Asklemmy

Amazon basically.

Some things are near impossible to get in a reasonable time frame, or get shipped from China anyway if i get them at the source.

Youtube.

My vote goes to Google, to whom I am tightly married. It's ecosystem and interconnectivity between apps as well as devices is unbeatable. It's super reliant.

It's the one entity that can wreck my online and offline presence. I mean, I use android and Google to login everywhere. If Mr. Google so decrees, my phone could wipe and google account be gone tomorrow. Same applies to Apple and Microsoft, but I don't use their systems as much. The poison I picked is Google and I hate it.

Windows

WhatsApp

Facebook. I never willingly go on it, but my friends all use it for events and shit. It’s funny hanging out with them and having someone mention things from a group chat I’ve never even touched. I absolutely refuse to install that fucking malware they call Messenger.

Other than that, anything Google. Have to use it all for work.

Discord. Too many people and communities on it that won't use Matrix.

Almost anything Google. I have an Android because I hate the restrictions of iOS, but forcing me to sell my location to Google if I want to know where I am (even in an open source app because location is a system thing).

Several things from Google.

• Google Maps - none of the OSM-bases options are there yet. I need traffic conditions and good Android Auto support. At the same time I hate that Google Maps is so full of ads. When I search for "breakfast" and the top result is a sponsored result for Dunkin and the closest is 50 miles away...
• YouTube - the content is there so it's hard to go to an alternative.
• Google Photos - my issue with this is really more tied to Gmail. If I stop paying for more Drive storage for my photos, I will stop receiving email because my account is full. But I did switch away from Gmail at least.

A car running on fossil fuel.

Well fossil fuel in general…

modern internet

I hate that there's an app for everything, it's like when everything wanted your fuckin email now they want an app plus your email and a phone number, I have having to download POS apps on my phone for simple things that can be done from a browser, like concert tickets.

Amazon. I try to buy elsewhere most of the time but other sites just don't have the same stuff sometimes.

Socks. If I'm at home you'll never see me wearing socks, not even if it's -5°C out there. But got to use them while wearing shoes, I guess.

Google.

Reddit - I don't post there any more, but sometimes I still end up there looking for answers and information.

BUT most of all:

LinkedIn - This platform is built to benefit companies, employers and managers, not the masses of people scrambling to use it to get noticed and build their careers. There are so many things that bug me about LinkedIn, but ONE is definitely that I have no real options NOT to use it (without suffering terrible economic penalties if I you know, don't want to give them my data). I get resentful and anxious every time I look at it.

Capitalism

Browsers. Firefox hasnt given me reason to doubt. Yet. And I find that odd. Still uses it. Because every other big browser have given me reasons.

Generally "free" stuff from big companies is giving me more and more the heebie-jeebies. Even if they have good reputation. But there's NO WAY I could ever pay for everything I use. Nor donate to every deserving person who has given their free time to create and publish FOSS.

money

YouTube. I wish they made better decisions about how to run the platform,.

It's not just one thing. I can easily whip up a list:

• Cars - they strangle out the city and make our urban communities dystopias
• MS Office - I can mostly avoid it, but every time I have to use it, WTF?
• Java - the syntax is fine. It's the whole universe of build/config/versioning tools that gets me
• Pure Capitalism - I'm ready to protest the hell out until we get some democratic socialism
• First Past the Post Voting - It just degrades into a two party lockdown

Facebook because my family is on it.

Google, YouTube, Gmail, chrome.

YouTube, Amazon, Comcast Internet, and my employer. In fact, all employers.

Windows

Single use plastics 🤮

Cars

my body

Social media. I use some begrudgingly and most others I avoid like the plague.

Holy crap, Lois. Where do I even begin?

• Microsoft on my desktop. Want to try out Linux but even boomers would make fun of my tech skills. That, and more games are on Windows.

• Cars. Born in bumfuck nowhere, and cities with public transit are expensive as hell. If I ever get a better paying job, I'm selling that shit and moving anyways, because cars are also a huge money sink in and of themselves.

• Google. I'll give them props, it's a good search engine even in its enshittified form, some of the ads I can deal with because if I am looking for a new t-shirt or something, then it would make perfect sense a Uniqlo ad would pop up. But its privacy that's the problem, and I try to be as "normal" as possible in this KiwiFarmsified hellscape. In the panopticon, the winning strategy is to not be interesting.

• My iphone (inb4 avocado toast Venezuela). It would be silly to trash this thing now by principle, but once when its unusable, I'm going for a Linux Pinephone.

• YouTube. It's a Monopoly and my broke ass doesn't want to subscribe to curiosity stream. It's like Texas though, while it's mostly derivative cringe, there's small pockets of gold that keep me there.

• Linkedin. Pretentious garbage

• Suburban life. Again, I am not a suburbanite by choice, decent paying jobs are tight and it's even harder to find an apartment in a state I know I probably won't be killed in AND I can afford.

TL;DR: I REALLY need to start learning 2 tech so I can navigate tech alternatives. Oh, and I need to get my shit together in life so I can afford to live in a blue city.

I waste time every day watching YouTube shorts.

The way it's designed, you can see a little bit of the next short, and the curiosity will get me, i'm always really tempted to scroll and find out what the next one is.

I wouldn't intentionally waste time like this, which is why i haven't installed TikTok; but i do watch YouTube every day, and so shorts come get me where i am. And honestly, it's a garbage experience. Part of me thinks i would probably have more fun on TikTok because their algorithm is better. Shorts keeps giving me these channels that edit bits of podcats, often MrBeast and Joe Rogan, and there's loads of channels doing this so i keep seeing it no matter how many i block. What content i do enjoy is drowned out by a lot of trash content like that, and would probably be better in long form anyway.

• Cars, even if I use public transports and my bike as much as possible, I still have to use it sometimes
• Supermarkets, I try to buy things elsewhere but it's not always possible...

The internet

iPhone. I travel a lot and I had my bags lost three times. Well no more thanks to AirTags.

We don’t know where your bag is, come back tomorrow and try . I understand you overworked and underpaid but my bag right behind that wall. Oh look it was.

This is only thing reason why I keep using it. I am not going to be hater . For some people it is a great phone but gods on high the limits all over the place.

Here is app drawer. Great can I change Categories? Nope have fun if an app is wrong category. At least I can change what icon gets big? Nope.

The keyboard? Where is the bloody , or ? Button? On android I can have button that lets me pick any of those. But not here I have to go into an under keyboard. But you can have auto prediction on! Not once have it given me a question mark during this whole rant.

The spellcheck. This is probably me being dumb but god, how do I correct? It doesn’t seem to work if I click the word it doesn’t work if I use spacebar to guide it to end of a word. Only seems to work if I somehow managed to click at the end of the word.

The first party cable missing the basic thing pretty much every 3 party cable using to prevent the cable from breaking but no need to 3d print option for it.

The lockdown. Now this maybe obsidian but I will blame Apple. I love lockdown and I probably should not use it yada yada. But why can’t I just a bloody list of all apps and white lists what I want? No instead I have do a big song and dance with sync on obsidian for over 3 hour’s then just one day it works and shows up.

anything proprietary

Human interaction.

Safety bars on my power rack. I hate when the bar goes low and clanks on it and I'm always hyper aware about hitting it. But I have a home gym and I don't want to die doing anything less than a 3 plate bench.

Pants!

I should move somewhere warm.

JavaScript.

The English language.