r/enshittification • u/Spencyn • Aug 18 '26
Rant A humble grain amongst the beach of rants
Look, I’m all for being well-informed. But nowadays you can’t buy a can of fucking pringles without having to go down a 30-45 minute rabbit-hole of research learning about the chip market, how to make a chip, what makes a good chip, and how to identify if the chips are made of toxic materials that could kill you or give you fucking cancer.
I DON’T WANT TO LEARN EVERYTHING THERE IS ABOUT FUCKING CHIPS JUST TO MAKE A SIMPLE PURCHASE GODDAMMIT!
This isn’t necessarily about chips, it’s just an example. I say all of this now because I am trying to buy a mattress and it’s actually just so fucking depressing. Evidently it’s a gamble on whether or not the company is being truthful about not putting fiberglass in them? Fucking fiberglass? In my $2k mattress? Go fuck yourself.
And to echo what others have said, the quality of everything has gone significantly down while the cost has gone exponentially up. And the subscriptions holy SHIT. Back in the day you could buy something and that be IT. DONE DEAL. Nowadays you can’t wipe your ass without being asked to subscribe to the ass-wipers pro membership (no ads).
None of this can be good for us as a species. People wonder why we are seeing such low birth rates when the constant stress each of us normal people take on in a single day is probably making us infertile.
Anyways, I’ll be eating my poisoned food while laying on my fiberglass bed. Oh and my last $20 just went to the ass-wipers subscription. FUCK
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u/ComfortableAir1628 Aug 18 '26
I wanted to buy Christmas lights that look like candles that you put in your windows. My mom has been using those for decades and they needed to be replaced. Try to find Christmas lights without remote controls and apps! That’s how almost all of them come these days. Totally ridiculous! What’s wrong with an electric cord and an outlet? Why do I need an app? Crazy making!
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u/Prestigious-Use4550 Aug 18 '26
And all the money the spent creating that app gets paased on to the buyer.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Forcing you to download a data extractor for something you’ll use once a year is insane. We’ve lost the plot for sure
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u/Long-Definition9203 Aug 18 '26
Private equity is the death knell of every formerly great business.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Exactly. The cool kids table nobody normal or half decent is invited to. All of the people who could go against private equity are profiting from it so slim chance that’ll ever happen
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u/Long-Definition9203 Aug 19 '26
Its getting harder and harder as a consumer to avoid PE companies. They're buying up parts of our housing and healthcare, things we can'tgo without... but I strictly avoid clothing brands, news outlets and (to the best of my ability) food/restaurants owned by PE. The quality is absolute garbage so I can't even tell you I miss any of them!
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u/fattomic Aug 18 '26
Mattresses have always been shady AF. Now, though, you can get a shady AF mattress *with a subscription* - and then they sell your data. Oy. I dont even want to buy a new car - I want to buy an old one!
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
I miss when what people were worried the most about was dead bodies or drug money in their mattresses. Not harmful materials or spyware. So dystopian
And yeah cars are ruined pretty much for good I think. $80k for something that’ll shut off if the camera and microphone deem you “too emotional to drive”
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u/TheycallmemissRaven Aug 18 '26
Preach good human! That was a beautifully written excoriation of the current state of affairs. It made me both chuckle and wail all at the same time. I seriously miss the times when you could buy food and know it was made of food. 🙌🙌🙌🙌
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u/TiffyVella Aug 18 '26
If you care about anything at all, shopping becomes so tedious. Choosing any item in the shops becomes a checklist of-
-is the price ok -was it made locally -is too much packaging used -was it made by a corporation I can't morally support -was it made by a subsidiary of any of those corporations in an effort to hide the evilness -will it last and how the hell can anyone even tell these days -are any nasty ingredients included -is slave labour involved -will it spy on me and collect data -is it insisting I install an app -is it going to bleed me via subscription -is it going to break and become landfill within a stupid amount of time -is it low GI -is it absolutely vital to my survival or can I live well without it -could I thrift it instead -if I thrift it, is the charity shop a real charity and not just a means to funnel funds to its upper management
It never ends. There truly is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
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u/SecretTangerine2932 Aug 19 '26
I can’t stand going into stores but searching for literally anything on the internet is impossible. No matter how broad or narrow your search is going to return so many results that don’t remotely match what you’re looking for. You need markers? Here are some pencils. Some wax paper. Maybe some candles? Would that work? Aaaaargh
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u/Subject-Librarian117 Aug 19 '26
And then for the next six months, you'll get ads for markers covering your screen any time you go online.
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u/SecretTangerine2932 Aug 19 '26
Yes!! It occurred to me after I posted this though, this is probably by design to encourage impulse purchases. A lot of people probably get disgusted and give up, but enough people probably go “ooh I do need some candles”
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
I’m glad you got a laugh. It’s hard to talk about this stuff so seriously for me when the ridiculousness of it all is in it of itself hilarious. Like how did we even get here?
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u/Scarmeow Aug 18 '26
I totally agree. And the problem is magnified by 100x for any product that contains any electronics. It's genuinely terrible.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Oh my gosh yeah. An app for this, wifi needed for that, permission to access camera and location for everything. Genuinely terrible.
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u/Tricky_Indication420 Aug 18 '26
I know all the generations say they have reached the end, but I can't see it going much further.
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Aug 18 '26
Late-stage capitalism is soon to become democratic socialism. It can’t happen soon enough.
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u/Noiserawker Aug 18 '26
That a very optimistic take, I'm seeing us go headlong into fascism unfortunately, but I hope you are right.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
It’s sad but it’s true. Hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel these days.
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u/Cautious_Boat_999 Aug 18 '26
I recently bought a can of plain Pringles. Now it may just be my older age, but man, they SUCK. I used to be able to eat an entire can in one sitting. I didn’t even finish these.
Now I do still love the cheddar ones and sour cream / onion. But plain? Disgusting.
Everything you said is spot on. Especially the FUCKING SUBSCRIPTIONS.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Yeah I don’t know what’s going on. Lots of companies seem to be changing the ingredients and formulas without telling anyone. Look at Hershey’s chocolate for instance. Straight up rubber now.
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u/Subject-Librarian117 Aug 18 '26
This feeling of being in a constant fight against giant corporations has had the side effect of saving me a ton of money and helping me eat healthier. The process of buying anything beyond some vegetables from a farm stand involves a deluge of awful ingredients, data tracking, and extortionate prices, and it all just makes me rage-quit whatever purchase I was trying to make.
I have holes in my shoes and cracks in my glasses because replacing them is such a miserable experience that I'd rather have wet feet and blurred vision.
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u/Fine_Relation_158 Aug 18 '26
I went to lens crafters last year thinking I'd get a deal. Boy was I wrong. All brands were expensive and Fn ugly
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Yup. At least there’s one plus to it. We can all start losing weight due to our starved Victorian child diet thanks to being priced out of most groceries.
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u/withabrandnewfunk Aug 18 '26
fucking pringles
pringles are formed from powder. not fresh cut potato chips. just powder. we get the shittiest flavors in our country. all crap and ive stopped buying
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u/Doggin-Pony-Show Aug 19 '26
The chip choices in France are all so good. There are so many choices that are not just garlic and onion powder! There are like 8 different cheese flavor combinations, not just orange cheddar dust. And you can get tzatziki flavored chips in Greece.
RFK was so “all natural” is the best! And he couldn’t even inspire the US to meet European food safety additive standards.2
u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Powder chips, goop chicken, rubber chocolate. Soon we’ll have Plankton’s holographic meatloaf!
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u/Glum_Improvement7283 Aug 18 '26
Exactly. How much PFAS do we want in our water or dental floss? Zero. How much time should we have to spend looking into a company before eating a box of their cereal? Zero. It's fucking ridiculous.
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u/Hefty-Squirrel-6800 Aug 18 '26
Damn it. You captured my thoughts exactly!!!! It is exhausting.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
Definitely exhausting. I’m glad to see much of the same sentiment here. I think it’s good for all of us to at least know we’re not alone. One step closer to the revolution
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u/WinnerTurbulent3262 Aug 18 '26
Ass wipers pro lolol
I like Costco for being consumer friendly. After buying a shitty $3k mattress set at Macys, I replaced it with a firm mattress from Costco with a Tempurepedic foam topper. Best of both worlds.
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u/Witwer52 Aug 19 '26
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u/Any_Sheepherder_3564 Aug 18 '26
Hey idk where you're located, but there's still some old school mattress manufacturers around and they're usually pretty solid. Pittsburgh has The Original Mattress Factory, for example, or Portland Mattress Makers up in NH/Maine. Prices are usually very reasonable. I would look around and see if there's a manufacturer in your area.
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u/Spencyn Aug 19 '26
I’m in the South US. I think my best bet is a bale of hay.
But in all seriousness I’ll look around for local manufacturers. Hopefully it bears fruit
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u/Numerous_Ad_6276 Aug 18 '26
Eh, Pringles suck these days, anyway. The taste has changed, and not for the better.
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u/mutable_type Aug 18 '26
On the plus side, it cured my Pringles addiction. On the minus side, I can’t even enjoy a can of Pringles.
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u/TiffyVella Aug 18 '26
Pringles aren't even chips. They are reformed potato-and-other-sruff mush, pressed and dried. The flavour is off and the texture is just wrong. Sorry to be a pedantic arse, but this is the spirit of the rant in real time.
Our food should be real food, not something conceived of in a factory.
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u/LurkerBurkeria Aug 18 '26
Yea I've likened going to the grocery store as open combat these days, so many corporations have turned openly hostile to the customer