Things that Used to be Great, But Have Now Become Really Bad

[Anderton]

A while ago, Reddit user u/Open-Outcome-660 posed the question, "What’s a thing that used to be great but has now become really bad?" Here are some of the top-voted answers, and I thought you might want to comment. But! In a day or two I'm going to start a thread on "Things that used to suck, but are now really good," because I have a lot of nominees. I just figured we'd get the venting over with first, before being grateful for a while...and I gotta admit, I agree with these. What are your nominees?

 

"The internet in general. I used to be able to search Google for a subject and then get a list of reliable websites to read from. Now, it's 99% crap, ad-ridden sites that all want to sell me shit I don't need. And then, there’s the ads…ads everywhere. Paywalls left and right. Endless scrolling on tons of sites instead of concise information and well-considered site navigation and layout. To go back to the days when the worst sin of a website was when it autoplayed music, and you had to search around for the mute or pause button…sigh."

 

"Flying. From the shrinking seats, poorly-behaved people, no food, baggage fees, and carry-on fees to questions about plane safety."

"Social media. When it started or even as far back as 2012-2017, it was fun. Just a platform to post silly, goofy pictures and stay in touch with people...until the rise of the influencers, content creators, and whatnot! Now, it's just a filtered, carefully curated, negative, toxic wasteland."

 

"Theme parks. Rising crowds, rising ticket prices, rising costs for everything. Last time I went to Disney World, there were, like, seven vloggers all in everyone's way and acting crazed to get on attractions. I wish they would all go away."

 

"Cooking websites. Everyone knows the struggle of scrolling through 273 paragraphs of bullshit before getting to the recipe, but now some actual antichrist websites are putting a second page inside the first, where after you get past the 273 paragraphs, it’s like, 'Now, click here for the recipe.' Rage-inducing."

 

"MTV. It was so good back in the '90s. Actual music videos, shows that featured artists, MTV Unplugged, Daria, Beavis and Butt-Head, Æon Flux, TRL, Celebrity Deathmatch...Then, Pimp My Ride and Cribs were pretty fun, though it was the start of reality TV-style shows."

 

"Hollywood. They ran out of ideas." I feel like movies used to have substance, but now everything feels like a cash-grab."

 

"Being able to go outside. Maybe not so much in the cities, but in the suburbs, there were all these open fields and forests to go into. You could stay out 'til the sun went down, just riding your bike. Now, those fields and forests are paved over and turned into a strip mall. And if you wanna go somewhere that isn't outside, you better cough up some money. Every place charges you to be there now."

 

"YouTube. Try watching it for an hour without adblocker on. They literally penalize you for using their platform. I was watching YouTube with my wife, and her mom called. I paused it while they talked. Took about 10 minutes. When I hit play again, boom, commercial. We rewound two clicks because we forgot what happened, got back to the original pause point, commercial. At minute 30, commercial. 30 seconds after that, commercial. Literally unwatchable without adblock. Try it for an hour. Guaranteed you won't make it that long."

 

"Streaming. Back when Netflix moved away from sending DVDs in the mail, they turned to streaming. You had everything you wanted in one place, for one small price! Now, there are about 15 different streaming platforms. Might as well pay for cable at this point."

 

"Concerts. I remember being able to go to shows for $15-$30 to see three to five bands in a scummy, poorly lit bar. Everyone had so much fun, just enjoying the music. Now, you’ll never find a show under $50 unless it’s a local unknown band, and everyone’s so aggressive about trying to get to the front and get a photo op for social media that they ruin it for the people who want to go and enjoy the music."

[KuruPrionz]

As to the first one - The Internet.

It has changed, we must also change our strategies. I do use the web for research. One of my best searches is to type out what I am searching for and adding the word "forum". I've found many discussions where somebody goes to the trouble to share useful knowledge. I don't remember now what I was looking for but that's how I found Music Player network for one. Learned some useful things about specific automobiles as well, somebody who's done it can save you a great deal of time and possibly frustration. 

 

And here's one they missed. 

 

Shrimp!

 

Farmed shrimp are just nasty, really nasty. Please look it up and spare messenger duties.

Flavor and texture are disgusting. I used to enjoy eating shrimp sometimes, now I would only eat it if I knew who caught it and I'm fine if they leave the wild shrimp alone for bit and let them replenish. 

 

I have a couple of goodies for your follow up thread. 😇

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

I don't remember now what I was looking for but that's how I found Music Player network for one.

 

And that has definitely enriched the forums!!!

 

1 hour ago, KuruPrionz said:

Learned some useful things about specific automobiles as well, somebody who's done it can save you a great deal of time and possibly frustration.

 

Absolutely. The Interwebz told me how to disable my VW's alarm, which would go off every time I looked at it.

[pinkfloydcramer]

Late night comedy TV used to be great with classic SNL, Carson, Leno, Letterman, Conan (with his sidekick Andy Richter) and others. Now it's unfunny, biased suckage.

 

Fine dining music and ambience used to be great. I can't speak for the food because I have rarely been able to afford it, unless it was comped or discounted by 50% because I furnished the music. Speaking of which, it used to be musicians were expected to play classy stuff- jazz standards, Sinatra, showtunes, some classical. Now the music at these places is the same worn-out bar band crap you hear at the local beer and burger joint, albeit at a lower volume and stripped down to 1-2 pieces. Disclaimer: my attempts at playing the "classy stuff" sucked worse than well-played beer and burger joint music, but I still received encouragement. And today I still try to keep it classy, like smooth jazz versions of Steppenwolf when the fake bikers come in with the price tags still hanging off their brand new leather getups (hint: real bikers don't request Billy Joel and Elton John). Also, this degredation doesn't seem to have taken place at the highest levels. A concert pianist friend sent a clip of a guy at the Peabody playing all 15 minutes of Rhapsody In Blue, and not one person interrupted him in the middle of it with "hey man, know any Billy Joel?"

 

RE ambience, the fine dining dress code has been replaced by baseball caps and flip flops.

 

And what the H happened to TV music themes? When was the last time one got your attention? If there are any memorable TV themes from the last 2 decades and beyond of popular shows, I would like to know about them, please. Like M*A*S*H*, The Odd Couple, Good Times, Peanuts, Sanford & Son, Hawaii 5-O, Night Court, Barney Miller, TAXI, Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Letterman Theme.

[Doerfler]

I nominate this thread for the "You punks get off of my lawn" award. 

My dos centavos.

 

MTV was good in the 90's? How about the 80's. That's when it was really good.

 

YouTube is owned by Alphabet. Anyone who uses YouTube regularly (I am on it hours every day) needs to subscribe to YouTube premium.

$12.71 monthly. Worth every penny.  Pay or watch commercials. Stop complaning. 

 

Streaming. I just canceled FIOS TV a few weeks ago, had 3 set top boxes. Now I have 1Gigabyte internet and 7 different streaming services, including YouTube Premium.

I am paying $100.00 a month less now including the streaming services, with much better internet speed. That is a huge savings. Anyone who thinks "they might as well just pay for cable at this point". is uneducated.

 

Concerts. I paid $11.00 to see Led Zepplin. It was all downhill from there. 

As musicians/entertainers we know that the business model has changed. "That's Life", to quote Frank Sinatra.

Bands don't make money selling records anymore so they try to make their money playing shows.

These same people complaining about the cost of concert tickets listen to their favorite music for free on their phones.

They don't understand that these  musicians have the same bills as they do. They have to pay rent, have to eat. 

 

The rest is why I avoid Reddit. 

Rant on pause now, probably not over. 

 

[Notes_Norton]

Driving. It used to be getting in the car and driving somewhere was fun. The cars were more stylish, the traffic mostly manageable, and the other drivers more courteous. The drive was the experience, often the destination wasn't important. Of course, fuel was relatively cheap, population was less than half what it is now, and we were unaware of the environmental damage we were doing.

 

Now the cars are all built and shaped for fuel economy (a good thing but not as much fun), the Interstates are boring with the same chains at every exit and not much personality on either side in between, the traffic is a lot worse as the population expands, and the drivers are more aggressive and ruder, probably due to that congestion.

 

Food. As we went from small farms to factory mega-farms, the productivity of food per acre has improved, but in most cases, the taste of the food has suffered for the efficiency. Local farmed and fresh to market food is hard to find, but it tastes so much better.

 

Shopping for new instruments. When I bought my first, brand-new saxophone (the two previous were used) I went to a music store in Miami, Ace Music. The model I was looking for was a Selmer Mark VI. They had 3 of those, plus 3 King Super-20s, multiples of Conn, Buescher, Martin, Leblanc and all the other main brands. As long as I took my own mouthpiece, I could try as many as I wanted.

 

I borrowed a strobe-tuner from my school, tried a Super-20 and a couple of others, then sat down with 3 Mark VI saxes. Saxophones are not in tune with themselves, they take a different amount of lip pressure on each note to bring it into proper intonation. No two are alike, even the same brand and close serial numbers. I chose the one with the best relative intonation.

 

The last 3 saxophones and 2 guitars I bought I purchased via the Internet. I didn't get to hold them, compare them, feel them, or anything else first. I did get a lot of advice from other people on the Internet, but it's not the same as the 'try before you buy' experience. Nobody in anything other than mega-population centers has so many different instruments in stock anymore. I can't pick the best one of the same brand/model.

 

Music Stores. It used to be that I shopped at locally owned music stores. The big chains have put most of them out of business by offering slightly lower prices. The locals were usually owned by a musician who hired knowledgeable people. You got advice, and service no Guitar Center or equivalent offers, plus services unheard of today.

 

I needed a new mic for my sax. My Electro-Voice 664 finally met its 'best by' date and I replaced it with a Sure SM58. Nice for the voice, but it did not reproduce the sax tone well at all. All the guitar playing/singing friends told me the SM58 was the one. They didn't know sax.

 

So I went to my local music store, the owner went to the recording studio in the back and handed me a Sennheiser MD421. He said it was the best dynamic mic he had for sax, and it was bulletproof. He said try it out on the gig for a week, and let me know. Furthermore, he didn't ask for a deposit, didn't make a credit card image, and knew I'd be back.

 

It sounded great, my partner plus the other musicians who used to come see us on Sunday Afternoon immediately noticed the difference. "You sound like you again!"

 

I went back Monday, asked him to order a new one, and he told me to keep this one until the new one came in. I never asked price, but when the new one came in, I just paid what he asked. Not too long after a SamAsh catalog arrived (this was pre-Internet) and the mic was a couple of dollars cheaper, but by the time I would have paid for shipping and handling, I got the mic at my local store for a couple of dollars less.

 

Same thing happened with a BBE Sonic Maximizer. He said to try it on the gig for a week, bring it back unscratched if you don't like it. No credit card, no deposit, just trust and no 'restocking fee'. I went back with money because it took the mud out of our old column speakers (remember those???).

 

You just can't get anything like that at a chain. And even the iconic Manny's is no more.

 

Craig, I'm waiting for you "Things that used to suck, but are now really good," thread, because there are a lot of things that are better new than they used to be.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

[KenElevenShadows]

Education. Now I am looking at it from the opposite point of view. While I made the point that teachers do more and are more qualified to teach than ever before, that is also the problem. We've asked too much of them. They do too much, are held responsible for far more than they should be, and are dropping out in droves. Younger people are choosing more and more not to go into the field of education, while veteran teachers with years of experience choose to retire early or abandon the field entirely. In the United States, it's a dying field. too demanding and stressful while having too little pay. What teachers have done in the past few years has been awe-inspiring in their flexibility and demands, but it's been too much.

 

I put this in the discussion about what is better than before. I put education. And this is the other side of the coin to that.

 

Restaurants. Now, in the other discussion about what is better than it was before, I wrote "diversity of restaurants". Now, I am going to talk about restaurants again. Or perhaps more accurately, food. Restaurants are really expensive, although I don't necessarily blame them. And the ingredients don't tend to be as high quality because of the way we farm things now. There are less nutrients in our food, and quite often, unless we go to certain restaurants that serve things like, say, organic produce or heirloom tomatoes, it's reflected in its lack of nutrients and bland taste. And unfortunately, people in the United States view things like "heirloom tomatoes" and "organic produce" as fringe items when in fact they should be regarded as "normal" while crap that is mass-produced and has no nutrients should be regarded as "strange". But this isn't much of a priority for people here, so this is unlikely to change for the better any time soon.

[JimboKeys]

I have a few thoughts, but the big one is ...

 

Radio.  This has been discussed in a few other threads.  When DJ's were in charge of what music was played (rather than some corporate algorithm) you could hear Canned Heat followed by Stockhausen followed by Leadbelly followed by Ultimate Spinach followed by Switched-On Bach.  I don't think you could even find a streaming service today that would come up with something like that.

 

[Old No7]

23 hours ago, Anderton said:

A while ago, Reddit user u/Open-Outcome-660 posed the question, "What’s a thing that used to be great but has now become really bad?"

 

What are your nominees?

 

Well, I can't say it was ever "great" -- but as I'll turn 62 this summer, for sure, I can say it WAS BETTER in decades before......

 

Congress & U.S. Government

 

I think we should THROW ALL THE BUMS OUT and start over..............................

 

And maybe also add....

 

Mainstream Media and Journalism

 

Old No7

 

[KenElevenShadows]

Social media. I don't need to elaborate, do I?

[The Real MC]

SMT Almost everything built today are SMT technology.  Great for compact size, but if it breaks you either replace the circuit board (>IF< it is still available) or dispose the device.  Component level repairs are no longer done either because repair shops don't have the tools or the repair expense exceeds the original cost of the device.

 

You can still repair older music gear built with through-hole components, as long as non-custom components are still available.  There's a reason why vintage music gear still has a high market value.

 

Non-chain Music Stores While online chains have brought us lower prices, I miss the personal atmosphere and services of mom-n-pop stores.  Your amp went on the fritz hours before the gig?  Mom-n-pop stores can loan or rent out substitute gear to get you through the gig.  You could develop the camaraderie with the staff and with fellow musician customers in the store.  Can't get that from online outlets.

The deals on desirable used gear was better too.  The local stores would occasionally have them on consignment, and you could grab a bargain.  If a Guitar Center store receives a vintage item, it is shipped to a location near a metropolitan area (LA, NYC, Nashville, etc) and marked up to maximum market value.  That means the average Guitar Center customer never sees any bargain, and they'll never see any vintage gear outside of the metropolitan stores.

Race-to-the-bottom Gear While beginners/students have affordable gear these days, they come at a price.  Race-to-the-bottom sacrifices price for quality and environment waste.  If they break you don't repair them you replace them.  All that disposed gear gets dumped en masse in our landfills.  The competition for price hurts our workforce - in a recent example Peavey closed their factory in MS putting hundreds out of work and resorting to having their products built in Asia because they couldn't beat the prices from overseas competitors. 

 

Highway Travel Highways are REALLY miserable.  Too much traffic, too many trucks, too many construction zones.

Air Travel Awful!!!  Coach class seats are cramped, the food is terrible, fees everywhere, and getting through airport security is a miserable experience.  And you have to wear those damned masks for hours.

 

MSM/Journalism I don't like deception.  For the last fifteen years I have cross checked news outlets, even newspapers.  Many of them are deceiving - they 1) report part of the story (omissions turn out to be crucial info) 2) report things that aren't true (I'm college educated and spot these things) or 3) don't report it at all.  Some are outright tabloids not journalism.  I don't like deception and I get tired of sorting out the truth from the lies, leaving me no choice but to build a black list of deceptive news outlets.

 

Face vs The Art Way too many "music artists" who are only promoted on the pretty face/body and not on the art.  The exceptions are fewer and farther between, too many formulaic artists these days.  A major reason I quit listening to broadcast radio and quit watching broadcast TV.

[Notes_Norton]

The weather (climate change). Droughts, fires, floods, stronger hurricanes, stronger tornadoes and rising seas.

[Anderton]

Self-service checkout. It was great when self-service, like supermarket checkouts and such, were options for those in a hurry. It wasn't so great when it was all about replacing human beings so you had to scan and bag everything yourself, and essentially become an unpaid employee.

 

If I have a week's worth of groceries, a human will get me checked out in 1/3 the time of using machines, because the machine won't have an item coded in the system, or freaks out because I changed the position of the bag holding my food, or can't handle my wanting to use my own reuseable bags, or not factoring a sale price into an item. So I always end up needing a human to come over and engage with the machine anyway, and apparently, a condition of employment is that whoever deals with the machines has to function at 10% the speed of an actual checkout person.

[KuruPrionz]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

Self-service checkout. It was great when self-service, like supermarket checkouts and such, were options for those in a hurry. It wasn't so great when it was all about replacing human beings so you had to scan and bag everything yourself, and essentially become an unpaid employee.

 

If I have a week's worth of groceries, a human will get me checked out in 1/3 the time of using machines, because the machine won't have an item coded in the system, or freaks out because I changed the position of the bag holding my food, or can't handle my wanting to use my own reuseable bags, or not factoring a sale price into an item. So I always end up needing a human to come over and engage with the machine anyway, and apparently, a condition of employment is that whoever deals with the machines has to function at 10% the speed of an actual checkout person.

 

Yep, the local Kroger's chain (Fred Meyer) is transitioning to self serve cashiering. They still have a few lanes open with cashiers, some of them have been there for years. 

There are a couple of cashiers that I know there and they will have your groceries rung up, bagged and in your cart lickety split so I always go find one of them for checkout.

 

Don't you worry, it will get worse. Alibaba has a couple of prototype grocery stores in China where you register as a customer with your cell phone. Then you walk through the store and as you remove an item from a shelf, it is automatically scanned. When you have your items you go to the front, bag them and leave. Walking out the door triggers the sale process for the items you removed from the shelves and your bank account pays for the groceries. That same list is sent to the back as inventory and robots will restock the items that were removed. 

 

I'm pretty sure there are still bugs in the system or we'd see it here already. Maybe robot repair technicians are still rare enough that they can't hire the one staff member that they actually need to run the store. I'm certain somebody will figure all of this out sooner rather than later. 

 

Just one facet of the potential "new labor force" that is coming world wide. Eventually, virtually all manufacturing will be done by robots operating 3d printers and performing assembly and testing. There's more to that story but probably too political for MPN.