Idk if this falls I to the right category, but everything needing wifi. I bought a scale the other day that needed wifi before it could read my weight. I have a PS5 with all the media apps I need, give me the option for a dumb TV. My washer, dryer, fridge and oven also shouldn't need wifi to be able to do basic operations.
Samsung as a company is driving me up the fucking wall lately.
Everything as a subscription. As a tech worker I understand why this is so popular but god do I hate it
Edit: Some subscriptions can genuinely offer amazing value to consumers. My problem is the mass adoption of subscription on products and services that have no business being a subscription. Those that exist solely so companies can make more money off of you. Not everything should be a subscription
I literally read an article last month from a very well know consulting firm titled “The future of XaaS (everything as a service)”.
Seriously…it has gone on long enough. It has to stop.
I worked at a place that sold hardware…buy it once, use it forever. One of the “genius” board members thought it was a good idea to cut the cost of the device in half (still with a 400% markup) and sell a yearly subscription. The sales dropped from 85 million in one year to 30 the next.
The genius/dbag board member moved on to another company and I’m sure he got a raise. Meanwhile, 200 people lost their jobs.
It’s such a scam.
Right? I despise it. Some of the most popular apps now are subscription only and I refuse to use them. Others I've snatched up for lifetime 1 time payments before they went subscription. I'll never buy an app every damn year for 10x the total cost, it's insane.
Only subs I've ever use will be utilities - including media which refreshes. Bug fixes are not a reason to pay again.
Pops always told me to get a hard copy of everything, so I opted for the Adobe CS5 box and not the download.
I may have a 12-year outdated Photoshop, but it still works *and it's fucking mine* forever 😂
Screw Adobe's subscription model.
Oh my god. I never thought of this. But you’re right. Imagine how many calls they could make from a server farm when you don’t have to have actual people slowing things down. 🤮
Replicating yours, your friends, and yours families voices and learning the speech patterns to call other family members as you... man... the future is gonna be crazy.
Third party student loan "consultants". I used to work as a federal student loan collector for a Department of Education contractor. I have horror stories about borrowers who were purposefully deceived by these people, the worst of whom was someone who thought a consolidation she paid for completely eliminated her obligation.
What these legally grey assholes do is trick people into paying to have *free paperwork* done on their behalf. Sure they have the tiny fine print disclosures, but they're extremely predatory and make me sick. Imo getting rid of them could be legislation worthy, given that they interfere with federally owned debts.
The amount of FB posts I see that are like “join my book exchange! Send 6 books, get 36 back!” (Variations include wine bottles, kids toys, etc)… tells me pyramid schemes are not going anywhere, because people are not smart enough to realize these are LITERALLY the definition of a pyramid scheme.
That's why I have this fantastic new idea for a business model: The Inverted Funnel Plan! Instead of your money funneling down into some fat cat's new yacht fund, you flip it around and start funneling money to you! And the best part is, the more people you hire, the wider your funnel!
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Look them up.
They’re basically bloodsucking middlemen that sit between hospitals and health insurers. Supposedly created to control prescription drug costs and manage formularies, but they actually drive prices up. One of the many terrible causes of high medical costs in the states.
It’s not the PBMs alone that drive up the price, it’s the combination of every single company in the supply chain. PBMs are often easily blamed by the other companies to hide their own drug price inflation because it’s easy to blame a negotiator and call them a middleman.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you PBMs are terrible too, but wouldn’t it just be better if medical insurance went away, or even better, eliminating the industry of corporate lobbying that prevents the government from going after the medical industry?
As someone who works on these topics, here are my opinions:
1. The complexity itself is a big part of the problem.
2. Small reforms are hard, usually because of money. Even big reforms like Obamacare were a mess, mainly because of money.
3. If you want good reforms, look for an entire foreign system to copy. Find one adapted to the way the US currently works.
4. It will work better if most decision makers in medicine are very afraid that keeping the current system is going to cost them money. For example, imagine a patient strike, where everything elective is delayed, or some alternate nongovernmental way of delivering services grows fast. Or, there are big successful lawsuits.
One of the wildcards is something medicine does not see coming. The biggest effects would not be for a single condition, but broad groups.
As someone who has been told “you have very good health insurance”… the complexity is actually huge. I went to the mountains in June, came down with a cough I couldn’t cough anything up. Local Dr. said it’s HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) which according to him can happen randomly to anyone going high altitude (he said this in response to me saying I’ve been there many times). So he warns me if I don’t get back down to altitude soon, it’ll become pneumonia. I got back to my town about 4 hours away and it still became pneumonia. I check in to the ER barely able to breathe. I was exhausted just walking to the front door. After a 2.5 day stay my bill was like $30,000. I had an out of pocket cost of $5.8K and insurance got the rest. When I took out a small personal loan to cover these costs, I had to pay like 20 different providers for my treatment! It was insane! The hospital isn’t just a one size fits all bill. Everyone within the hospital is billed separately and just going through my statements and finding who needed to get what payment was a small headache but I did it. I really want to see the industry reformed, but if that’s how things work right now…. I have no idea where to begin with rolling out changes.
>I had to pay like 20 different providers for my treatment! It was insane! The hospital isn’t just a one size fits all bill
And the biggest bullshit is when the hospital is supposed to be "in your network" but turns out one doctor working with them that did one thing during your stay was out of your network and now you're stuck with a big bill for that one person that your insurance will make you pay in full. What are you expected to do? Question each doctor that walks in your room if theyre in your network before they touch you? Private insurance is a fucking scam and healthcare should be made freely available to all
I think it's funny that we already have telemarketing robots calling call-screening robots.
Personally I just use Tasker to auto-drop any call from a number that isn't in my contacts.
The problem I have is that all of the telemarketing calls I get, either from bots or from real people, are calling me *using* phone numbers spoofed from my contacts list.
I can't refuse to answer a call from my daughter, but I'm *really* pissed when it's not my daughter calling, but some scammer using my daughter's phone number.
Everyone always wants a better phone, but people never complain enough about this. I can't believe the phone part of phones is by far the worst part of the experience.
The fact there is a way to spoof numbers so easily in 2023 is a monumental failure of the telephone system.
Having formerly worked for both Verizon and AT&T, I can assure you that this isn't a *failure* of those companies. It's a boost to their profit. They're paid by telemarketers to help telemarketers spoof numbers.
It's really easy to do this in 2023 when the entire telecommunications industry is responsible for the spoofing in the first place.
Real telemarketing died shortly after the federal Do Not Call list. There is a reason you aren't getting phone calls from Macy's, or the local furniture store, or insurance companies anymore.
What you are getting are scam calls. Specifically scam warfare from places like India that extracted 5.8 billion from the pockets of Americans last year. And not just any Americans, usually the most infirm, elderly, disabled, kinda dumb or other wise compromised Americans.
When I first enrolled in the Do Not Call list I thought this would help.
Got a spam call a while later and told the lady that I was on the Do Not Call list and she straight up said "I don't care" and went on with her pitch.
At this point if you have the time, you take up all their time if they are live and not a bot. Make them waste their time on you instead of someone that might be taken in by their ruse.
More than a few youtubers have made it their job to fuck with these guys.
Yep, last time "Microsoft" called me it was 30 minutes of them getting angrier trying to explain the difference between my computer and monitor to me...my wife had to end the call because she got tired of my stupidity or it'd have been going on for a lot longer.
Look bitch, I work in IT. I know exactly how to push your buttons all day, I'll just repeat what my customers tell me. It's cathartic to dump that on a scammer.
Awhile back, I got a call at work from "Sven from Microsoft" who had a thick Indian accent. I told him all of our computers were Macs and hung up. (They're actually Windows PCs.) 5 minutes later, the exact same guy calls back saying he's Jann from Apple and needs to help me get rid of a computer virus. I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about, my computer doesn't have any apples, we have the one with the penguin and I don't know how to put a virus on it" and hung up again.
He didn't call back again that day, but I came in the next day and my tech-phobic boss was hanging up the phone after talking to "Linnus from the Penguin Computer Company." Thank goodness all she told him was that she just bought a new computer from QVC and she didn't want another one. I love my boss, she treats me like a member of the family and she's really good at what she actually does (we don't work in technology), but dang if she ain't the exact target audience for scammers like this.
The concert ticket mafia. (TicketMaster / StubHub / LiveNation). Fuck them.
ETA: I know those entities aren't really an entire industry. They basically have the market monopolized, though.
No shit. A few years ago I wanted to get Garth Brooks tickets. The venue had this “system” set up to keep scalpers aka Ticketmasters from grabbing a bunch of tickets. I logged into the website at THE exact time the website said and had to keep hitting refresh for a fucking hour and a half. By the time I could get in there was one ticket left. ONE. Then guess who started advertising tickets. Yup. FUCKING TICKETMASTERS. FUCK EM
Ticketmaster is the worst, and secondhand sites like StubHub aren't far behind. My wife is pregnant so we couldn't do standing room only. I just wanted to sell my tickets for what I paid - $350 (which of course included exorbitant ticketmaster fees). Except StubHub takes another $35 cut from me, so I'd only get $315 if they sold. And the buyer has to pay another $100 in fees. So they end up paying $450 and StubHub walks away with $135 in fees just for being the middle man for 2 tickets! That's a 30% cut! Meanwhile Facebook and Craigslist are riddled with scams, so sites like StubHub are really the only safe choice for many buyers and sellers...
This and even pet stores that actually sell animals from these mills. My home state of Maryland is the second behind California in banning pet stores from selling animals from puppy/kitten mills.
The Troubled Teen Industry.
Look up Nexpos video on Elan school and you’ll see what I mean. Abusing minors for money shouldn’t be an industry.
Edit: didn’t realize this would get so much traction, so if you’re interested in helping advocate against TTI, head over to r/troubledteens and join our little crew!
As a former student (prisoner?) I could not second this enough. The facility I was sent to got shut down a number of years ago but there are still many other *thriving* programs. Some of the girls who also went there are now working on a documentary to shed some light on how counterproductive and down right criminal these places are.
One of the facilities I went to recently was shut down because of a class-action lawsuit. I’m very proud tbh. Fuck those creepy groomers who drove us to the middle of nowhere and told us we were worthless and nobody would value us and then drove us back and pretended like nothing happened to the other staff/ “therapists”… whew I’m so glad I get to speak whenever I want now and eat food or drink water whenever I want now. That was definitely beyond insane.
Another place. I think they had four places. And they’re all closed now.
My “therapist” (who got his PhD writing about his inhumane treatment of us from the University of Utah) was named in the suit and was one of the owners. His name is like a beverage or seasoning. Looked a lot like Rick Scott too. For over two years that man held my life in his hands.
I watched the Elan documentary and read that one guys comic about it and my god. The utter *rage* I felt through the whole thing, combined with complete hopelessness was the worst. I cannot even fathom what it was actually like to go through something like that and you have me deepest sympathies that you ever had to endure something so inhumane.
I truly hope you're doing well now.
I work for a psychiatric hospital in HIM (that doesnt pull any TTI nonsense, should be the standard but we dont even use any form of mechanical restraints). Whenever we get contacted by a TTI facility, it's always a whole aggravating ordeal. Once we got a call from one nearly 1,000 miles away because *they lost a kid*. Apparently this particular wilderness facility does "their own investigations internally", even if a kid goes missing. The thing is, when they call, it's never obvious they're calling from a facility because they're so bad at doing anything. They cant send proper ROIs, and so it drags on because we have to figure out what the hell they sent us and why. Even the notorious Provo Canyon, which how it's still open is beyond me.
Whenever any of my coworkers picks up the phone from them, they have to put them on hold to gather their thoughts of "what the hell". And everytime after looking at the caller ID & asking who is on the phone, I say "yes that's a facility, they dont have staff, they have a goon squad". I have gone on so many tangents of how horrible these places are, and somehow before I explained it to them, my coworkers had no clue despite the red flags that are raised everytime we're contacted by them.
Sadly it should be the standard rather than an achievement. I grew up in a different state, I was so close to being sent to a residential (interestingly enough, according to medical records I got a hold of it was due to my autism diagnosis). I spent a lot of my time in psychiatric wards, most of my teenage years, they were good at convincing me and my mom I'd never "really" get out or that I was a lost cause. I was lucky to not experience residential, but the wards inflicted a lot of physical & emotional scars nonetheless.
The differences between the hospitals I was placed in & the one I work in are like night and day. What I experienced would *not* fly where I work, we'd be in deep shit. My department is not big, only 3 people, so when something is even *suspected* to be amiss we all have to put in serious OT to help with investigation (not as in do the entire investigations, completely internal investigations are obviously not good, so that's a whole lot of other teams like accreditating agencies & the state, but just make sure everything is prepared on our side). I really wish ethical practice was more common.
Their dentist when I went to one of those schools asked me how many sexual partners I had at 12 years old then put me under. I don’t even want to know what happened.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3kad/paris-hilton-sexual-abuse-provo-canyon-school
I can't conceive of any legitimate program that would involve that kind of behavior.
What. The Fuck. Did I. Just read?!
How can that be real, leat alone legal?
Edit: just read that elan in particular got shot down, but there seem many Programms like that? Effing hell...
yeah there is one about 1.5 from where I live; its a few hours outside of nyc. My husband grew up in the very small town near there, once in a while they would find kids that escaped from there wandering the roads or hiding around town. Townspeople would give them food and drive them an hour or so in one direction or the other and put them on busses where ever they wanted to go. The implicit understanding was wherever they wanted to be would be better then the school they had been sent to.
The crazy thing was that Elan (and most TTI facilities) tell the kids that everyone in the neighboring towns hates them/is scared of them, and they better not run to those people because they'll just turn them in.
Tom Hanks sent his kid to one when he refused to try to get clean or something. Part of the program is that parents transfer legal guardianship to these facilities.
A real blow to these facilities would be unannounced welfare checks. Currently in most states any welfare checks must be announced more than a week in advance.
I read this over the course of a couple days a few months ago and I think it's the saddest thing I've ever read. Made me very angry at times as well. I had to remind myself several times that I was reading someone's actual experiences because the cruelty is just unfathomable, and it really hurts me to know that so many people have been through similar experiences. I'm glad it's being exposed and hopefully with greater awareness of the issue there will be better treatment options for victims of these institutions.
This is *fucked up* in a way I cannot convey over text. The people who run this school should all be lined up and shot.
Edit: Apparently the guy who ran it is dead from cancer. That's too good a fate for him.
I dated a guy who went through one of these programs and was abused horribly there. Just weeks into dating he admitted to me he was an alcoholic who had struggled since he was a teenager, he drank a whole bottle of vodka a day (+ pills and occasional cocaine!) as a result of receiving, instead of help, further trauma from these despicable organizations.
For those wondering, we did get him help and I helped him detox (medical note, do not try to do this without medical help - it will KILL you!! I had to drag him to the hospital and he only barely averted life-threatening shock!), and though we are not in touch today, I hope he has maintained his sobriety. It was unbelievable y disturbing how his parents and society let him down as a boy.
* I wanted to update to add that I met him when we were both in our early 30s, meaning the trauma he faced had already impacted over a decade of his entire adult life when all he needed was proper support and healthcare. Not to say you can flick a wand and end someone’s addiction, but he was decidedly FAR worse off due to being sent to be abused rather than helped, all for some soulless fucks to make a buck.
My brother and I lost a friend to one of these places. Started to act up in school and the next day he was gone. We didn’t know where he went, parents said he was away at “wilderness school”. We were in boy scouts at the time so it was like “yeah sure makes sense”
6 months later we were at his funeral, you could still see the rope marks on his neck in the casket. Once the truth came out of where he really was and what kind of place it was, the parents were ostracized by basically everyone in town. That was 22 years ago too, so it find it absolutely insane that these places still exist.
I was 11 when this happened so I wasn’t made aware of much detail other than he committed suicide. I didn’t know the reason why he was sent until I was in college when my parents had ran into the kids parents before they packed up and left town. I don’t recall ever being told the name of the place he was sent, but I remember it either being in upstate NY or Maine.
The way the troubled teen industry hasn't been shut down after we've known about the abuse for DECADES is further proof that young people need their rights specifically defined.
They threatened me with Tranquility Bay *all* of the time and taunt me with the fact that Jamaica doesn’t have child labor laws. My guess is they never sent me because my parents were cash payers. They would have lost out on too much $$ if they sent me. How is your mom doing now?
I can't remember the AskReddit post- I think it was something along the lines of, "what's the most fucked up thing that has happened to you". One of the comments was about someone's experience there, and holy fucking shit
I work in IT for a company that runs all kinds of social service programs. Now I'm going to look more into it as I thought I was supporting a helpful cause.
I worked for an MSP and one of our clients was one of these TTI ranches. We knew they were being sued for abuse before we brought them on, but the company just saw $$$ and made them buy all our most expensive products for them to sign on. We spent hours on site (never saw a kid, they were all isolated while we were there) rebuilding their network and they bought a bunch of new equipment. Then we never got paid because they had to file for bankruptcy. The ranch shutting down and my company not getting paid was one of the best days ever. Fuck both those places.
An excerpt from a satire podcast called "Kakos Industries: Do Evil Better"
>A client of Kakos Industries came to us with an idea. They said they wanted to make a Cable News channel. We politely replied that such a thing already exists. “But wait,” they said. “ We want to make a cable news channel that is truly evil.” Our interest was piqued. They said “We want to make a news network that intentionally misleads its viewers.” We told them that such a thing already exists. They said, “no, no, not like that. We want a network that claims to be impartial, but instead hides its agendas inside of its headlines.” We told them that this already exists. They said, “no you’re really not getting it. We want to make something so evil that it spends all of its time digging into celebrity news and fake outrage, with pundits who aren’t remotely qualified, while ignoring important world events. It will keep the people completely uninformed.” We told them that such a thing exists already. “No!” they said, turning blue in the face, “we want to make something so evil that it will actively make its viewers angry to feed into their addiction to emotional stimulus. It will actually teach them that anger is the correct response!” We sighed heavily and informed them that such a thing does already exist. They began to sweat profusely. “You still don’t get it. It will masquerade as a source of information, but it will only provide people with a range of various emotions that will keep them hooked enough to sit through all of the commercials. And it will have commercials, showing for certain that there are places they won’t go because their paychecks depend on them not doing so!” We began to feel sorry for this client of ours, and we said, “okay, we’ll look into it.”
Mommy/Family vloggers. They're sinister... a podcast I listened to did a 7* episode deep dive and it was horrifying. There needs to be laws to protect these exploited children and in 10-20 years we're going to see a LOT of these kids telling their horror stories and suing their parents.
EDIT TO ADD: The podcast is called Some Place Under Neith. It's episodes 56 - 62.
>in 10-20 years we're going to see a LOT of these kids telling their horror stories and suing their parents.
The horrible thing is that for every cringy family vlog with a million subscribers there are a hundred failed attempts with parents that are probably doing even more damage to their children.
Exactly! This is what is truly terrifying to me. There's thousands of unknowns who have put their kids through hell to try to get attention, likes, etc. I actually have one particular "Mommy" in mind that I've seen do this and she continues to fail, but she just tries harder the next time...hurting her children more in the process. It turns my stomach.
We should come together and get laws passed!
I’m guessing there is also some loopholes they can exploit to get around the child actor laws.
I forget what it’s called but there is a law named after a child actor who got screwed by his parents in the 30s. It basically requires your parents to still provide for you and they can only have access to a certain percentage of your earnings. Since the titular Ryan isn’t technically an actor, I’m skeptical those laws would apply.
Coogan accounts. This has been a huge thing with underage TikTokers getting hired to perform on…accounts? Idk I’m not on TikTok. And they’re basically operating outside of Hollywood norms so these kids aren’t being protected. https://www.insider.com/piper-rockelle-11-kids-sue-youtubers-mom-alleging-abuse-exploitation-2022-1?amp
It's weird, like the channels that are just like hobby or fun videos my kiddos watch snd its chill and calm, but if it autoplays one of those ad-family videos I can almost bet in 3 minutes there's going to be a meltdown.
It's like these family of 8 kids, upper middle decor and they seem to communicate entirely on shrieks and buying toys.
I found a “mommy influencer” who was making monetized content off a newborn she was fostering! I was so disgusted and was happy to hear that reunification with the birth mother happened only to find out that the “influencer” was still making monetized content about the foster baby even after she no longer had the child!
In the podcast, I referenced, they talked about a woman who wanted to adopt a baby from Hong Kong (iirc) and they told her she couldn't post his face online for the first year during the adoption process... so she stopped pursuing the adoption. People like her are the very reason these countries have to make these policies for US adoptions. They know people do it just for clout.
They also talked about another woman who adopted a Chinese baby who ended up being "too difficult" so she "rehomed" him when he was 3. That was even the language she used. And she didn't confess until her entire fan base was demanding to know where the kid was because all of a sudden she just pretended like he never existed.
The name of the woman who adopted the baby from China was Myka Stauffer, a YouTuber. She placed her autistic son from China, Huxley, with a new family in 2020 - but only after making monetized content off of him for more than three years.
As an autistic adult, one the biggest and most alarming issues I see with the whole "autism community", which is made up largely of "autism moms" - not "autistic community", because that's made up of autistic people - is the widespread and rampant exploitation of autistic children for monetization or attention purposes.
My own mother tried to become one such "autism mommy vlogger" when I got diagnosed with autism in high school, around age 16. She didn't disclose to me that she had even made a blog about "having a child with autism" until I came home from horrible Prom night when I was 17, crying due to feeling ostracized, and the first thing she said was: "I'm so sorry, honey. Look, I posted about your awful Prom on my blog!"
The blog post she showed me proceeded to talk about how *she* was the victim, and how *she* felt "terrible", simply because she was "the mom of a child with autism", and "the experience of having a 'normal' child had been robbed from her by autism".
I'm sorry, WHAT
Fuuuck, man! You're doing ok though, right? Like, it sounds like you've found your way at least.
I have a "technical" question, too: How did she already have the article ready when you just came back and were literally still crying?
I'm doing fine emotionally, but [my relationship with my mother is about the same](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/10wtgtt/comment/j7qk18p/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). I'm 31 now, and I've tried many times over the years to educate her and change her mind about autism, and to accept that my autism is a part of who I am as a human being, but she just doesn't "get it" as a non-autistic.
>I have a "technical" question, too: How did she already have the article ready when you just came back and were literally still crying?
This happened back in 2010, so I called her when I was ready to be picked up. I was crying a lot. When I got home, I locked myself in my room for a while, and then when I came out, she showed me "the blog post she had written". Instead of comforting her own daughter, she wrote a blog post about it instead...
That’s the only reason why my BILs wife wants to have kids. So she can be a momfluencer. She’s already trying way too hard to be an influencer. Kids are not accessories!
>next couple decades we're going to see the damage
That's what I thought too, but there was once a post similar to this one where a girl/woman from one of these families posted about how awful it is/was for them.
She mentioned that it was even difficult getting therapy for it because it's such a bizarre and specific problem that's not even in the bleeding-edge stage of research.
I messaged her and tried helping her figure out what kind of therapist to look for the best I could by hearing her out about the problems she was having, but it was like ... All of them. Her life was a mess because of that stupidity. It's sad. She's got a long road ahead of her.
It got to where I was telling her to promise me she'd go to a hospital if the Bad Thoughts got to be too much.
Interesting to think about how TV shows try to cast older ages to play younger characters because of laws around using children. I wonder how they could apply similar restrictions to social media
I did a research about child development and people who record their child’s every move. It’s absolutely horrible. You’d be surprised at the amount of children that have a lower IQ, unhealthy relationships with their parents in the future, and it’s straight up teaching them bad behavior and it’s BAD parenting.
Making your child talk into a camera for likes and views just shows where their priorities are. Parents don’t have permission to record their 4 year old doing something stupid or embarrassing.
I just can’t emphasize enough how horrible this is. Parents today who grew up in the digital age need to really reevaluate their choices and think about what their actions do to that child. People these days tend to think about themselves more than others.
US tax prep. Unnecessary middle man with artificially maintained necessity due to ~~lobbying~~ bribery.
Edit: I understand that many people have a reason to use professional tax services. In fact, I'm one of them -- surprise!!!
Most people don't need this, though. There should be a better alternative for the average taxpayer, especially considering how confusing and fluid the government's system is.
As a tax preparer I partly agree. There is absolutely no reason for an individual who works a job and receives wage income needs to file a tax return in the computer age. Employers should be able to withhold the correct amount and everything is done. It would save the IRS paper and man hours and a lot of people a lot of frustration. It is done by plenty of other countries. People with rental income, self employment income, and similar would still need to file a return.
Not that I disagree - but wouldn’t you need oncologists to diagnose and cure still? Like you still need someone like a dermatologist to make sure you get the right treatments for skin issues and such.
Fast fashion.
It's terrible for [the environment](https://goodonyou.eco/fast-fashion-facts/) (fashion accounts for [20-35% of the microplastic that end up in the ocean](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion)) , terrible for the workers ([93% aren't paid a living wage](https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/labor/clean-clothes-campaign-fashion-checker-garment-worker-living-wage-transparency-218938/), child labour and bonded labour are not uncommon, and many of the [factories are unsafe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Rana_Plaza_factory_collapse)).
I could keep going, and the fucker of it is, and people *often don't even wear the clothes*. They buy them and then bin them. Or wear them once and they donate them -[around 90% of those clothes end up in a textile waste mill](https://www.rd.com/article/what-happens-used-clothing-donations/) \- it's recycled, sure, but a better solution would have it never having existed in the first place. [And if you send the clothing abroad your good intentions are crippling local markets, and the clothes aren't 'donated' by oxfam et al,](https://www.kleiderly.com/our-blog/these-african-countries-do-not-want-our-waste)they are sold to local textile traders who sell our old rubbish to a community who have no alternative, the textile mills all closed when our clothes showed up en masse.
I have an ambition: when/if I get off the extreme ill-health/child bearing merry-go-round (at the moment I wear a lot of old pyjamas, I'm not buying any clothes at all) I'm going find a tailor and have a to have a small wardrobe of clothes that I really like and fit me perfectly made. And then I will enjoy them, and I will wear them until I die.
I know a lot of people aren't in a position to do that - fast fashion is associated with profligate purchasing of cheap clothes (and that is very much a thing, shopping hauls are so hard to watch...) but fast fashion also exists because people who don't have a lot of money need clothes to go to work, and deserve to feel stylish and attractive too.
And I don't have an answer for that aspect of this issue - or how to support the garment workers, who are being paid fuck-all, but fuck-all is slightly better than nothing.
These are things were going to have to address as some point anyway, because the current model is not sustainable. Might as well find solutions now...
I got into fashion (mens) about 10 years ago and bought a wardrobe of higher quality, mostly thrifted stuff. Still have most of it! To take your post one step further, if you go to a thrift store in a nice area you can usually find really good stuff and you're also saving it from a landfill!
These days I only buy shoes and denim brand new (because I like to wear them in). I don't NEED to anymore, but it feels a little bit like saving the world. A tiny bit.
>if you go to a thrift store in a nice area you can usually find really good stuff and you're also saving it from a landfill!
YouTube destroyed thrift stores in my area. There was a trend where people were going to thrift stores to "find a bargain" and reselling those bargains on marketplaces like Ebay and what not. Thrift stores responded to this trend of people coming in and buying all the good stuff by putting prices up to make it far less viable for these resellers. Now it is almost as expensive to buy stuff from thrift stores as it is to just buy stuff new.
Here in Scandinavia a lot of brands are starting to push into this, for example, refusing to take part in Black Friday, creating reselling areas in stores for their products, pricing according to costs, manufacturing in Europe not Asia and creating very small drops. There’s also the repair cafe economy taking off, where they’ll encourage you to get your clothing fixed rather than throw it away. It’s possible, but it requires a mind shift to clothing should cost more, we should buy less, and sales aren’t actually all that great for brands.
Edit: I work in e-commerce with brands like Ganni, Samsøe Samsøe and Son of a Tailor.
I'll always ask them "what car do I drive?"
Then they'll always ask me what car I have. Which I reply, "no. You're calling me about my cars extended warranty. What car do you show I have?"
Then they reply with a car I had like, 3 cars ago.
Then I laugh and hang up.
"will be"?
I haven't gotten a spam call from an actual human being in quite some time. Hell, I get calls trying to get me to support some politician in an entirely different state and even those are automated voices.
Fun fact, a company I used to work for did (legitimate) automated calls and while plenty of our clients chose the automated voice systems, some chose to pay a little more and have one of our "voice artists" do the messages. The primary voice artist for the entire company worked her ass off. I sat right outside the sound booth and I swear she worked more than anyone I know. She also had a problematic teenage daughter and she once told me that whenever she and her daughter got into an argument that was just so, so dumb, she'd turn on her "automated calling voice" just to piss her daughter off. Can you imagine being in the middle of a big argument and your mom goes full-on AI voice?
Edit: Rereading this still has me laughing at the prospect of "mom you said if I finished my homework I could go to the party with Sarah! You're being so unfai--" "_Please hold. We will look into your situation and get back with you as soon as possible. We appreciate your input._"
Just to be clear, he doesn't diddle kids. That was the other guy he met in a titty bar. He will even sing a song about not diddleing kids if that helps.
sex trafficking industry and just the trafficking industry in general. unfortunately trafficking has been around for thousands of years and will most likely not be gone in the next ten years :(
**Sewage cleaning.** In many third world countries people have t o climb into sewer to clean them without any proper protection. I hope the technology becomes cheaper soon. More here: https://www.factchecker.in/india-to-eliminate-manual-cleaning-of-sewers-says-min-fact-tech-not-ready-caste-major-challenge/
The thing is - *people like them*.
I go to a very small church - like we might have 25 people every Sunday. I've seen numerous churches start up and flourish and get hundreds of people every service, and wondered how they can start from zero and zoom past us so fast. Every time, the things people say they like is that this new church is huge, bombastic, has rock music and yelling and lights and flashy everything. People say they want coffeehouse, but show up to the Taylor Swift concert.
The Fuckers that make college text books 2,000$ dollars!
Idk if this falls I to the right category, but everything needing wifi. I bought a scale the other day that needed wifi before it could read my weight. I have a PS5 with all the media apps I need, give me the option for a dumb TV. My washer, dryer, fridge and oven also shouldn't need wifi to be able to do basic operations. Samsung as a company is driving me up the fucking wall lately.
Walmart sells dumb 4k tvs. Mine was like $140 for 60 or so inches
Everything as a subscription. As a tech worker I understand why this is so popular but god do I hate it Edit: Some subscriptions can genuinely offer amazing value to consumers. My problem is the mass adoption of subscription on products and services that have no business being a subscription. Those that exist solely so companies can make more money off of you. Not everything should be a subscription
Right? I fucking despise it, even something silly as a bad coloring app wants a $8.99 monthly subscription, that's Disney+ with ads MFs!!!
“Don’t forget to create a account with us so we can sell- I mean so you can save your work haha” - Literally everything
The worst is a subscription to activate heated seating in your own car.
Subscription to start your car via your phone
It will only get worse. Everything will be on a subscription basis.
I literally read an article last month from a very well know consulting firm titled “The future of XaaS (everything as a service)”. Seriously…it has gone on long enough. It has to stop. I worked at a place that sold hardware…buy it once, use it forever. One of the “genius” board members thought it was a good idea to cut the cost of the device in half (still with a 400% markup) and sell a yearly subscription. The sales dropped from 85 million in one year to 30 the next. The genius/dbag board member moved on to another company and I’m sure he got a raise. Meanwhile, 200 people lost their jobs. It’s such a scam.
Right? I despise it. Some of the most popular apps now are subscription only and I refuse to use them. Others I've snatched up for lifetime 1 time payments before they went subscription. I'll never buy an app every damn year for 10x the total cost, it's insane. Only subs I've ever use will be utilities - including media which refreshes. Bug fixes are not a reason to pay again.
Pops always told me to get a hard copy of everything, so I opted for the Adobe CS5 box and not the download. I may have a 12-year outdated Photoshop, but it still works *and it's fucking mine* forever 😂 Screw Adobe's subscription model.
Scam call centers
They'll be replaced by AI scam call centers.
Oh my god. I never thought of this. But you’re right. Imagine how many calls they could make from a server farm when you don’t have to have actual people slowing things down. 🤮
And to make matters worse, it learns what works and what doesn't. So over time, it will only get better and more deceitful.
Replicating yours, your friends, and yours families voices and learning the speech patterns to call other family members as you... man... the future is gonna be crazy.
Third party student loan "consultants". I used to work as a federal student loan collector for a Department of Education contractor. I have horror stories about borrowers who were purposefully deceived by these people, the worst of whom was someone who thought a consolidation she paid for completely eliminated her obligation. What these legally grey assholes do is trick people into paying to have *free paperwork* done on their behalf. Sure they have the tiny fine print disclosures, but they're extremely predatory and make me sick. Imo getting rid of them could be legislation worthy, given that they interfere with federally owned debts.
Child modeling and anything to do with children being publicized on social media.
MLMs/Pyramid schemes
The amount of FB posts I see that are like “join my book exchange! Send 6 books, get 36 back!” (Variations include wine bottles, kids toys, etc)… tells me pyramid schemes are not going anywhere, because people are not smart enough to realize these are LITERALLY the definition of a pyramid scheme.
That's why I have this fantastic new idea for a business model: The Inverted Funnel Plan! Instead of your money funneling down into some fat cat's new yacht fund, you flip it around and start funneling money to you! And the best part is, the more people you hire, the wider your funnel!
Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Look them up. They’re basically bloodsucking middlemen that sit between hospitals and health insurers. Supposedly created to control prescription drug costs and manage formularies, but they actually drive prices up. One of the many terrible causes of high medical costs in the states.
It’s not the PBMs alone that drive up the price, it’s the combination of every single company in the supply chain. PBMs are often easily blamed by the other companies to hide their own drug price inflation because it’s easy to blame a negotiator and call them a middleman. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you PBMs are terrible too, but wouldn’t it just be better if medical insurance went away, or even better, eliminating the industry of corporate lobbying that prevents the government from going after the medical industry?
As someone who works on these topics, here are my opinions: 1. The complexity itself is a big part of the problem. 2. Small reforms are hard, usually because of money. Even big reforms like Obamacare were a mess, mainly because of money. 3. If you want good reforms, look for an entire foreign system to copy. Find one adapted to the way the US currently works. 4. It will work better if most decision makers in medicine are very afraid that keeping the current system is going to cost them money. For example, imagine a patient strike, where everything elective is delayed, or some alternate nongovernmental way of delivering services grows fast. Or, there are big successful lawsuits. One of the wildcards is something medicine does not see coming. The biggest effects would not be for a single condition, but broad groups.
As someone who has been told “you have very good health insurance”… the complexity is actually huge. I went to the mountains in June, came down with a cough I couldn’t cough anything up. Local Dr. said it’s HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) which according to him can happen randomly to anyone going high altitude (he said this in response to me saying I’ve been there many times). So he warns me if I don’t get back down to altitude soon, it’ll become pneumonia. I got back to my town about 4 hours away and it still became pneumonia. I check in to the ER barely able to breathe. I was exhausted just walking to the front door. After a 2.5 day stay my bill was like $30,000. I had an out of pocket cost of $5.8K and insurance got the rest. When I took out a small personal loan to cover these costs, I had to pay like 20 different providers for my treatment! It was insane! The hospital isn’t just a one size fits all bill. Everyone within the hospital is billed separately and just going through my statements and finding who needed to get what payment was a small headache but I did it. I really want to see the industry reformed, but if that’s how things work right now…. I have no idea where to begin with rolling out changes.
>I had to pay like 20 different providers for my treatment! It was insane! The hospital isn’t just a one size fits all bill And the biggest bullshit is when the hospital is supposed to be "in your network" but turns out one doctor working with them that did one thing during your stay was out of your network and now you're stuck with a big bill for that one person that your insurance will make you pay in full. What are you expected to do? Question each doctor that walks in your room if theyre in your network before they touch you? Private insurance is a fucking scam and healthcare should be made freely available to all
Telemarketers.
I think it's funny that we already have telemarketing robots calling call-screening robots. Personally I just use Tasker to auto-drop any call from a number that isn't in my contacts.
The problem I have is that all of the telemarketing calls I get, either from bots or from real people, are calling me *using* phone numbers spoofed from my contacts list. I can't refuse to answer a call from my daughter, but I'm *really* pissed when it's not my daughter calling, but some scammer using my daughter's phone number.
Everyone always wants a better phone, but people never complain enough about this. I can't believe the phone part of phones is by far the worst part of the experience. The fact there is a way to spoof numbers so easily in 2023 is a monumental failure of the telephone system.
Having formerly worked for both Verizon and AT&T, I can assure you that this isn't a *failure* of those companies. It's a boost to their profit. They're paid by telemarketers to help telemarketers spoof numbers. It's really easy to do this in 2023 when the entire telecommunications industry is responsible for the spoofing in the first place.
I'd still call that a failure of the telephone system.
Real telemarketing died shortly after the federal Do Not Call list. There is a reason you aren't getting phone calls from Macy's, or the local furniture store, or insurance companies anymore. What you are getting are scam calls. Specifically scam warfare from places like India that extracted 5.8 billion from the pockets of Americans last year. And not just any Americans, usually the most infirm, elderly, disabled, kinda dumb or other wise compromised Americans.
When I first enrolled in the Do Not Call list I thought this would help. Got a spam call a while later and told the lady that I was on the Do Not Call list and she straight up said "I don't care" and went on with her pitch.
At this point if you have the time, you take up all their time if they are live and not a bot. Make them waste their time on you instead of someone that might be taken in by their ruse. More than a few youtubers have made it their job to fuck with these guys.
Yep, last time "Microsoft" called me it was 30 minutes of them getting angrier trying to explain the difference between my computer and monitor to me...my wife had to end the call because she got tired of my stupidity or it'd have been going on for a lot longer. Look bitch, I work in IT. I know exactly how to push your buttons all day, I'll just repeat what my customers tell me. It's cathartic to dump that on a scammer.
Awhile back, I got a call at work from "Sven from Microsoft" who had a thick Indian accent. I told him all of our computers were Macs and hung up. (They're actually Windows PCs.) 5 minutes later, the exact same guy calls back saying he's Jann from Apple and needs to help me get rid of a computer virus. I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about, my computer doesn't have any apples, we have the one with the penguin and I don't know how to put a virus on it" and hung up again. He didn't call back again that day, but I came in the next day and my tech-phobic boss was hanging up the phone after talking to "Linnus from the Penguin Computer Company." Thank goodness all she told him was that she just bought a new computer from QVC and she didn't want another one. I love my boss, she treats me like a member of the family and she's really good at what she actually does (we don't work in technology), but dang if she ain't the exact target audience for scammers like this.
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Give them fake info. What are they gonna do about it?
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The concert ticket mafia. (TicketMaster / StubHub / LiveNation). Fuck them. ETA: I know those entities aren't really an entire industry. They basically have the market monopolized, though.
No shit. A few years ago I wanted to get Garth Brooks tickets. The venue had this “system” set up to keep scalpers aka Ticketmasters from grabbing a bunch of tickets. I logged into the website at THE exact time the website said and had to keep hitting refresh for a fucking hour and a half. By the time I could get in there was one ticket left. ONE. Then guess who started advertising tickets. Yup. FUCKING TICKETMASTERS. FUCK EM
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That’s my point though. The venue’s site said they weren’t selling to middlemen, only the public. All a big fuckin scam.
Ticketmaster is the worst, and secondhand sites like StubHub aren't far behind. My wife is pregnant so we couldn't do standing room only. I just wanted to sell my tickets for what I paid - $350 (which of course included exorbitant ticketmaster fees). Except StubHub takes another $35 cut from me, so I'd only get $315 if they sold. And the buyer has to pay another $100 in fees. So they end up paying $450 and StubHub walks away with $135 in fees just for being the middle man for 2 tickets! That's a 30% cut! Meanwhile Facebook and Craigslist are riddled with scams, so sites like StubHub are really the only safe choice for many buyers and sellers...
All my homies hate Ticketmaster
Puppy/kitten farms
This and even pet stores that actually sell animals from these mills. My home state of Maryland is the second behind California in banning pet stores from selling animals from puppy/kitten mills.
Munchkins and pugs and all other genetic abominations because they’re “cute”
The Troubled Teen Industry. Look up Nexpos video on Elan school and you’ll see what I mean. Abusing minors for money shouldn’t be an industry. Edit: didn’t realize this would get so much traction, so if you’re interested in helping advocate against TTI, head over to r/troubledteens and join our little crew!
As a former student (prisoner?) I could not second this enough. The facility I was sent to got shut down a number of years ago but there are still many other *thriving* programs. Some of the girls who also went there are now working on a documentary to shed some light on how counterproductive and down right criminal these places are.
Friend of mine and survivor did their dissertation on the industry. They’re the only one of their “troubled teen” peers who isn’t dead or in prison.
One of the facilities I went to recently was shut down because of a class-action lawsuit. I’m very proud tbh. Fuck those creepy groomers who drove us to the middle of nowhere and told us we were worthless and nobody would value us and then drove us back and pretended like nothing happened to the other staff/ “therapists”… whew I’m so glad I get to speak whenever I want now and eat food or drink water whenever I want now. That was definitely beyond insane.
Sr. John's military academy? I got sent (kidnapped by two dudes my parents hired) there and it just got shut down after class action lawsuit
Another place. I think they had four places. And they’re all closed now. My “therapist” (who got his PhD writing about his inhumane treatment of us from the University of Utah) was named in the suit and was one of the owners. His name is like a beverage or seasoning. Looked a lot like Rick Scott too. For over two years that man held my life in his hands.
Are you saying it was Dr. Pepper?
I watched the Elan documentary and read that one guys comic about it and my god. The utter *rage* I felt through the whole thing, combined with complete hopelessness was the worst. I cannot even fathom what it was actually like to go through something like that and you have me deepest sympathies that you ever had to endure something so inhumane. I truly hope you're doing well now.
I work for a psychiatric hospital in HIM (that doesnt pull any TTI nonsense, should be the standard but we dont even use any form of mechanical restraints). Whenever we get contacted by a TTI facility, it's always a whole aggravating ordeal. Once we got a call from one nearly 1,000 miles away because *they lost a kid*. Apparently this particular wilderness facility does "their own investigations internally", even if a kid goes missing. The thing is, when they call, it's never obvious they're calling from a facility because they're so bad at doing anything. They cant send proper ROIs, and so it drags on because we have to figure out what the hell they sent us and why. Even the notorious Provo Canyon, which how it's still open is beyond me. Whenever any of my coworkers picks up the phone from them, they have to put them on hold to gather their thoughts of "what the hell". And everytime after looking at the caller ID & asking who is on the phone, I say "yes that's a facility, they dont have staff, they have a goon squad". I have gone on so many tangents of how horrible these places are, and somehow before I explained it to them, my coworkers had no clue despite the red flags that are raised everytime we're contacted by them.
Thanks for not abusing children!
Sadly it should be the standard rather than an achievement. I grew up in a different state, I was so close to being sent to a residential (interestingly enough, according to medical records I got a hold of it was due to my autism diagnosis). I spent a lot of my time in psychiatric wards, most of my teenage years, they were good at convincing me and my mom I'd never "really" get out or that I was a lost cause. I was lucky to not experience residential, but the wards inflicted a lot of physical & emotional scars nonetheless. The differences between the hospitals I was placed in & the one I work in are like night and day. What I experienced would *not* fly where I work, we'd be in deep shit. My department is not big, only 3 people, so when something is even *suspected* to be amiss we all have to put in serious OT to help with investigation (not as in do the entire investigations, completely internal investigations are obviously not good, so that's a whole lot of other teams like accreditating agencies & the state, but just make sure everything is prepared on our side). I really wish ethical practice was more common.
Props to Paris Hilton for fighting this industry so hard.
Her story is really messed up. Surprise, involuntary non medically necessary vaginal exams?
Their dentist when I went to one of those schools asked me how many sexual partners I had at 12 years old then put me under. I don’t even want to know what happened.
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3kad/paris-hilton-sexual-abuse-provo-canyon-school I can't conceive of any legitimate program that would involve that kind of behavior.
That's called rape, or at least sexual abuse/assault
> Elan school For those interested: https://elan.school/
What. The Fuck. Did I. Just read?! How can that be real, leat alone legal? Edit: just read that elan in particular got shot down, but there seem many Programms like that? Effing hell...
yeah there is one about 1.5 from where I live; its a few hours outside of nyc. My husband grew up in the very small town near there, once in a while they would find kids that escaped from there wandering the roads or hiding around town. Townspeople would give them food and drive them an hour or so in one direction or the other and put them on busses where ever they wanted to go. The implicit understanding was wherever they wanted to be would be better then the school they had been sent to.
You know your industry is fucked up when people have to start an underground railroad because of it.
The crazy thing was that Elan (and most TTI facilities) tell the kids that everyone in the neighboring towns hates them/is scared of them, and they better not run to those people because they'll just turn them in.
it wasn't legal, but it was mandated by bribes, corruption and a failing system of checks and balances phoning in their checks.
Tom Hanks sent his kid to one when he refused to try to get clean or something. Part of the program is that parents transfer legal guardianship to these facilities. A real blow to these facilities would be unannounced welfare checks. Currently in most states any welfare checks must be announced more than a week in advance.
It's really fucked up, that's for sure!
I lost an entire day reading the comic
Days, plural. I think Joe has 80+ chapters now.
I just got the notification for chapter 90 a few minutes ago.
He recently added another chapter too
Please I stayed up last year till 3am reading it 💀 I fee you
I read this over the course of a couple days a few months ago and I think it's the saddest thing I've ever read. Made me very angry at times as well. I had to remind myself several times that I was reading someone's actual experiences because the cruelty is just unfathomable, and it really hurts me to know that so many people have been through similar experiences. I'm glad it's being exposed and hopefully with greater awareness of the issue there will be better treatment options for victims of these institutions.
This is *fucked up* in a way I cannot convey over text. The people who run this school should all be lined up and shot. Edit: Apparently the guy who ran it is dead from cancer. That's too good a fate for him.
I dated a guy who went through one of these programs and was abused horribly there. Just weeks into dating he admitted to me he was an alcoholic who had struggled since he was a teenager, he drank a whole bottle of vodka a day (+ pills and occasional cocaine!) as a result of receiving, instead of help, further trauma from these despicable organizations. For those wondering, we did get him help and I helped him detox (medical note, do not try to do this without medical help - it will KILL you!! I had to drag him to the hospital and he only barely averted life-threatening shock!), and though we are not in touch today, I hope he has maintained his sobriety. It was unbelievable y disturbing how his parents and society let him down as a boy. * I wanted to update to add that I met him when we were both in our early 30s, meaning the trauma he faced had already impacted over a decade of his entire adult life when all he needed was proper support and healthcare. Not to say you can flick a wand and end someone’s addiction, but he was decidedly FAR worse off due to being sent to be abused rather than helped, all for some soulless fucks to make a buck.
You are a good person. I hope he's doing better, too.
My brother and I lost a friend to one of these places. Started to act up in school and the next day he was gone. We didn’t know where he went, parents said he was away at “wilderness school”. We were in boy scouts at the time so it was like “yeah sure makes sense” 6 months later we were at his funeral, you could still see the rope marks on his neck in the casket. Once the truth came out of where he really was and what kind of place it was, the parents were ostracized by basically everyone in town. That was 22 years ago too, so it find it absolutely insane that these places still exist.
I have lost 2 friends as a direct consequence of these places. It’s truly horrifying when someone opens up about what happened to them there.
I was 11 when this happened so I wasn’t made aware of much detail other than he committed suicide. I didn’t know the reason why he was sent until I was in college when my parents had ran into the kids parents before they packed up and left town. I don’t recall ever being told the name of the place he was sent, but I remember it either being in upstate NY or Maine.
The way the troubled teen industry hasn't been shut down after we've known about the abuse for DECADES is further proof that young people need their rights specifically defined.
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I really sorry you were a victim to TTI! I hope you’re doing much better now!
My mother was a prisoner of Tranquility Bay. Spent a few years in Jamaica. Probably the lowest point in her life, from what I've gathered.
They threatened me with Tranquility Bay *all* of the time and taunt me with the fact that Jamaica doesn’t have child labor laws. My guess is they never sent me because my parents were cash payers. They would have lost out on too much $$ if they sent me. How is your mom doing now?
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This is a good one.
I can't remember the AskReddit post- I think it was something along the lines of, "what's the most fucked up thing that has happened to you". One of the comments was about someone's experience there, and holy fucking shit
In the middle of the Last Podcast on the Left series on this and yeah, it's not great.
Hail yourself 🤘
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I work in IT for a company that runs all kinds of social service programs. Now I'm going to look more into it as I thought I was supporting a helpful cause.
I worked for an MSP and one of our clients was one of these TTI ranches. We knew they were being sued for abuse before we brought them on, but the company just saw $$$ and made them buy all our most expensive products for them to sign on. We spent hours on site (never saw a kid, they were all isolated while we were there) rebuilding their network and they bought a bunch of new equipment. Then we never got paid because they had to file for bankruptcy. The ranch shutting down and my company not getting paid was one of the best days ever. Fuck both those places.
Yes!!! This needs to be upvoted more. Check out https://elan.school/ if you want your mind blown.
Trueanon has a great series on it
24 hour propaganda media outlets masquerading as “news”.
TLC masquerading as "The Learning Channel"
An excerpt from a satire podcast called "Kakos Industries: Do Evil Better" >A client of Kakos Industries came to us with an idea. They said they wanted to make a Cable News channel. We politely replied that such a thing already exists. “But wait,” they said. “ We want to make a cable news channel that is truly evil.” Our interest was piqued. They said “We want to make a news network that intentionally misleads its viewers.” We told them that such a thing already exists. They said, “no, no, not like that. We want a network that claims to be impartial, but instead hides its agendas inside of its headlines.” We told them that this already exists. They said, “no you’re really not getting it. We want to make something so evil that it spends all of its time digging into celebrity news and fake outrage, with pundits who aren’t remotely qualified, while ignoring important world events. It will keep the people completely uninformed.” We told them that such a thing exists already. “No!” they said, turning blue in the face, “we want to make something so evil that it will actively make its viewers angry to feed into their addiction to emotional stimulus. It will actually teach them that anger is the correct response!” We sighed heavily and informed them that such a thing does already exist. They began to sweat profusely. “You still don’t get it. It will masquerade as a source of information, but it will only provide people with a range of various emotions that will keep them hooked enough to sit through all of the commercials. And it will have commercials, showing for certain that there are places they won’t go because their paychecks depend on them not doing so!” We began to feel sorry for this client of ours, and we said, “okay, we’ll look into it.”
Payday loans
Just an endless cycle of debt
Mommy/Family vloggers. They're sinister... a podcast I listened to did a 7* episode deep dive and it was horrifying. There needs to be laws to protect these exploited children and in 10-20 years we're going to see a LOT of these kids telling their horror stories and suing their parents. EDIT TO ADD: The podcast is called Some Place Under Neith. It's episodes 56 - 62.
>in 10-20 years we're going to see a LOT of these kids telling their horror stories and suing their parents. The horrible thing is that for every cringy family vlog with a million subscribers there are a hundred failed attempts with parents that are probably doing even more damage to their children.
Exactly! This is what is truly terrifying to me. There's thousands of unknowns who have put their kids through hell to try to get attention, likes, etc. I actually have one particular "Mommy" in mind that I've seen do this and she continues to fail, but she just tries harder the next time...hurting her children more in the process. It turns my stomach. We should come together and get laws passed!
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That poor Ryan's world kid. Well, the parents aren't poor. Poor fuckin kid.
They make $25 million A YEAR
I’m guessing there is also some loopholes they can exploit to get around the child actor laws. I forget what it’s called but there is a law named after a child actor who got screwed by his parents in the 30s. It basically requires your parents to still provide for you and they can only have access to a certain percentage of your earnings. Since the titular Ryan isn’t technically an actor, I’m skeptical those laws would apply.
Jackie Coogan. He was the original uncle fester. As a kid he was in movies with Charlie Chaplin and his parents stole all the money from him.
This reminds me of Gary Coleman's portrayal in the play *Avenue Q* as well, though the same could also be said of Britney Spears' exploitative father.
Coogan accounts. This has been a huge thing with underage TikTokers getting hired to perform on…accounts? Idk I’m not on TikTok. And they’re basically operating outside of Hollywood norms so these kids aren’t being protected. https://www.insider.com/piper-rockelle-11-kids-sue-youtubers-mom-alleging-abuse-exploitation-2022-1?amp
That's disgusting. I went into Walmart yesterday and that shit took up almost a whol aisle.
Pleased to say I have no idea what Ryan’s World is. Sounds awful.
Ryan's World is what happens when you sell out your child for money so to speak.
It's basically the Olsen twins but if they were one little boy and did YouTube videos instead.
Yeah his face and image on so much shit before he’s even a tween
I try as hard as I can to stop my kids watching all of this stuff on YT. It's just brain rot.
It's weird, like the channels that are just like hobby or fun videos my kiddos watch snd its chill and calm, but if it autoplays one of those ad-family videos I can almost bet in 3 minutes there's going to be a meltdown. It's like these family of 8 kids, upper middle decor and they seem to communicate entirely on shrieks and buying toys.
I found a “mommy influencer” who was making monetized content off a newborn she was fostering! I was so disgusted and was happy to hear that reunification with the birth mother happened only to find out that the “influencer” was still making monetized content about the foster baby even after she no longer had the child!
In the podcast, I referenced, they talked about a woman who wanted to adopt a baby from Hong Kong (iirc) and they told her she couldn't post his face online for the first year during the adoption process... so she stopped pursuing the adoption. People like her are the very reason these countries have to make these policies for US adoptions. They know people do it just for clout. They also talked about another woman who adopted a Chinese baby who ended up being "too difficult" so she "rehomed" him when he was 3. That was even the language she used. And she didn't confess until her entire fan base was demanding to know where the kid was because all of a sudden she just pretended like he never existed.
The name of the woman who adopted the baby from China was Myka Stauffer, a YouTuber. She placed her autistic son from China, Huxley, with a new family in 2020 - but only after making monetized content off of him for more than three years. As an autistic adult, one the biggest and most alarming issues I see with the whole "autism community", which is made up largely of "autism moms" - not "autistic community", because that's made up of autistic people - is the widespread and rampant exploitation of autistic children for monetization or attention purposes. My own mother tried to become one such "autism mommy vlogger" when I got diagnosed with autism in high school, around age 16. She didn't disclose to me that she had even made a blog about "having a child with autism" until I came home from horrible Prom night when I was 17, crying due to feeling ostracized, and the first thing she said was: "I'm so sorry, honey. Look, I posted about your awful Prom on my blog!" The blog post she showed me proceeded to talk about how *she* was the victim, and how *she* felt "terrible", simply because she was "the mom of a child with autism", and "the experience of having a 'normal' child had been robbed from her by autism".
From a fellow autistic person: FUCK your mom. What the FUCK. That is BULLSHIT and I hope you're no longer dealing with any of that nonsense.
From a non autistic person: Fuck that person’s mom. Exploiting your child.. wtf.
I'm sorry, WHAT Fuuuck, man! You're doing ok though, right? Like, it sounds like you've found your way at least. I have a "technical" question, too: How did she already have the article ready when you just came back and were literally still crying?
I'm doing fine emotionally, but [my relationship with my mother is about the same](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/10wtgtt/comment/j7qk18p/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). I'm 31 now, and I've tried many times over the years to educate her and change her mind about autism, and to accept that my autism is a part of who I am as a human being, but she just doesn't "get it" as a non-autistic. >I have a "technical" question, too: How did she already have the article ready when you just came back and were literally still crying? This happened back in 2010, so I called her when I was ready to be picked up. I was crying a lot. When I got home, I locked myself in my room for a while, and then when I came out, she showed me "the blog post she had written". Instead of comforting her own daughter, she wrote a blog post about it instead...
Ah yes, Brittany Dawn. Utterly disgusting.
Brittany Dawn? If so, that's the least of her crimes.
That’s the only reason why my BILs wife wants to have kids. So she can be a momfluencer. She’s already trying way too hard to be an influencer. Kids are not accessories!
I agree. In the next couple decades we're going to see the damage that was done by this bs. Hopefully there will be laws enacted.
>next couple decades we're going to see the damage That's what I thought too, but there was once a post similar to this one where a girl/woman from one of these families posted about how awful it is/was for them. She mentioned that it was even difficult getting therapy for it because it's such a bizarre and specific problem that's not even in the bleeding-edge stage of research. I messaged her and tried helping her figure out what kind of therapist to look for the best I could by hearing her out about the problems she was having, but it was like ... All of them. Her life was a mess because of that stupidity. It's sad. She's got a long road ahead of her. It got to where I was telling her to promise me she'd go to a hospital if the Bad Thoughts got to be too much.
Interesting to think about how TV shows try to cast older ages to play younger characters because of laws around using children. I wonder how they could apply similar restrictions to social media
I did a research about child development and people who record their child’s every move. It’s absolutely horrible. You’d be surprised at the amount of children that have a lower IQ, unhealthy relationships with their parents in the future, and it’s straight up teaching them bad behavior and it’s BAD parenting. Making your child talk into a camera for likes and views just shows where their priorities are. Parents don’t have permission to record their 4 year old doing something stupid or embarrassing. I just can’t emphasize enough how horrible this is. Parents today who grew up in the digital age need to really reevaluate their choices and think about what their actions do to that child. People these days tend to think about themselves more than others.
I listened to that series. It was crazy describing the viewer data. Surprise all followers on your 6 year old's account are 45+ year old men.
What is the podcast name? I’m intrigued to listen to this.
The podcast is called Some Place Under Neith. It's episodes 56 - 62.
For profit prisons
Private prisons are an abomination
US tax prep. Unnecessary middle man with artificially maintained necessity due to ~~lobbying~~ bribery. Edit: I understand that many people have a reason to use professional tax services. In fact, I'm one of them -- surprise!!! Most people don't need this, though. There should be a better alternative for the average taxpayer, especially considering how confusing and fluid the government's system is.
As a tax preparer I partly agree. There is absolutely no reason for an individual who works a job and receives wage income needs to file a tax return in the computer age. Employers should be able to withhold the correct amount and everything is done. It would save the IRS paper and man hours and a lot of people a lot of frustration. It is done by plenty of other countries. People with rental income, self employment income, and similar would still need to file a return.
Oncology
I think even oncologists would agree and we would happily retrain them in any other field of their choosing.
I’d support legislation that would give them a few months paid vacation as a ‘victory lap’ and then paid retraining.
Hell, let them have the rest of their lives off if they want. I feel like they earned it.
Offcologist
Not that I disagree - but wouldn’t you need oncologists to diagnose and cure still? Like you still need someone like a dermatologist to make sure you get the right treatments for skin issues and such.
I think they're implying that cancer would be gone completely and we wouldn't need Oncologists.
Yeah. Fuck cancer.
Oohh, Oncology is cancer. Was wondering why everyone hated birds.
Lmaoo that's ornithology
Yeah, fuck birds! Who needs 'em and the nerds who study them?
Yep. Would love to see that no longer needed
Call Scammers that steal from the elderly.
Fast fashion. It's terrible for [the environment](https://goodonyou.eco/fast-fashion-facts/) (fashion accounts for [20-35% of the microplastic that end up in the ocean](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-fashion)) , terrible for the workers ([93% aren't paid a living wage](https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/labor/clean-clothes-campaign-fashion-checker-garment-worker-living-wage-transparency-218938/), child labour and bonded labour are not uncommon, and many of the [factories are unsafe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Rana_Plaza_factory_collapse)). I could keep going, and the fucker of it is, and people *often don't even wear the clothes*. They buy them and then bin them. Or wear them once and they donate them -[around 90% of those clothes end up in a textile waste mill](https://www.rd.com/article/what-happens-used-clothing-donations/) \- it's recycled, sure, but a better solution would have it never having existed in the first place. [And if you send the clothing abroad your good intentions are crippling local markets, and the clothes aren't 'donated' by oxfam et al,](https://www.kleiderly.com/our-blog/these-african-countries-do-not-want-our-waste)they are sold to local textile traders who sell our old rubbish to a community who have no alternative, the textile mills all closed when our clothes showed up en masse. I have an ambition: when/if I get off the extreme ill-health/child bearing merry-go-round (at the moment I wear a lot of old pyjamas, I'm not buying any clothes at all) I'm going find a tailor and have a to have a small wardrobe of clothes that I really like and fit me perfectly made. And then I will enjoy them, and I will wear them until I die. I know a lot of people aren't in a position to do that - fast fashion is associated with profligate purchasing of cheap clothes (and that is very much a thing, shopping hauls are so hard to watch...) but fast fashion also exists because people who don't have a lot of money need clothes to go to work, and deserve to feel stylish and attractive too. And I don't have an answer for that aspect of this issue - or how to support the garment workers, who are being paid fuck-all, but fuck-all is slightly better than nothing. These are things were going to have to address as some point anyway, because the current model is not sustainable. Might as well find solutions now...
I got into fashion (mens) about 10 years ago and bought a wardrobe of higher quality, mostly thrifted stuff. Still have most of it! To take your post one step further, if you go to a thrift store in a nice area you can usually find really good stuff and you're also saving it from a landfill! These days I only buy shoes and denim brand new (because I like to wear them in). I don't NEED to anymore, but it feels a little bit like saving the world. A tiny bit.
>if you go to a thrift store in a nice area you can usually find really good stuff and you're also saving it from a landfill! YouTube destroyed thrift stores in my area. There was a trend where people were going to thrift stores to "find a bargain" and reselling those bargains on marketplaces like Ebay and what not. Thrift stores responded to this trend of people coming in and buying all the good stuff by putting prices up to make it far less viable for these resellers. Now it is almost as expensive to buy stuff from thrift stores as it is to just buy stuff new.
Here in Scandinavia a lot of brands are starting to push into this, for example, refusing to take part in Black Friday, creating reselling areas in stores for their products, pricing according to costs, manufacturing in Europe not Asia and creating very small drops. There’s also the repair cafe economy taking off, where they’ll encourage you to get your clothing fixed rather than throw it away. It’s possible, but it requires a mind shift to clothing should cost more, we should buy less, and sales aren’t actually all that great for brands. Edit: I work in e-commerce with brands like Ganni, Samsøe Samsøe and Son of a Tailor.
Anything involving cold calling, or massive phone call farms pimping random Shit Edit: i did not expect 17k upvotes. Haha ty
I've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.
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Opened once with "I aten't ALLOWED to drive on account'a all the HOMICIDES!" They hung up.
I tell them my VIN is 000000001 because it's the first Model T.
Sounds like you really need that extended warranty then
I'll always ask them "what car do I drive?" Then they'll always ask me what car I have. Which I reply, "no. You're calling me about my cars extended warranty. What car do you show I have?" Then they reply with a car I had like, 3 cars ago. Then I laugh and hang up.
I know people that get these calls and they don’t own a car.
I get them all the time. I don’t even have my license and never will due to a visual impairment. I just fuck with them now.
This what I say to them. “According to our records” “what’s my name?” “Excuse me?” “You have the records, so what’s my name?” “…” End.
I've missed really important calls because of all the scam calls..
brace yourself call farms will be replaced by AI phone bots that call more frequently
"will be"? I haven't gotten a spam call from an actual human being in quite some time. Hell, I get calls trying to get me to support some politician in an entirely different state and even those are automated voices. Fun fact, a company I used to work for did (legitimate) automated calls and while plenty of our clients chose the automated voice systems, some chose to pay a little more and have one of our "voice artists" do the messages. The primary voice artist for the entire company worked her ass off. I sat right outside the sound booth and I swear she worked more than anyone I know. She also had a problematic teenage daughter and she once told me that whenever she and her daughter got into an argument that was just so, so dumb, she'd turn on her "automated calling voice" just to piss her daughter off. Can you imagine being in the middle of a big argument and your mom goes full-on AI voice? Edit: Rereading this still has me laughing at the prospect of "mom you said if I finished my homework I could go to the party with Sarah! You're being so unfai--" "_Please hold. We will look into your situation and get back with you as soon as possible. We appreciate your input._"
Fast fashion
For profit health insurance.
Child beauty pageants- are they still going? That.
Not even Frank's little beauties?
"Do not diddle kids... "
🎶Wouldn’t do it with anybody younger than my daughter, no little kids gotta be big 🎶
Just to be clear, he doesn't diddle kids. That was the other guy he met in a titty bar. He will even sing a song about not diddleing kids if that helps.
Human trafficking.
*looks back at history* Should I tell them?
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We aren't anywhere near a final stage
Everything to do with planned obsolescence. Massive industry, disproportionately responsible for obscene levels of environmental damage.
Child porn
No matter the place it feels weird to upvote a comment that says "child porn"
sex trafficking industry and just the trafficking industry in general. unfortunately trafficking has been around for thousands of years and will most likely not be gone in the next ten years :(
**Sewage cleaning.** In many third world countries people have t o climb into sewer to clean them without any proper protection. I hope the technology becomes cheaper soon. More here: https://www.factchecker.in/india-to-eliminate-manual-cleaning-of-sewers-says-min-fact-tech-not-ready-caste-major-challenge/
Social media influencing
I think it’s going to get much worse before it gets any better.
For profit healthcare. For profit tax filing companies. For profit prisons.
Money in politics
lobbying
Mega churches
The thing is - *people like them*. I go to a very small church - like we might have 25 people every Sunday. I've seen numerous churches start up and flourish and get hundreds of people every service, and wondered how they can start from zero and zoom past us so fast. Every time, the things people say they like is that this new church is huge, bombastic, has rock music and yelling and lights and flashy everything. People say they want coffeehouse, but show up to the Taylor Swift concert.
Car dealerships. Give me my damn direct to consumer sales. Death to the sleazy middle-men!
telemarketing