40 Once Great Inventions That Are Becoming Worse And Worse

We had knobs and buttons on car radios and car ventilation controls. A driver could make adjustments just by touch and not take their eyes of the road. Nowadays, all buttons feel the same or we have touch screens and a driver has to look at them.

I think social media was an invention that made the world an inferior place.

Websites. Early websites were clean, loaded quickly, didn't have tracking cookies or cookie pop-ups and focused on telling you what you wanted to know without a ton of extraneous low-value images.

Things used to be made of wood, metal and glass. Now everything is made of plastic which doesn't biodegrade, is made from oil and is weakened by UV light.

Led headlights. The older halogens were just fine and better for everyone.

Kitchen white goods such as washing machines etc. My mum’s washing machine she bought in 1980 lasted her nearly 20 years. Modern ones don’t seem to last more than 5-6 years.

Mobile phones. The worst thing to ever happen as a supposed 'technological advance' was removing the earphone socket in mobile phones. Now, I have to rely on wireless earphones that always fall out, and the possibility that my phone might lose connection and start blasting music out loud.

Google and by extention the internet generally.

Google used to give you a truly diverse set of results whenever you searched something. Now it gives you a few curated results which all say the same thing.

2 Things.

Completed products. Before the rise of online gaming all games had to be completed before they could be pushed out and you couldn't really do upgrades (although there were add ons). I gave up gaming when I had a PS4, every time I wanted to do anything it it needed time to do uploads. Just got sick of it.

Owning things. I hate subscription models. They are great for a physical thing you get every month but for lots of digital products they are rubbish. Give me the software and stop messing around with it. I've stopped caring so much about paying them now. If it can't be owned, it can't be piracy.

Online menus,it doesn't hurt to just tell me what you have on a list at the very least.

Handwriting .. Many people having handwriting that were almost like art back then (especially the elders). On the occasions one see handwriting nowadays.. it's just like wtf is written here. Nice/Perfect handwriting still impresses me no matter how "ancient" many think handwriting is nowadays. A kind of "everyday art". Can still look at some letters sent by grandparents and think of both the skills and time they used to make it. Using their minds and souls before the words were put on the paper. Words are so cheap and simple in the era of the keyboard and computers.

Keyless ignition serves no useful purpose and is much less secure than a physical car key. You can't clone a key through a brick wall.

One of those Jurassic Park moments of people trying to show what they could do without thinking whether they should.

Banks and branches with managers you could talk to and ask for things, e.g. overdraft extensions. Nowadays you have to be on hold for an hour to speak to someone in the Philippines who doesn’t know what an ISA is.

Modern cake mixers. I have a mixer from the 1960s that is still going strong today. I have tried modern mixers, but not only do they not work as well, they don't last very long either.

It's more than 60 years old, used to belong to my grandmother, has all its original parts and is still making cakes to this day. It's outlasted every single modern mixer I've tried.

Houses
My house is 150 years old and is built to last. Very little issues. I know 2 people who have a 'newish' build house (built within the last 10 years) and because of the extreme weather the UK has had with wind the past few years both their houses need serious work. Not a single shingle has come off my roof.

New builds in the UK are built like S***E. I used to work in construction retail and traders would even comment how out of line walls/floors would be when working in new houses.

I had a vhs player that worked for 30years. Now when I buy a digital film, apparently I don’t actually own it and it could disappear.

Shops where the workers could do more than than tell you to go back home and call customer services. Looking at you Samsung.

Maybe already said but fridges. I don’t need a coffin sized, Bluetooth connected cold wardrobe. I need an accessible, adjustable and flexible fridge that is not going to take up half the wall.

Streetlamps used to give a nice warm glow before we replaced them with those ghastly white lights.

Cars. Too wide, too bulky, headlights too bright, too locked in with ridiculous diagnostics and sensors and god knows what else...and they all look the f*****g same!

I bought an '09 Vauxhall last year, hoping I can keep it running as long as possible, but I'm really dreading having to choose something else in a few years' time.