more money off us and force us to continually consume.
"When they say 'there is no alternative to capitalism', they do not make a observation. They make a demand. They demand to not think about alternatives."
You missed patch 1917 on eurasian servers.
You know capitalism is really new in the scale of human history right? It wasn't until the industrial revolution in the 18th century that the means of production could be privately owned which then allowed for further speculative capital (stocks, land value, etc) to be equated to power.
The people of the past weren't inherently stupid. Plenty of scientific and cultural progress was made prior to capitalism being our economic model.
weird that not everyone was a farmer before capitalism then
Ruined photography?
Professionals or hobbyists can still use a proper camera but the old maxim "sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you" often applies and cellphones do fairly well in that regard
And some phones have some excellent cameras. I've taken some pretty decent shots with my phone camera, like this one of a squirrel eating pizza. Without carrying around a camera literally all the time, I never would have caught that shot.
Same with many of the abuses that we've seen caught on camera recently. There are some problems with videos that lack context, but authorities can't just act with impunity in their face and expect to not have a camera in their face.
Yeah. I am a new-ish hobby photographer and at the moment I have a 50mm lens for my Canon R10 (I will buy a bigger lens soon). The camera with its current lens doesn't zoom well but my smartphone could sometimes take a better photo zoomed in depending on how I play with the settings, angle and lighting.
I like having maps and gps with me
Dumb phones had that too (and cameras, and internet). I was using GPS on my Motorola Razr back in 2004.
I had an actual Garmin GPS map handheld device with me. It was a pretty hefty brick I'm sure you could double as a weapon and literally all it did was show maps and your location. Fucking things were pretty advanced, I think they used those for civil engineering and shit
And then young me bought an Android device....
Proved the underpaid math teacher wrong when they said we wouldn't always have a calculator in our pocket.
Yeah definitely the smartphone is why I still don’t have a girlfriend yup yup
Dating sites with the usual business model of pay-to-play have an incentive to sabotage long term relationships by not showing the most compatible people to each other.
Corrupt states can use it to undermine assumed enemy states.
GPS, music, and I disagree about the camera. I’d love a dumb phone that could do GPS music and a camera and nothing else besides text and calls.
I'm prepared for the downvotes knowing where I'm posting.
If you hate it that much, why are you using it? It's a tool. It's useful. It also allows you to overindulge, but that says more about you than the tool.
A lot of those are problems caused by phones regardless of whether one uses one themselves.
But for the personal ones, there are self aware addicts of all kinds. Smokers know cigarettes are killing them, complain about them, sometimes even hate them but can't stop.
Edit: pair o words
For someone sharing OP's opinion, simply "not using it" wouldn't solve anything. Most of the problems OP lists is stems from that people in general use them.
I'm not saying you should agree with OP, but your argument misses the point.
Smartphones are using me more than I use them. I hate them, and love them, and hate that I love them.
As someone who carries around a flip phone on purpose, it’s not impossible to live without a smartphone, but it’s getting more challenging.
Ticketmaster now requires a smartphone. You can’t print tickets. Which means I can no longer go to baseball games.
So far, that’s the only thing I’ve found that’s a hard block, but many other things are certainly not designed for the phone impaired.
the guy exclusively lists cultural phenomena. how would not using a phone personaly solve any of these?
"It's just a tool" is such an ignorant statement in general. The tools we use have been shaping or culture for thousands of years. There is no choice not to take part in the current state of humanity. "It's just a tool" is what people who want to sell you their technology tell you to make you forget about the effects it can have on a bigger scale.
I don't have one, I'm browsing from my computer. I still go through all the inconveniences listed above and some more. Checkmate, smartphone user.
Not using the device doesn't suddenly end its impacts on society.
I don't use it. At all. But nevertheless I still have to deal with people constantly telling me that I need to use their 'app', and or only giving information in the form of a QR code. I still have to navigate around zombie-people staring at their phones while they walk around. I still have to deal with the fall-out of bad online interactions that kids have had. and so on. The attention-span issue that the green-text mentions results in a dumbing-down of news and media and basically all kinds of information sharing...
This stuff negatively affects me in obvious and measurable ways, even though I don't use any of the features of this 'tool'.
It's a powerful tool, but the power isn't yours.
I myself feel conditioned to have it over a dumb phone. Companies and people assume that you have one, and the thing I find the most offending is obsessive QR overusage. I hate that.
If it's on a banner or in a document, it rarely ever have plain text address. They are on all of my bills, as mobile banking is popular and you are supposed to trust it and open it in your banking app lol (although it's payment info in a specific format, not a web link). It's also used in 2FA\registration for apps and you can't login into popular messengers without scanning a pattern and my workplaces used some of them for all internal communications. And whenever I scan anything or refuse, I see them everywhere, this sharp b\w noise that is not a part of a human world, but rather meant for machines. These technological shenanigans occupying the visual landscape is probably why I can jump from not wanting a smartphone myself to disliking others having them. And with how it locks you from pretty essential things I can see the next step is having government services only availiable in Zuckerberg's Metaverse. That's when I'd call quit on that fuckyverse.
/rant
I think QR codes are cool because it's literal computer data in ink. You can draw a QR code with a pencil if you know how to encode the data. It's like a punch card, a physical manifestation of digital data.
However using a QR code is really freaking annoying, especially if you have a cheaper phone. I always configure my phone to only show the encoded string and not click the links because fuck normalizing blindly clicking links
network effects
knowing where I’m posting.
a place where people call each other out for saying stupid shit?
Wow
I just got a new phone and someone asked me "do you like it?" I hesitated to answer and they assumed "that's a no". Well, not really, it works well and does what I need it to. But do I like it? Not really, its a tool of necessity for operating in modern society. I like my steam deck, I like my speakers, I like my bike, but liking my phone is sort of similar to liking my work laptop. It's just a thing I have to have or be really very inconvenienced.
I would say that it is also a fault of the device if it encourages this brain-dead overindulgence that is clearly of the interest of many big advertisement companies. You can choose a device and OS tho and install apps that lessen the effect, but an simpler phone might not have all the bells and whistles but can get you quite far without offering such a possibility to lose hours off your brain just turned off.
Maps/gps navigation and being able to talk to someone across the world for free (provided you have an internet connection). Genz and younger millennials don’t know how expensive long-distance calls were back then.
How calls were expensive..
How music hobby was expensive and nowadays you got the world music collection for less than 10 euro per month..
How we had to pay a few euros per movie when going to the video club to get a movie. And that would imply moving there to get it, moving there to return it. Nowadays I pay less than 10 euro per HBO max..
How we had to get into a public library to get some info on something and always would come very short, specially on some themes...
How electronic equipment was way more expensive and did way way less.
And this... And that... And this... And that..
How music hobby was expensive and nowadays you got the world music collection for less than 10 euro per month..
Well, 0 is indeed less than 10.
How we had to get into a public library to get some info on something and always would come very short, specially on some themes...
We still have public libraries. For example scihub, anna's archive, the pirate bay.
You don't hate smartphones; you hate capitalism.
a lot of the issues listed are related to the impact of technology on our lives. not on the system that controls the means of the technology's production. unless you're trying to say that smartphones are only possible under a capitalist society?? but im assuming you're not saying something that ridiculous. or are you one of those freaks that thinks communism will solve all existential woes, even aging and mortality lol i hope not. because life is gonna have shit in it no matter what and being pampered to death is absolutely a thing. that's essentially the smart phone problem. thousands of potential dating partners a swipe away, hundreds of memes and videos constantly being uploaded to the brain, yeah it's going to impact you. this is bigger than economics.
none of those items listed are impossible communism. Its smartphones that suck. The difference is, with capitalism you have a choice not to use them.
Ah yes in communism you have no choice and must use smartphone or else!
But rampant and unchecked capitalism is still what ruined all of those things, whether or not it's possible in other systems. The constant drive for line go up drives tons of shitty behaviors that directly lead to enshitification.
good luck getting a job without having a smartphone
smartphone manufacturers have almost no common standards, they are made to be bought and then disposed of instead of upgrading the specs
it's impossible to do stuff like upgrading ram which would be very easy on a computer, and every smartphone has a different cpu
companies are doing their best to keep the open source guys out of the game, which in my opinion would solve a lot of the issues if this weren't the case
I want a smartphone without ios or android but just plain linux, which should be upgradable and durable, possibly with open source firmware and that kind of stuff
I mean I use a fairphone with /e/OS from Murena. This solves the issue of open source and upgradability/replacability mostly for me. I like the idea of bare linux phones but the hardware and software is just not there yet. I used an iPhone before that and while I miss some aspects of apple hardware I am really happy to be able to just replace parts without this tremendous glue they put in their phone and like 20 different screws and steps to replace one part. Besides some minor inconveniences the switch was definitely the right move!
I hate how /e/OS's 'BlissLauncher' doesn't let you leave an empty space between icons on the homescreen. I don't know whether switching to a different launcher will break /e/OS's widgets etc, and it bugs me just little enough to ignore it. The worst thing is that because you can't leave gaps (unless you leave the bottom row partially blank, which is dumb because that's the most important row), moving any app requires swapping it with another, which requires a minimum of three app-drags. In practice four, because draggin one app onto another will turn the icon into a folder with the two apps in them, so you'll have to open the folder and drag em both out.
I hate it so much. Why can't they just make a normal homescreen?
From my experience, all the linux for mobile distros I've tried on my Pinephone were a really bad experience, with a lot of issues. But the option is there, and while it wasnt reliable enough to use as a daily phone, I still carry it in the bag with a dock and Kali, which sometimes can get useful during pentesting.
Maybe a flatpak repo with mobile-first software?
The problem is the chipsets, which include the radio. They have their own proprietary code, including some built in firmware. Along with things like roaming, negotiating frequencies, requesting MMS downloads and other niggly details, you have stuff like handling sim cards, emergency services modes, and public alerts. All of which I've heard are lightly documented and a pain to work with... It's a lot of compatibility layers built up over the years
You can get a Linux phone today, the consensus just seems to be it's not ready as a primary phone
I have a smart phone with a custom ROM, and a dumb phone (Sunbeam Mobile). No, I am not a drug dealer. Sometimes I change out my SIM card and will use the smart phone (especially if traveling to another state or country), and because it can make my life easier.
Here are some rambling thoughts I have on the topic:
-If you don't want to have a smart phone, and opt for a dumb phone, you need to be careful not to let your PC "replace" your bad smart phone habits in terms of scrolling, etc.
-For the peeps worried about privacy, I'm not sure if dumb phones would be an ideal choice. I'm not so sure how secure SMS and phone calls are. I am not an expert, so I have no idea about this, though. I usually use Matrix to have at length text conversations on a PC when I am not using a smart phone, because texting is annoying on a dumb phone and who knows if cell phone companies or other people are intercepting data to market more crap. I'm not so schizo about this, but it is annoying and creepy.
-People are isolated and need a way to build and maintain communities. These days, it is difficult to walk places and build community in the physical world. So that is why you have people getting together on Discord, Instagram, etc. I have definitely been isolated or lived in rural areas and having these outlets has been more helpful than harmful for me.
-If you want a dumb phone, I do recommend a Sunbeam Mobile phone. It supports group texting, navigation (with HERE Maps). I have an SD card full of music I put in the phone and it supports Bluetooth. I recommend the models of phones that are completely de-Googled.
-I don't think people should feel bad if they need a smart phone, especially if they are living in circumstances beyond their control which puts them in an isolating position.
-I think that ultimately people need to want to wake up to all of this. I want to be more involved in making my life more community oriented. I do live in a city, but it is very car dependent. I think that we need to push for development and policies that support community building over the long term, because most people are not happy having smart phones a fixture of everything. For example, is creepy to me that in any moment of time, I can guess what most people are doing (and that is that they are sitting on the Internet in some capacity or a smart phone).
-I hate Google and Amazon. Any way that I do not support them and boycott them is a win for me and society.
-I find it interesting that whenever I am using my Sunbeam phone, that younger people will come up to me and start asking about it. People are desperate to escape smart phones, but there are so many macro political and macro economical problems that create the situation we are in now. We see ourselves as so atomized that there is no examples of any organization or collective rejection of this crap.
Here is a great blog post, which I highly recommend reading: https://wrongthink.link/posts/re-life-in-dysfunctional-world/
Calling out cops on their bullshit, troublshooting your pc when you bork the ethernet, sending photos of your feces to your friends to name a few
Usable flashlight!
Yeah, none of that is the phone's fault. That is like blaming fast food for being a fat ass.
There is a legitimate comparison there. There's shared culpability. Sure, you're responsible for what you eat. But those fast food companies hire teams of nutritionists, psychologists, and sociologists, people with PhDs in their fields, and task them with developing the most addictive foods they can. It's no different than cigarettes. Sure we're ultimately responsible for our actions. But it does end up feeling a bit like victim blaming.
I understand the position and the line of thought that leads to the victim blaming idea, but ultimately there is not a "victim". It is not being forced upon the "victim". While it is entirely true the playing field is violently unfair, it is still a choice to participate.
This is why regulation is a good thing. Level the playing field and make it safer for those that choose to partake...but it is ultimately personal accountability, unfortunately.
Yeah it is totally the phone's fault that this person is unable to date other people, that is their biggest problem with smartphones, not the Internet.
Ruined pointless but enjoyable arguments with mates in the pub. In the old days you could get a good 15 minutes of entertainment out of 'Was it Matt Damon or Mark Wahlberg in that Three Kings movie?'
Now some asshat with a phone will kill that argument in 5 seconds.
There's plenty of pub topics Google can't kill. For example Would you rather have hands made of chocolate cake or an armpit that squirts cream?
That's a complete no-starter though. Cream squirting armpits every day of the week. After all, I'd have usable hands to be able to harvest the free cream, therefore profit. Whereas hands made of chocolate cake wouldn't be very usable and once they'd been eaten (and with my wife and daughter around they soon would be) I'm just left with the stumps. You've not thought this through. So. Armpits that squirt cream. Definitively.
They ruined clubs, too. The flip phone cameras were shitty enough to make it a non-issue.
The Guinness Book of World Records was created to do just that, settle pub arguments.
Yeah, but up to the point where you could have it on your phone, no-one took a copy of the Guinness book of records to the pub with them.
“There’s something so human about taking something great and ruining it a little so that you can have more of it”
Ruines photogrpahy ?
Rhien II sold for $4.5 Million in 2011
I'd suggest that ruined photography.
That really is an unimpressive photo. Most of the photos on that list are terrible.
Wow....what a boring picture. Must've been money laundering. For that price you could fly here and do one yourself. I live here and made nicer ones out the window of the Rhine. Tsk...
But I'm more baffled at the pedo shit. What the actual f....
Amateur photography has gotten pretty darned good.
This is actually the best point for a "smart"phone. Having a camera with you all the times in case you'd have/want to capture a moment or even a video. And they've gotten pretty darn decent at it. Would've killed for such a device in the 80s+
I honestly hate smartphones as well, not because of any of what OP posted. On my PC, I can install whatever I want, including swapping out the OS. Most smartphones are locked down, and the few that allow alternative ROMs have huge incompatibilities w/ FOSS OSes (i.e. getting SMS to work is a bit spotty).
My phone runs GrapheneOS. I would much rather use something else (e.g. PostmarketOS), but it's the least bad option that supports all the features I need. I am still limited to Android-compatible apps, and developing for my phone is a lot more painful than any other ARM-based device because I'm stuck w/ the Android ecosystem.
The end result is that I don't feel like I truly own my phone, whereas I definitely feel that way about my PC. Yeah, my phone is convenient, and I don't use most of the nonsense Anon is complaining about (I mostly use websites on my phone instead of apps), but I still generally dislike having a thing in my pocket that I don't actually control.
The end result is that I don’t feel like I truly own my phone
You kinda/sorta don't. Manufacturers saw an opportunity to create a closed environment around the tech, not unlike gaming consoles, and made sure it happened that way. It may also be a side-effect of smartphones emerging from the same manufacturers that made far less capable and less open devices in generations prior (think old flip phones and 1st gen cell phones). Just like with game consoles, DRM (coupled with DMCA advantages) and the attached walled-garden retail environment are the prime motivators there. Marketing and financing help make sure it stays this way.
At the same time, providing a watered down platform for the masses did accelerate all the things OP is talking about. Phone/tablet apps make user interaction insanely^1 easy to do without any understanding of the platform its on. In contrast, PC's do a great job of requiring some amount of tech literacy before you start. So most people that would be stymied by the complexities^2 in a Windows system or Mac can easily do all kinds of internet-enabled things, for cheaper, on their phone. It's not a root cause by any measure, but I really do think that the commodification of software services in this way, has thrown gasoline on whatever fires were already burning.
- Note: not "insanely great".
- I know what you're thinking, dear reader. You would be surprised.
So most people that would be stymied by the complexities^2 in a Windows system or Mac can easily do all kinds of internet-enabled things, for cheaper, on their phone
And this is what gets me. Just 40 years ago, you had to understand the whole system to use a computer, because your options were basically DOS or Unix. Apple came along w/ a GUI around then, but you still needed to understand things at a pretty deep level. And then there was Win 3 and later Win 95 and Win 98, and you still interacted w/ DOS a fair amount (I learned to launch DOS games from floppy).
And people largely seemed okay with that and adapted.
So when people get confused by our much simpler devices, I don't think it's because they're complicated, but exactly the opposite. Everything is presented as "easy," so anytime you need to do anything beyond the expected happy path of uses, it doesn't fit and people give up. If people were used to interacting with the lower level bits periodically, they would probably just adapt.
And the net result is that power users lose and larger orgs win, because people end up getting an app to do something they could have solved another way, which gives the app store even more money and shoves ads in the user's face. It's incredibly frustrating. For example, if I want to debug my wifi signal, I download an app that shows the signal details. On my desktop, I'd just run a command-line app that lists available networks by signal strength and whatnot, no app needed. Or if I want to test latency, I need an app on my phone, whereas I can just use
pingon my desktop.
Can I jailbreak a Samsung Flip 6 like this? If I do will I still be able to use my job's Microsoft 365 stuff and authenticator? I know I could Google it but I'd rather ask an expert.
I don't know anything about Samsung's phones, but you certainly can't install GrapheneOS on it, since it only supports Pixeel phones, and I didn't see a LineageOS build for it (and LineageOS is usually the best bet).
Here are a bunch of others though, just in case you wanted to shop around.
So short answer is no, but maybe there's a longer answer. :)
The person who wrote this wasn't alive before smartphones and are doing the whole "I was born in the wrong decade" thing.
GPS and calendar.
Ruined cell phone keyboards
Ruined cell phone batteries
If you teach yourself to use swype typing on Gboard it can be almost as fast as a keyboard to type. Of course that's a Google product though blah blah blah.
Apparently parents love it as it keeps the kids quiet and relieves them of the stress of parenting.
Also a tracker and a way to contact them at all times. I believe parents who let children take phones to school would feel a bit nervous if their kid would forget it at home one day.
As a parent, it is convenient to have a handy device to zombify my hellspawn for an hour while I need to get some actual important adult shit done, but I also strictly limit mobile device use because my kids will not be iPad kids for as long as I have any say in the matter
Before modern smartphones existed, I dreamed that they would one day exist and we could use computers and the Internet whereever we are, not just from home/work/school.
There are bad things about them too, but overall I would not want to do without them.
People either have forgotten or didn't live in the time before smart phones, but the world was fucking boring as, you HAD to talk to someone because you were so fucking bored, that's why we discovered shit, we were bored and had to do something, then turtle neck man gave us smartphones.
It's really sad to me that people think that smartphones are the source of all entertainment now. Even today I use my phone very little on a daily basis. You're limiting your perspective to that little screen in your hand instead of exploring the real world.
Smartphones are what is fucking boring to me. I don't want to sit around and look at that shit.
They're good for those of us with physical disabilities or certain mental issues. I'm mostly off today. I wish I could just go downtown and have fun or go get some groceries but my brain is not letting me.
what? thats how i feel when i use my smartphone
Add in ruined music to that. Shitty speakers, super lossy codecs to preserve cellular bandwidth, even shittier Bluetooth compression, listening to music on a phone is convenient but it sounds like shit. And we've got generations of people who think that's what music is supposed to sound like.
Unless you have a Sony phone or an LG V series phone. The DACs on those are incredible (for phones at least)
And we’ve got generations of people who think that’s what music is supposed to sound like.
There was an article on Hacker News a little ways back, about this very phenomenon in China. Basically there's now a generation that has profound nostalgia for the absolutely awful and dirt-cheap playback tech available over a 30 years ago. To the point that "music doesn't sound right" on newer tech, and may well be outright un-listenable without crappy hardware in play. By this, I think we can predict that "Bluetooth audio emulation" on newer and better devices, is absolutely going to be a thing eventually.
What do you mean "is there anything good about smartphones at all"? It made a ton of money for Apple and its shareholders, that's the only thing that matters. Who cares that it caused anxiety in a whole generation and ruined social life?
Unironically this. I wish I had just paid in dollars instead of my data. Looking back, it was too good to be true. It's hard to deny we never should've let it get this engrained in our lives.
Ruined these things for you maybe. I still enjoy them. And don't use my phone for most. One of the things I live about the phone is being able to communicate with my friends and family I want. I also enjoy having the majority of the worlds information available to me. Ooooo and music. Soooo much music at my fingertips.
There's no way you are having a good time with digital dating, there just isn't.
Well, not anymore no. Living with my bae. But I dipped my toe in that scene some years back, it was kinda fun. Setting up my own blind dates, occasionally meeting someone as thirsty as me. I'm sure it's changed. I meant more that the mobile versions of those things doent ruin the regular versions. Im sure the affect each other, but Normal dating is still a thing.
I’m not very confident in person in the sense I would never randomly start talking to a cute girl. Online dating is great for me as a way to start conversations.
NO! You are not allowed to enjoy things, you must be sad, capitalism bad, communism is solution to all our problems. enshitification. enshitification. enshitification. 😡
Capitalism is demonstrably bad. Very few people are claiming communism fixes everything, and you might as well take a flying fuck at a rolling donut if you think we can pull off communism right now. And yeah we're surrounded by enshittification. What's got you mad?
Gotta respect the rules. Enjoyment canceled.
Take away anon's phone for a day and see how he likes it.
Damn good summary. Even more BS than I complain about on a weekly basis.
(written from my smartphone when I should be sleeping)
Pocket porn!
"Smartphones. This Christmas, take a short break from using a device to masturbate and use it to talk to your extended family." Yea that's not something I considered would happen with tech when I was younger.
To be fair, would've used my Nokia 3220 for the same purpose had it more than 6 pixels:))
Another word for TikTok!
Honestly wouldn't know, never tried TikTok and I still don't feel tempted:))
ruined privacy
Ruined that too
Yes, the option to just throw it in the corner and not charge it anymore.
Or to uninstall all your shitty apps.
Anonymous does have valid points. The devices and internet all released with the governments blessing, for tracking and spying.
Well this is the cold hotdog water of hot takes. Ill guess anon wasn't alive before smart phones.
How does everyone everywhere having a really decent camera ruin photography? One of the things we had to do in photography class was use a disposable to take well composed shots (but also we developed the film ourselves). A phone camera would make those look way better.
Photographic art is drowned in a world of snapshots. That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly. Of course, there are a lot of awesome upsides and people can still do photography as a hobby, but there's a real "you can't go home again" feeling. You probably would have had to been into the hobby prior to the smartphone to appreciate the loss.
Snapshots can also have artistic value. Something that was also taught to me in my photography classes that I took before smartphones were a thing.
The gaming sectors always makes me hurt the most man.
It has taken over conventions too so there is little a way to avoid it entirely.Why is it the only good mobile games are either ports of desktop games or games that were developed with the intention of later releasing on desktop if successful enough?
because we let it happen, the average consoomer that is
the times of dead space mobile are long gone
because most people do not give a flying solitary fuck
you want quality? well tough shit, we are the overwhelming minority
Navigation
If anyone relates give this book a read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
Whats this got to do with Seveneves?
I guess Flappy bird?
Smartphones are awesome
