Modern Changes That Are Ass

Not all changes and updates are helpful

Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash. What time is it? Do I check my phone or my smartwatch?

Technology is an amazing thing. Pretty much. Sometimes it’s nice.

I mean, I like television and planes and cars and the Internet (mostly-ish). Microwaves were quite the invention. I like cell phones (pretty much).

But then there are tech gut punches that make us question why we just didn’t stop at the CD player.

Everywhere we look, walk, drive, fly, or even sit, technology is there. And growing. In fact, it’s growing so rapidly that a large number of movies formerly considered sci-fi may become a scary as fuck reality if we don’t get our shit together.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not holding my breath for the powers that be to do anything for the right reason or to do it before it’s too fucking late.

Before I get questions and barbs in the comments, yes, I am Generation X. And, yes, I am good with technology. I’m a tech OG, fuckers, so keep your snarky bullshit holstered.

So, before Skynet sends Arnold Schwarzenegger after my ass, I better get this piece moving.

1. AI with (seemingly) no oversight or accountability

It seems appropriate to start with the biggest, most recent technological jump: AI. Despite what our sharp-as-a-pillow Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may think, I am not referring to A1 Steak Sauce. I’m talking about Artificial Intelligence.

Back in the day, we considered AI would eventually be robots or highly intelligent computers with velvet-smooth, yet creepily polite voices.

Instead, we have videos that seem real as hell but are actually completely fake. In my small Washington town, a high school teacher was nearly fired over a student-created AI video. This fucking kid took a photo of a teacher he didn’t like, and a separate photo of a student he didn’t like. He used AI to make it look like the teacher and student were passionately kissing.

Despite the teacher and student both denying the video was real, the teacher was immediately suspended. She was nearly fired by the school board until a watermark was noticed in the corner of the video that proved it was AI-generated.

AI is also being used to create nude photos of anyone from children to teenagers to famous adults. The number of lives this has ruined is hard to fathom because so many of us believe every goddamn thing we see online. (Of course, it’s easier to do so when it’s not our lives being fucked over.)

The vast majority of my students use AI to cheat on every digital assignment. It’s to the point that I am cutting students using technology in my classroom to the bone. This is despite my district providing every student with a Chromebook since before Covid.

All of these uses (and more) of AI have come at lightning speed. That is not surprising. Once anything in tech is shown to be successful, the use is multiplied among every other company instantly.

The biggest problem with such quick advancement is the slowness at which any kind of accountability follows. The student who nearly got his teacher fired, almost caused her divorce, and ruined another student’s social life was given a one-day suspension.

The lives of girls in middle school, high school, and college have been ruined by trolls creating and spreading nudes they created in their basements. The number of those assholes being arrested and held accountable is a minute fraction of those still doing it.

If one of my students tries this shit, I hope I go down with people thinking I made out with Scarlet Johansson. Sadly, I doubt even AI could make that believable.

I could probably handle a distraught Colin Jost in a fight, though.

2. Streaming services with ads

There are a few reasons why streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Apple TV, etc are so damn popular. But they are not without deception.

1. Bingeing: Being able to watch episode after episode for an entire season (and more) is epic. Those who complain about “cliffhangers” can not relate to the pain we in Generation X suffered through. We dealt with “Who shot JR?” and so many other brutal questions for months. And then we waited for one episode a week. Fuck off, Millennials. You have no idea.

2. Epic vaults: Thousands of movies and television shows to choose from in each streaming service’s “vaults” at any time for our “viewing pleasure.” It’s not the streaming services’ fault that we can’t make a decision on what to watch. But the choices are still mind-numbing.

3. No ads: And here we arrive at the bullshit. When streaming started, and no one knew (yet) how successful the idea would be, there were few, if any, commercials. It was heavenly. Then the ads started once everyone realized more people watched streaming services than real TV. Now, every fucking service has a version with ads and a version without ads. Except, there always seems to be ads on the ad-free version. And every time the rates are raised, the version with ads gets raised more than the ad-free version. Which is just corporate greed bullshit 101. They are already making bank from the advertisers and the customers paying for their service. Then they jack up the cost even more.

All of that (and more) means that as great as streaming is, it’s still flawed as hell for the same reasons most American-dominated things are flawed: Billionaires and the corporations they run are being greedy as fuck.

Yeah, I’ll still stream shit. But I’ll do it bitterly. At least until they increase the prices one time too many.

Or take Jimmy Kimmel off the air again.

3. Bagging your own groceries (while paying more)

This one pisses me off every time I shop in any store.

Bagging our own groceries has become the norm, with each store seemingly having more self-service checkouts than those with actual cashiers.

The main reason for this change is the same as any widespread change in any industry; the powers that be thought they would make more money. It makes sense if you don’t think or care about your employees or customers.

With self-service checkouts, companies can get away with only paying one employee to monitor eight machines instead of one per checkout. Do these billionaires give a shit that customers get so frustrated with those fucking machines they Google “Is killing a self-checkout machine count as homicide?” along with “Is there such a thing as justifiable vandalism?”

No, they don’t care.

Acting out those Google requests in real life is probably frowned upon socially, which I feel is ironic considering the AI shit I wrote about above.

If AI can fuck up our lives for real, then we should be able to do the same to its machines.

To top things off with the cherry pit on the shit sandwich that is present-day shopping, prices have skyrocketed to the point that the billionaire rocketships are jealous.

We are playing a massive increase on groceries across the board and we’re bagging our own groceries using technology that is the bane of our existence.

We know this is a fucked up situation, yet we keep doing it. There are not enough hours in the day for me to make this make sense.

4. Tipping for every-fucking-thing (except my job)

As a writer and a teacher, it pains me to say this, but I am beyond sick of hearing, “You’re going to be asked a question.” For most of my life, I was fine with most questions.

Don’t get me wrong, as a teacher, a parent, and someone who has interacted with MAGA, I have heard more than my share of stupid questions. But that is part of life and dealing with different kinds of people.

But I am done with being asked that same damn question every time I buy something. We all know what that question means; it’s the most polite way someone can ask, please, tip me.

Tipping has its place, especially in the States, because so many people don’t earn a living wage. But, my God, there has to be a limit and logic to who is asking for a tip.

I have a daughter who has worked over two years at Dairy Queen. If anyone deserves tips, it’s her. Fast food workers don’t earn tips, which mystifies me. I get it. Fast food isn’t known for its complex tastes and flavors. Hence the name. But those employees work hard and deal with members of the public who get incensed over their orders of Blizzards and burgers.

Yet any employee at a donut shop, deli, ice cream shop, restaurant, bar, and so on does.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a generous tipper. My tip will be forthcoming because it’s bad juju to anger someone who is handling my food and drinks.

With tipping as widespread as it is in the U.S., I’ve often considered asking the parents of my students that same question after our parent/teacher conference.

Depending on the outcome, that could change my entire opinion on tipping.

5. Parking lot apps

Here is another prime example of technology slowing me the fuck down.

I have often wondered if there is some sinister government agency (not named ICE) that monitors Americans’ day-to-day life looking for things that are quick and convenient. And then just fucking it up to make it longer and more frustrating. It’s probably called something like the Federal Convenience Killer Unit (FCKU).

Paying for parking is just such an example of FCKU living up to its name.

Public parking has never been a good time. But it was a relatively simple process. I circle my target area, praying to any deity willing to deem me worthy of a parking spot. I put money in the meter. I keep track of the time I have left to stay in said parking spot, and I go about my tasks until I return and depart.

Simple. It was often frustrating, but we understood the process.

Until FCKU and our over-reliance on apps had to step in to add another layer to our annoyance enchilada. Every damn parking spot in any city has a contract with a company to monitor and accept payment for parking.

Each of those asshole companies has its own app that must be downloaded. Then we put in our credit card info. Since each company has multiple lots in multiple cities, we then put in the fucking code to find the correct lot and parking spot, and then add details of our vehicle.

All of this shit can happen only if we have access to WiFi and if we haven’t thrown our cell phone onto the pavement or into the back of a passing Waste Management truck first while launching a tirade of four-letter words that would make Richard Pryor blush.

FCKU indeed.

6. No paper restaurant menus

Restaurants have crossed the line into the QR Code Kingdom. Because of course they have.

Most restaurants have either greatly reduced their use of physical menus or eschewed them entirely unless you’ve decided to enter their hallowed booths and agreed to eat their food.

I get that menus can be costly to order (irony at its finest). This is especially true for places like The Cheesecake Factory where the length of its menu rivals The Odyssey.

Using a QR Code makes changing the prices easier, too. Again, WiFi issues can delay vital information, which is aggravating as hell.

All I need to know is how expensive the chicken strips are, what sandwiches are available, and how much are the alcoholic drinks?

Have that shit on a hard copy menu outside your doors. You know, like it’s been for fucking ever.

My phone battery is always drained anyway. I don’t need to make it worse seeing how much a BLT and a Jameson with Coke costs.

7. McDonald’s counterproductive kiosks

Fast food (as we know it) has long been one of the last bastions of American ingenuity still standing. I am bypassing the depressing truth of that statement to make my point as quickly as possible.

No one eats at McDonald’s for a fine dining experience. People eat at McD’s for three reasons: convenience because they are fucking everywhere, mostly edible food, and your order is cooked and served to you quickly.

Hence the moniker fast food.

One might think the wizards behind the curtain at McDonald’s Corporation would either make sure those three reasons ran as smoothly as possible or perhaps improve at least one of them.

Instead, McD’s chose to fuck up one of the three reasons people frequent their restaurants. Apparently an executive had a thought, “What if we drop the ‘fast’ from fast food?” I might be behind such an idea if the purpose of slowing things down was to improve their menu or quality of food.

No such luck.

Apparently, it was way too fucking simple to say, “I’d like a number two, with a Diet Coke, please.” Mickey D’s decided to install computerized kiosks for us to order from instead. If you’re wondering how ordering from a kiosk where you have to scroll on a screen the size of a Buick at least three times is faster than just speaking your order to a human, stop.

It isn’t. It’s slow, cumbersome, and irritating as fuck.

Even worse, they still have the original hardware at the counter that we all walked up to thousands of times before. But there’s never anyone standing there to take our order. They’re cooking the food and probably updating their resumes.

It’s bad enough to fall victim to the evil influence of FCKU. But to leave the original - and much faster - equipment sitting there to mock us is uncalled for. Well, I’m not having it.

I’m going to Burger King where I can get a Whopper Jr my way and do so while ordering old-face-to-acne-scarred-face. And I get a badass crown to adorn my royal noggin while I consume my burger and onion rings at BK.

Kiosk this, Ronald McDonald.

8. Nonsensical password recommendations

Anytime I need to create a password for something, Google always gives me a “secure recommendation.” It may be secure, but it’s also nonsensical and lazy.

Google is supposed to know us so damn well. Big Brother Google is spying on us worse than republicans. If Google is going to sell all my boring online secrets (trust me, they are so boring — nothing to see at all — for sure), why not use its knowledge of me to come up with a password that makes sense with my personality? After all, we’ve been seeing each other for some time now. Doesn’t Google know me at all?

How about WizerThanHeSeems4Sure? Or SmartAss4hire? Maybe CantWait2Ret!re would work?

Instead, Google gives me something like 4lrti@98J4KT2219$6xxT, which I find insulting. First, I prefer any of my catalogue of passwords not to be named after elon musk’s next kid. (I totally have like so many different passwords. I do not use the same one repeatedly. At all.)

I’m lucky if I remember why I walked into the kitchen. How am I supposed to remember my new securely recommended password? Yes, Google promises to remember my passwords. But Google seems to have more memory lapses than a republican member of Congress.

Come on, Google, get creative. We’re already creeped out by you, and we both know we’re stuck with each other. It’s like living with our parents again.

Or Herpes.

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On that fun note, I’m tapping out. For now.

What other modern changes that are ass would you add?

Let’s find a pay phone, get some extra quarters, call the FCKU hotline (1–888-UFCKOFF), and we can bitch and moan at them together.

Let’s at least feel like we’re making a difference.

Thanks for reading.