How Do You Make Technology Worse?
My latest computer issues prompted me to think back on technology. I think the time of the 360, MP3 players and flip/slide phones were the peak of technological convenience. Tablets, smart phones and subscription services are so fucking cumbersome now it’s unreal. How do you make things worse? Let me explain.
I loved the Xbox 360. I love how the controller shows which player number you are, I loved the original dashboard and I loved how easy it was to communicate with my PC. I could go over to the media tab, select my PC and play my music. No problems. When I got my Xbox One I couldn’t do that. I go over to the tab, try to play my music and it says “you need Xbox Music on your PC.” Okay… I mean I’m using Zune, a Microsoft player, but alright. I go to download Xbox Music and get “Oh, you need to have Windows 8.1 for Xbox Music.” Wow. Convenient Microsoft.
I just saw something recently on Facebook but I can’t find it now; one of my friends commented on it and I’ve been looking to leave a snarky comment but it’s gone. It was some meme/picture saying “If your ad interrupts my song I’m never buying anything from you.” If only there was a way to buy music, actually support artists you like and putting it on a device so you can listen to it as you please. Oh wait, you COULD; and still can just not as easy. People don’t have desktop computers much anymore so they gravitate towards these music subscription apps. I loved my MP3 players. They were nice and small, easily fit in your pocket and had what you wanted on them. At one point I decided I was going to deal with Apple as little as possible and be a good Microsoft fanboy. I had a Windows Phone and I bought a Zune right around the time Microsoft decided to stop with Zune to, ironically, focus more on their phones. The Zune was awesome. I loved it. It was easy and small. At one point the screen went out on me. The touch buttons still worked but I just couldn’t see anything so my music was on a big, all-in-one playlist. I sent it out to get fixed, after some time later they came back saying it was my battery. That didn’t sound right but what do I know? They sent it back, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the same one but what could I do? After about three months it died again and I said “well fuck me I guess.”
So at this point I had to figure out how to get my music onto my phone. It was a pain in the ass. I feel like I couldn’t really do it on my Windows Phone and at some point I got a Google Pixel. I was able to get my music on the phone using Google Play or whatever. “Cool!” I thought. One day on my way home from work I’m listening to a Static-X song and I mean honestly, I can’t understand half of what he says but I could hear something was different. (That's actually what this blog is named after. It's a misheard lyric from Push It.) I restarted the song, turned it up and listened close and sure enough there was some censoring. I look into it and apparently even though you upload YOUR music to your Google whatever, Google would look into their archives of everyone’s music and if they see a match they just pull that song. And it wasn’t just different versions of songs. I have several random songs I downloaded off of Youtube or SoundCloud and if Google couldn’t find it they would just pull something that they deemed close enough. You could go through your music and select the three little dots and select something like “mismatch” and it would give you your song. But it could take 24 hours and your computer HAD to be on. I’ve got like 3000+ songs, are you fucking high? You want me to sit through and do that to every song that you fucked up? It’s MY music that I bought. I’ve got the fucking CDs sitting on my shelf, get bent. I have currently found a work around but how long before that doesn’t work anymore?
I find phones to be too big now. I loved my slide phone, it did what I needed it to, call and text. Now they are your everything. They’re your camera, your wallet, your GPS and your identity. I get it that it’s more convenient to have one device than several but they’re bulky now. They barely fit in a man’s pocket and woman’s clothing is lucky if it has pockets. I’ve seen commercials for Xbox’s Xcloud and the phone they have in the ads is so fucking big, it’s basically a tablet. I just think to myself “who the hell has a phone that big and why???” The phone is bookend by half of an Xbox controller basically so not only do you need this huge “phablet” but also need to tote around this holder for the phone? Who actually does this? People don’t want to carry around a phone, GPS, camera and MP3 player, what makes you think they’re going to carry all that around. I bring my Switch to work to play on breaks but the various Xcloud holders or controllers aren’t convenient in the least. And where I work the internet is not great so I wouldn’t even be able to play it so what good is that?
Everything needs to be online at all times now. Used to be able to go to a friend’s house, hook up your Xbox’s and play against each other all night long using LAN. Now if you were to do that you little shits would be soaking up the whole families internet. I don’t know how popular it is anymore to just play against your friends; I feel like more kids are chasing the streamer bandwagon and be getting all sweaty with everyone else. I’ve seen articles about many players being robbed at tournaments because they weren’t doing, or better yet CAN’T do, LAN and the internet cut out causing them to restart the match. Do these companies really care so little about their own products? Why would they not do the most they can if their primary focus is going to be on multiplayer?
You need a subscription service for everything now too. I’ve seen someone on Twitter complaining that they’ve had an old bootlegged version of PhotoShop and had no problems. Then they decided to get the new subscription PhotoShop and have had nothing but problems, constant updates and bugs. Companies can just put out crappy programs or games and patch them later. Seems like a shitty business practice. I’ve even heard that there are printers that require you to have an ink subscription and if you try to cancel it they charge you a cancellation fee. Like what the fuck? I don’t know what kind of printer would require such a subscription. How much printing are you doing? It’s not just programs either. Now there are subscriptions for organic meat and produce, pet supplies, you name it.
It’s like companies are doing this on purpose and the younger generation isn’t even going to know how bad they have it. It’s like a pet eating its food not knowing it’s not that yummy. They just don’t know. Technology is supposed to be simpler, make our lives easier but it just seems to be getting more convoluted. Just greedy companies and the sheepish public that will blindly follow. We’ve had some internet outages where something has happened with the ISP and like the whole East Coast loses internet for a few hours and everyone has a fucking meltdown. It’s fucking hilarious. Got people complaining they can’t watch some shitty sporting event or “if I’m not playing CoD in fifteen minutes you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” Like really? Is your life that fucking sad? I mean I’m really introverted and I pretty much live online but even I can handle not having internet for a few hours or even a few days. It’s things like this that I’m glad I have physical music and movies. I don’t mind streaming services to find movies that I typically wouldn’t watch or something but if it’s something I like or plan on watching a lot I like having it.
I constantly float the idea of just up and leaving everything behind and hide in the woods. I like to think that society is turning around and understanding not to be so reliant on tech and being better to each other but at the same time I see the exact opposite all the time. Can only hope things get better right? Anyways, I’m out of quarantine soon, back to the crappy, normal grind.
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