This is why I detest modern technology....

[topochico225]

I'm a teenager. Everyone in my school talks about social media and everything while I'm just here wanting to talk about my animals. No one wants to hear about them so I'm a "loner" because no one wants to be my friend because I'm not on social media 24/7.

Don’t worry, that happened to me in high school. I was the chicken girl. Luckily I had two or three friends who were at least mildly interested in them. I wasn’t on social media at that point either.

High school people’s opinions do not matter in the long run! You might see these people 10 years later in the grocery store and I will guarantee that the “popular kids” have seriously aged badly/gone nowhere. High school is also a weird little community in itself. You may be the weird kid in high school, but get out in the real world and there will always be someone weirder than you. Embrace it. Life’s too short to get sad because other people fail you.

 

[Angel07]

Don’t worry, that happened to me in high school. I was the chicken girl. Luckily I had two or three friends who were at least mildly interested in them. I wasn’t on social media at that point either.

High school people’s opinions do not matter in the long run! You might see these people 10 years later in the grocery store and I will guarantee that the “popular kids” have seriously aged badly/gone nowhere. High school is also a weird little community in itself. You may be the weird kid in high school, but get out in the real world and there will always be someone weirder than you. Embrace it. Life’s too short to get sad because other people fail you.

At this point I've given up on trying to be their friend. I've been here for almost a year and none of them really care for me anyway. I'd much rather have animals and no friends than have friends and no animals.

 

[Solanacae]

At this point I've given up on trying to be their friend. I've been here for almost a year and none of them really care for me anyway. I'd much rather have animals and no friends than have friends and no animals.

I agree with what others have said about high school and the friend situation. I had a few friends in high school that were just as nerdy as I was, but we all went out separate ways after graduation. I keep in touch with one or two of them, but that consists mostly of calling or texting them a couple times a year at most. The same is true for the friends I made in college, though it’s like chatting with them 3-4 times a year.
People change, people move, and anyone who stays “exactly the same” as they were in high school are very sad indeed. Where was their growth or self discovery? What things didn’t happen in their life that made it necessary to grow and adapt?
My parents raised my siblings and me to be hard workers, we learned a lot of real life skills, and gave us a really great foundation for life. I didn’t fit in with most kids because of that, but I don’t regret it. I’m glad to have learned so value myself for what I am and not be constantly worried about what someone else thinks of me. What made me ‘weird’ to other ‘normal’ kids has resulted in a lot of happiness and satisfaction in my life in the long run. Hang in there, high school can be rough but it doesn’t last very long.

 

[rookbeak]

I think when we weigh the pros and cons of technology it's pretty evenly balanced. People are more connected now, and that means they're more connected to share negative things (biases, misinformaiton, bullying) as well as positive things (wikipedia, tutorials, knowledge, the very forum we're on). I think right now we're just experiencing a lot of growing pains because technology has advanced faster than we can regulate it. This also means companies like facebook can take advantage of this and profit off of misinformation and human misery.

 

[gtaus]

I think when we weigh the pros and cons of technology it's pretty evenly balanced.

I wish I had your optimism. But I don't. I think the misuse of modern technology is outweighing the advantages they could bring.

This also means companies like facebook can take advantage of this and profit off of misinformation and human misery.

As I have stated many times, I am currently a licensed Registered Nurse. I find it hard to believe that so many Americans would be so anti-vax if not for the misinformation and outright lies being spread on social media. I don't want to get political, so I'll just let the numbers talk. Currently over 750,000 dead in the US from COVID-19. USA is #1, but not in the good way. How many of those deaths are due to unvaccinated people who have believed the lies and misinformation on social media? And as you state, Facebook makes money off of people reading their content on their platform, whether it's true or not.

I still know people who think taking the vaccinations will magnetize you, or that tiny bots are in the vaccination that send information back to the government. Just crazy stuff.

Anyway, I've heard too many stories from nurses working the floors about patients getting the COVID virus, ending up in the hospital, but still believing that the virus is just a myth. And yet, last week, almost 95% of the COVID patients at my local hospital were unvaccinated. I'm just looking at this situation from a public health perspective.

I am ranting because people are dying needlessly Forgive me for caring.....

 

[rookbeak]

No trust me I completely agree that facebook has indirectly(?) killed thousands of people for the sake of profit. However, without the technology we have today we wouldn't have had the tools to research and create the vaccine, or the means of distributing the vaccine as fast as we had. Misinformation wouldn't have spread this fast 50 years ago, but we also didn't have mRNA vaccine technology.

 

[gtaus]

No trust me I completely agree that facebook has indirectly(?) killed thousands of people for the sake of profit. However, without the technology we have today we wouldn't have had the tools to research and create the vaccine, or the means of distributing the vaccine as fast as we had. Misinformation wouldn't have spread this fast 50 years ago, but we also didn't have mRNA vaccine technology.

Good points. I just think that we would have continued to see better and better computers as tools to use, but we really don't gain much by social media platforms that, IMHO, cause much more problems than they benefit society. But I'm really old school and most of my computer programming days were before the modern internet era and I had nothing to do with the social media aspect.

My social media is pretty much limited to the BYC forums, and that is enough for me. I have been on other music related forums, but they seem to get taken over by trolls, so I left them. Here at BYC forums I find the community informative, helpful, and when we occasionally feel the need for a rant, we can agree or disagree while still being agreeable. The BYC moderators do a good job in shutting down the occasional troll. I think that keeps the forums a viable place to share thoughts with others and lets the conversations continue on a positive note.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

A slight change of subject here. My gripe with technology is what I would call the planned obsolescence. Do we really need new iterations of our smart phones every six months? Does my phone need upgrades so often that before I learn how to use it I have to figure it out again? Nothing works the way I want it to, and just when I get comfortable with it, it goes all wonky again! It's frustrating and annoying, and makes ME feel obsolete! I'm making payments on my current phone and probably on the last three as well. Grr!

Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go burn my soapbox, and if you don't know what a soapbox is, you're probably one of those young people writing software for my next stupid smartphone!

 

[rookbeak]

A slight change of subject here. My gripe with technology is what I would call the planned obsolescence. Do we really need new iterations of our smart phones every six months? Does my phone need upgrades so often that before I learn how to use it I have to figure it out again? Nothing works the way I want it to, and just when I get comfortable with it, it goes all wonky again! It's frustrating and annoying, and makes ME feel obsolete! I'm making payments on my current phone and probably on the last three as well. Grr!

Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go burn my soapbox, and if you don't know what a soapbox is, you're probably one of those young people writing software for my next stupid smartphone!

What I find additionally infuriating about planned obsolescence is how much it contributes to e-waste, and the huge toll on the environment and the lives of the people manufacturing these products. The free marketplace has selected for companies who make products that are not built to last, because this continually brings in customers. Because the companies are allowed to design their products however they want, they don't design for the future or the long-term consequences of their decisions in mind, outside of what makes them the most money. Even though we know their practices of making products as disposable as possible are going to have lasting effects on future generations, as well as how their unethical labor practices exacerbate global inequality.

 

[Perris]

has 'right to repair' legislation appeared stateside yet?