40 Things In Our World That Are Slowly Becoming Worse

Loss of decency. Being hateful in public is getting more and more normalized.

Tolerating obvious lies from public figures and institutions. People are so bloodthirsty for anything they can shout at people they disagree with they don’t care if it’s true or not.

Allowing billionaires to not pay their share of taxes. Benefits are being cut across the board for working people and these grifters are sitting on their money and watching it grow without any regulation or oversight.

Lower standards for public servants. Before, a scandal breaks out, they have to resign or forced to resign. Now, I don't think there's any type of "Scandal" that can make some type of politician to stop, respect the position, and resign.

How we've allowed corporations to have basically the same rights as a human being, with a fraction of the accountability.

Destruction of all programs to keep the elderly and poor from starving.

All over the world, oligarchs are amassing the world's wealth into private holdings. The 1% is becoming smaller and richer.

Subscription everything. I got called old and made fun of for clinging to my DVD collection. Now those same kids come to me, wanting to borrow movies that their streamers aren’t currently hosting. I still buy some every week. My husband and I joke that it’s just a civilization preservation project at this point. Currently, we're just under 3,700 movies.

What I'm really concerned about is the conjunction of three trends, which are the conversion of most tech products to incorporate AI, the conversion of everything to a subscription-based product, and token-based charges. It's a very small step from where we are right now to a place where we are charged for checking our emails.

Insects slowly disappearing. It's very bad. Aside from being pollinators (a huge aside), they are nutrient recyclers and the major food source for secondary consumers, who are in turn food for tertiary consumers, and so on. Insect population collapse means a subsequent systemic collapse in biodiversity and agriculture.

The mess we've created with microplastics. We literally cannot even accurately study their effects. There's no control group. Imagine we wanted to test whether they cause cancer. We'd have to look at rates of cancer in people exposed to microplastics vs. people not exposed, which no longer exist. So yeah, there's a chance they do nothing. There's also a chance that they're currently the biggest threat to our health. More likely, it's something in the middle. The problem is, we have no idea and no way to tell.

Our total lack of privacy. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the younger generation is already totally comfortable with being surveilled. Like the location sharing feature on phones, where you can track your partner's location in real time, for instance. I was born in the 1980s, and I find this distasteful on principle, not because I'm hiding something, but because I just don't like the idea of being tracked 24/7, even by someone I'm close to.

Antibiotic coverage (and herd immunity for vaccine preventable illnesses) are slowly slipping away.

Pollution. The planet is becoming more and more toxic to animal life. We’re not going to survive another century or two at this rate.

The loss of hobbies. And by that I mean real hobbies. As kids we used to build thing. Models, radios, soapbox racers, all kinds of stuff. Now, it's exceedingly rare to find someone under 20 who's hobby isn't posting stuff online. Yes, I sound like an old fogey, but these things kept us together, and kept us happy. most of the stuff kids these days post online is about manufactured drama, fights, hate etc... It's so rare to see a video that's genuinely fun and happy by anyone these days.

That for some reason working an entry level job means you don't deserve to make enough to pay rent.
Wait, that already happened.

That the rich actually deserve more.. No, that too.

That corporations are actually being generous by allowing you the privilege to intern at their company in exchange for exposure?

Dynamic Pricing= price gauging
Never being able to buy anything to own because everything is either rent or subscription.

Climate change. Sure, it's totally normal that it doesn't snow in the winter anymore, we shouldn't worry about that.

AI.
I feel like the caveat here is the a decent chunk of people are against AI, but it just keeps getting shoved into every facet of our lives. Like at this point I feel like the frog has tried jumping out of the pot several times now, but AI makes someone money so it gets shoved back in. 

The cost of healthy food. It should not be cheaper to eat from fast food dollar menus every day than to purchase whole vegetables and meats from the grocery store once a week. It’s by design, an unhealthy population is easier to control.

Echo chambers.

Over 10 years ago when Facebook went mainstream and grown ups were let in, everyone was worried about echo chambers, algorithms, and destruction of the monoculture. This was a genuine concern and people took it seriously. No one cares anymore and instead have all drunk the KoolAid.

Now people create their own echo chambers with impunity. They block people they typecast as 'one of them' based on a single comment, they build Discord servers were they can have their biases confirmed, they kick people off subreddits, they refuse to engage in good faith and are constantly angry thinking a comment they don't like is some 'gotcha' waiting to pounce.

The monoculture is done. There was a time when people would go to work (remember that?) and talk about the latest episode of the West Wing. There was a time when we used to look forward to September and the start of a new season of Breaking Bad. There was a time when the idea of being trapped in your own home and living the world through a screen you couldn't turn off was considered a dystopia.

Those days are gone now, and all that's left is people feeling isolated in an increasingly atomised society, and their solace is to hate everyone and blame them all for their anxiety and depression, typically curled up on a screen which gives them the view of the world they agree with.

We are all sitting in front of our own personal Mirrors of Erised, like Narcissus or Faust.

In the UK, our freedom and anonymity is being stripped away bit by bit "for the children". The Online Safety Act was introduced to stop kids looking at sketchy stuff online, but it'll always be easy to find.

So companies have to check IDs or face fines. Papers, please. Some companies just pulled out entirely to avoid the trouble, like Imgur and Civitai. Fair enough, honestly.

Now, more stuff is going through to stop under 16s going on social media which, of course, will involve checking the rest of us are of age with face scans and IDs.

I ain't doing it, for anything. If I can't get around it somehow, I just won't use the service, or I'll VPN or whatever. I'm surprised there isn't more protests about this. I've never cared enough to join one before, but I'd take the train into London and take the day off for this one. Some 1984 nightmare.