People Are Naming Inventions The World Would Have Been Better Off Without, And It's So Interesting
Whether it be traffic lights or ovens, inventions have not only made our lives easier, but also help us progress in medicine and science. However, if you ask Reddit, there are a few concepts and creations that society should have never embraced...
Giphy: vh1 / Via giphy.com
User u/numbnerve asked the internet: "What is one invention that we'd be better off without?" And whether you agree with them or not, here are some of the top-voted replies:
1."Fast fashion. I can’t imagine the amount of cheap, tacky clothes that are just mountains in landfills."
– u/pyky69
2."Land mines. I'll tell you why — they render large tracts of land completely unusable. They are expensive and difficult to remove safely because there is seldom documentation of where they are placed. They kill and maim livestock and wild animals. They kill and maim innocent people decades after conflicts have ended. Many times the victims are children because they can't read or don't understand warning signs."
3."Convenience fees on debit and credit card transactions."
– u/skifro
4."Cookie pop-ups. How come we still don't have a more efficient way to manage our browsing privacy?"
– u/QBekka
5."Pay to win games."
"Literally. 'Let's get people addicted to gambling via gamification and then see how much money we can steal from them.'"
6."Calling different businesses and hearing a robot on the end. To navigate through all their hoops, especially when it's a voice response system, and only find that you landed in the wrong section and have to do the whole thing over is extremely frustrating."
7."Pop-up ads. Not only are they so annoying, but they can either scam you or install malware on the devices of unsuspecting people."
8."Any product that you pay for, and then have to pay a subscription to use."
9."Beauty pageants for children."
10."Robocalls."
11."YouTube end screens or end cards that often block content at the end of the video you're watching."
– u/jrmiv4
12."Devices meant to break after a short period of time, and devices that purposely have parts you can't replace."
13."Seafloor trawling... It destroys the habitat of fish just so we can squeeze every bit of a fish from an area."
14."Drug commercials. Average Joes shouldn't be making drug recommendations TO MY DOCTOR, who spent 10-plus years studying and working to be in their position."
"Those ads are banned in Canada, so whenever I watched an American channel it was just such a culture shock that they were allowed to advertise those things like that."
15."The polygraph test. It's super inaccurate."
16."LED advertising. They're too fucking bright, and now they're putting mini screens on trucks that drive around town, and it pisses me off. There's already enough distraction on the road."
17."Autoplay videos, especially in non-video-streaming websites. NOBODY asked for them, yet so much work is getting put into making it a web standard. Just fucking stop."
18."Popcorn ceilings."
19."Unskippable ads."
20."Ads on streaming services that I FUCKING pay for. You don’t need revenue, Hulu — that’s what my subscription is!"
21."Shark fin soup. Tens of millions of sharks are killed every year for their fins that offer little nutritional value and serve no purpose outside of being a status symbol."
22."For-profit prisons."
23."Scam calls! We get them on our house phone all the time, and it’s so annoying."
24."Reality TV. I swear it glamorizes the worst kind of behavior, and we eat it up."
25."24-hour news."
– u/RiMbY
26."Deepfakes. Any time I see a video with it, all I'm left feeling is fear for the future."
27."Cigarettes."
28."Junk mail is just a waste of everyone’s time."
29."Standardized testing."
30."Social media. It's addictive and dehumanizing."
31."40-plus-hour workweeks."
32."So called 'influencers.' I'm probably too old to understand them, but I certainly don't want my 1-year-old to aspire to be one."
33."The gender reveal party."
Now I'm curious — what inventions do you think the world would have been better off without? Let me know in the comments.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
