21 Parts of Modern Technology That Are Pure Scams

Remember when new technology was going to usher in a bright, new, distinctly Jetsonian future? We were all going to have flying cars, robot butlers and replicators that could make anything we want. Instead, we have murderous Teslas, idiot Roombas and 3-D printers that are only ever used by smelly guys at the library. Even at the dawn of the cyber era, we imagined a future of peaceful global interconnectedness. As an Estonian troll told us this morning, we could lick its taint.

It has its perks — the burrito taxis remain a nice bonus — but the enshittification of the glowing future we were promised is a real bummer. Everything that once seemed like a science-fiction utopia has just become another way for some wealthy CEO to bleed ever more money out of a populace that can’t really do much about it outside of becoming some kind of weird doomsday prepper. That’s why user cutypatotie asked r/AskReddit, “What’s the biggest scam in tech that has become widely accepted?”