Stupid People Managed To Ruin These 35 Once Genuinely Useful Things

State Parks, but more tainted than ruined. My husband and I hiked at two separate state parks this weekend and I was appalled. We saw dog poop, dirty diapers, water bottles, and food wrappers on almost every trail we walked. Also, for the love of God, NOBODY wants to listen to your music. Use headphones, you heathen.

The internet’s potential for knowledge has been marred by misinformation.

Every goddamed app on the planet wanting to have you turn on push notifications. No, I do not want my phone constantly going off at all hours of the day.

Airbnb.

A cool, couch surfing idea that became a way to rent a spare room and save a little money on a hotel, got turned into a way to cut off housing supply and create a housing crisis, all by its own users.

Pain medication. People with health issues suffer in pain ignored by doctors because junkies use our qualify of live saving medication to get high.

Google search

At the time, Google's algorithm was a breath of fresh air compared to the dog s**t Ask Jeeves.

Now its results are just those who paid the most to Google followed by those that paid the most to SEO companies.

One genuinely useful thing that has been ruined by stupid people is the online review system. Originally intended to help consumers make informed decisions and businesses improve their services, it has been flooded with fake reviews, both positive and negative. Some people leave one-star reviews for trivial reasons, like a package arriving a day late, or worse, they weaponize reviews to unfairly attack businesses they have personal grudges against. This misuse undermines the credibility of the entire system, making it harder to distinguish between genuine feedback and malicious or frivolous comments.

The environment. We should've been doing something about climate change ages ago. We've known since 1938.

Voting

Everyone who votes should pass a basic civics test. Stupidity is killing our democracy, as our elected representatives are increasingly manifestations of grievances and hatreds and not of our aspirations.

Plastic. Incredibly useful material.

Totally ruined by selfish people discarding it without a thought, corporations for prioritising profits over the environment, cosmetic companies for creating micro plastics, and governments for not doing anything about it!

Emotional Support Animals and Service Animals. Contrary to popular belief, they are not the same thing at all and stupid people getting fake ESA’s has bled into it harming people with service animals. Only a medical professional can prescribe an ESA, not a website or “registry” and an ESA is not allowed in public spaces like a service animal. It just allows the animal to live with you in places that usually wouldn’t allow animals or pets.

Conversations.

People don’t understand that information isn’t just found on FB, Insta and other social media platforms

They repeat ridiculous things they see posted by someone they don’t know and state it as fact because “I read it”.

Common sense is gone. Critical thinking. Gone. People liking things doesn’t make it true. And this whole “ I feel like it’s true” BS has to stop already. Facts aren’t what you feel.

Social Media. Spreading fake news, they are not thinking before clicking.

The media.

Great journalists doing impressive, balanced analysis of the issues of the day that informed people was what we had.

Today, with idiots at the helm and solely being driven by advertising rather than content we get total BS that is dividing countries by being aligned to a certain political movement.

Antibiotics. Great for dealing with bacterial infections, not so good at dealing with viruses, and now we have antibiotic resistant bacteria because of overuse.

Online recipe blogs.

I understand the value of sharing experiences and the personal touch, but scrolling through pages of life stories and reflections on the changing seasons just to find the temperature for baking chicken thighs can be maddening. The recipe gets snowed under an avalanche of context and anecdotes. It's especially tedious on mobile, where your battery life ebbs away as you swipe past the tales of childhood and pictures of someone's dog wearing a chef's hat.

What started as a wholesome platform to share kitchen wisdom has become a test of patience, where we're forced to dig like culinary archaeologists to find the treasure trove: the actual list of ingredients and instructions. We've taken the concept of passing down recipes and wrapped it in the literary equivalent of a thick wool sweater — heartwarming, but not when you're in a hurry.

The general idea of home owners' associations.

I’ll go first: essential oils. They smell brilliant, reduce stress & anxiety and help treat fungal infections, but all the anti-vax & ‘crunchy’ moms have decided they’re a magical solution to everything that is wrong with the world.

At least in my area, “Pick your own” farms. It used to be a way to get seasonal produce in bulk for a low cost because you supplied the labor of picking it. Then it became trendy to do. Now it is full of people and kids making a mess, damaging plants, picking unripe items or deciding what they picked isn’t “perfect” and throwing it on the ground, and eating huge amounts instead of buying. Farms have been forced to massively raise prices to compensate for the losses caused by people who have no business being in the field.

Public parks have been ruined by littering and vandalism.