Yes, I have been thinking very similarly lately. There’s too much of everything nowadays except for time, and it’s all getting more and more overwhelming
Ah, yes. The enshitification of nearly everything.
I used to do gig work for Shipt. While my local Target stores were okay matching items in the app with locations in the store (they had better be, Target owns Shipt), the grocery stores either had no locations or wrong locations listed in the app. Between this, shopper debit cards not working at the checkout, or long lines at the checkout that cause one to get penalized through no fault of one's one, all coupled with unrealistic shop time allowances to begin with, it could be very stressful. And I haven't even touched on the unrealistic demands of customers or the incompetent personnel who work in shopper services.
I decided a long time ago that if you can't beat 'em... leave 'em. Rather than try to engage with broken systems and companies, I'm choosing to opt out as much as possible. This is especially true with companies that are moving to a subscription based model or feel I should give up my basic privacy rights just to use their services. For example, once Windows 10 is no longer supported, I'm once and for all moving to Linux and will use GIMP for photo processing as I need. I refuse to pay a monthly or yearly subscription to services or licenses I used to be able to purchase and own outright. It also means I'm moving more and more to local purchases that I can pay cash for to limit tracking and building a profile me so companies can try to sell me more crap I don't want or need. Sure, it's harder to live this way, but the alternatives come with too many "gotchas" for me.
And even with trying, I'm appalled that I still have accounts with almost 200 different online entities (there's probably loads more that I used to use that I've forgotten about that aren't in my password manager). It's overwhelming to my neuro-divergent brain. I've attempted to delete many of them, but respecting a user's privacy quite frankly isn't in a company's best interest. At least Europe has privacy legislation with GDPR and its "right to be forgotten", but as we all know, the system we call the federal government is also broken.
Finally, like NancyV, I also am not getting on board with AI. Listen to the recent interview with Geoffrey Hinton (the nobel prize winner who is colloquially called "The Godfather of AI") on the Youtube Channel "Diary of a CEO" if you want to know my reasons why. Always remember, technology begets technology begets even more technology - and that technology can and will be used against you. With the pace things are moving, I don't have the money or time to keep up. I want off the hamster wheel. I'm drawing the line, and pulling the plug.
I was having a problem with my Stripe acct that had effectively frozen my financial life. I got on the phone with Stripe customer service for TWO HOURS and in the end she shifted me to an emailed service request that wouldn't respond for 24hrs, thanked me in the most tedious, robotic way she could and quit the call with my account still blocked. I got onto Reddit and had the problem solved myself in ten minutes.
Also, I've started using ChatGPT to navigate all the Italian bureaucracy and Italian banking industry labyrinths and it's been simply amazing. It can read all the Byzantine instructions in its bureaucratic idiomatic gibberish, translate into plain English and walk me through every task step by step, and write relevant emails in the correct bureaucratese for me as well as translating the replies.
The awful experience of 2 hours on the line with a half-witted woman who spoke like a robot - can a person die of over exposure to customer service? - made an interesting comparison to my experiences with ChatGPT. She had zero ability to think about my problem creatively. She spent 45 minutes "checking" their systems and found there was nothing wrong with it. I told her that there was indeed something wrong with it bcs I couldn't use it to get access to my money. We went a few circular rounds of, "Well, I've checked all our systems..." until I was literally in a shouting rage. Then the most creative she got was to suggest I try to get in touch with Yahoo customer service. The fact that such a thing did not exist did not deter her repeated insistence. Then she suggested that I buy a new computer.
Talking to her (yes, clearly in some call centre in Bangalore - while she continued to lie to me about being in San Francisco) was a great deal more like our old idea of talking to a robot - with a very small number of pre-programmed replies - than talking to an actual robot, ChatGPT, that is capable of creative problem solving, engagement in the conversation and figuring out a solution like it actually wants to.
We have robotised humans, while humanising the AI; not sure where this is going to go, but I'm betting no place good for a lot of people.
Yep, I can really resonate with "Everything is Stupid and Expensive Now". But I don't think I will EVER be on board with AI. All this stuff was supposed to make our lives easier...yeah yeah yeah... We are human beings, made in the image and likeness of God. Not to sound like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, but all this new-fangled stuff makes me feel like a hamster on a running wheel. After realizing I spent too much time figuring out how to make these things work for my advantage, I decided I wasted too much time on things. Thanks Steve for your writing.
Yes, I have been thinking very similarly lately. There’s too much of everything nowadays except for time, and it’s all getting more and more overwhelming
Ah, yes. The enshitification of nearly everything.
I used to do gig work for Shipt. While my local Target stores were okay matching items in the app with locations in the store (they had better be, Target owns Shipt), the grocery stores either had no locations or wrong locations listed in the app. Between this, shopper debit cards not working at the checkout, or long lines at the checkout that cause one to get penalized through no fault of one's one, all coupled with unrealistic shop time allowances to begin with, it could be very stressful. And I haven't even touched on the unrealistic demands of customers or the incompetent personnel who work in shopper services.
I decided a long time ago that if you can't beat 'em... leave 'em. Rather than try to engage with broken systems and companies, I'm choosing to opt out as much as possible. This is especially true with companies that are moving to a subscription based model or feel I should give up my basic privacy rights just to use their services. For example, once Windows 10 is no longer supported, I'm once and for all moving to Linux and will use GIMP for photo processing as I need. I refuse to pay a monthly or yearly subscription to services or licenses I used to be able to purchase and own outright. It also means I'm moving more and more to local purchases that I can pay cash for to limit tracking and building a profile me so companies can try to sell me more crap I don't want or need. Sure, it's harder to live this way, but the alternatives come with too many "gotchas" for me.
And even with trying, I'm appalled that I still have accounts with almost 200 different online entities (there's probably loads more that I used to use that I've forgotten about that aren't in my password manager). It's overwhelming to my neuro-divergent brain. I've attempted to delete many of them, but respecting a user's privacy quite frankly isn't in a company's best interest. At least Europe has privacy legislation with GDPR and its "right to be forgotten", but as we all know, the system we call the federal government is also broken.
Finally, like NancyV, I also am not getting on board with AI. Listen to the recent interview with Geoffrey Hinton (the nobel prize winner who is colloquially called "The Godfather of AI") on the Youtube Channel "Diary of a CEO" if you want to know my reasons why. Always remember, technology begets technology begets even more technology - and that technology can and will be used against you. With the pace things are moving, I don't have the money or time to keep up. I want off the hamster wheel. I'm drawing the line, and pulling the plug.
I was having a problem with my Stripe acct that had effectively frozen my financial life. I got on the phone with Stripe customer service for TWO HOURS and in the end she shifted me to an emailed service request that wouldn't respond for 24hrs, thanked me in the most tedious, robotic way she could and quit the call with my account still blocked. I got onto Reddit and had the problem solved myself in ten minutes.
Also, I've started using ChatGPT to navigate all the Italian bureaucracy and Italian banking industry labyrinths and it's been simply amazing. It can read all the Byzantine instructions in its bureaucratic idiomatic gibberish, translate into plain English and walk me through every task step by step, and write relevant emails in the correct bureaucratese for me as well as translating the replies.
The awful experience of 2 hours on the line with a half-witted woman who spoke like a robot - can a person die of over exposure to customer service? - made an interesting comparison to my experiences with ChatGPT. She had zero ability to think about my problem creatively. She spent 45 minutes "checking" their systems and found there was nothing wrong with it. I told her that there was indeed something wrong with it bcs I couldn't use it to get access to my money. We went a few circular rounds of, "Well, I've checked all our systems..." until I was literally in a shouting rage. Then the most creative she got was to suggest I try to get in touch with Yahoo customer service. The fact that such a thing did not exist did not deter her repeated insistence. Then she suggested that I buy a new computer.
Talking to her (yes, clearly in some call centre in Bangalore - while she continued to lie to me about being in San Francisco) was a great deal more like our old idea of talking to a robot - with a very small number of pre-programmed replies - than talking to an actual robot, ChatGPT, that is capable of creative problem solving, engagement in the conversation and figuring out a solution like it actually wants to.
We have robotised humans, while humanising the AI; not sure where this is going to go, but I'm betting no place good for a lot of people.
Yep, I can really resonate with "Everything is Stupid and Expensive Now". But I don't think I will EVER be on board with AI. All this stuff was supposed to make our lives easier...yeah yeah yeah... We are human beings, made in the image and likeness of God. Not to sound like Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, but all this new-fangled stuff makes me feel like a hamster on a running wheel. After realizing I spent too much time figuring out how to make these things work for my advantage, I decided I wasted too much time on things. Thanks Steve for your writing.
"Thank you. God bless you. I need the work, so I’ll take the money, but y’all need to learn some basic financial literacy, for your own sake."
Yes, y'all. Just how big is the Federal debt again?