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40 Things That Used To Be Great But Are Slowly Turning Into Trash
Whether you’re a pessimist or an optimist, you probably have an opinion about the direction our world is heading. Interestingly, people’s attitudes toward the world's future depend largely on geography.
According to an Ipsos survey at the end of 2025, those living in Asia and the Global South were quite optimistic about the coming year, while large parts of North America and Europe were pessimistic and anxious about the political and economic future of their countries.
On the Internet, there seems to be more doom and gloom than hope, as people attempt to quell their anxieties about AI, political uncertainties, and the loneliness epidemic. In one recent online thread, one netizen asked people to share the things that are slowly getting worse without us noticing: “What are we being ‘boiled like frogs’ about right now that future generations will be shocked we accepted?”
And folks shared the issues that worry them the most, from the absurdities of capitalism and threats to ecosystems to the greediness of corporations and the normalization of hateful behavior.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Lower standards for public servants. Before, a scandal breaks out, they have to resign or forced to resign. Now, I don't think there's any type of "Scandal" that can make some type of politician to stop, respect the position, and resign.
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#2
Loss of decency. Being hateful in public is getting more and more normalized.
Tolerating obvious lies from public figures and institutions. People are so bloodthirsty for anything they can shout at people they disagree with they don’t care if it’s true or not.
#3
Allowing billionaires to not pay their share of taxes. Benefits are being cut across the board for working people and these grifters are sitting on their money and watching it grow without any regulation or oversight.
WindySwede 8 hours ago
They gets share in company, and get "really low" salary. Therefore low tax. And then loans money on the stock value... *shake head*
#4
How we've allowed corporations to have basically the same rights as a human being, with a fraction of the accountability.
Roman Arendt 14 hours ago (edited)
Profits getting privatised, losses being socialised. Truly disgusting! But I see a little hope: A lagoon in Spain (Mar Menor) was granted the status of legal person (juristische Person in German law) a few years ago, complete with all (judicial) rights individuals and corporation's have. And now there are initiatives to implement this possibility into EU law. Private persons and organisations can sue for them and all this. Fingers crossed!
#5
Destruction of all programs to keep the elderly and poor from starving.
Andrew Keir 4 hours ago
Elect politicians who will vote against taking food from the needy. And challenge those who claim that many (all?) of those getting food aid are worthless scroungers. All people have worth.
#6
Insects slowly disappearing. It's very bad. Aside from being pollinators (a huge aside), they are nutrient recyclers and the major food source for secondary consumers, who are in turn food for tertiary consumers, and so on. Insect population collapse means a subsequent systemic collapse in biodiversity and agriculture.
#7
All over the world, oligarchs are amassing the world's wealth into private holdings. The 1% is becoming smaller and richer.
#8
Subscription everything. I got called old and made fun of for clinging to my DVD collection. Now those same kids come to me, wanting to borrow movies that their streamers aren’t currently hosting. I still buy some every week. My husband and I joke that it’s just a civilization preservation project at this point. Currently, we're just under 3,700 movies.
What I'm really concerned about is the conjunction of three trends, which are the conversion of most tech products to incorporate AI, the conversion of everything to a subscription-based product, and token-based charges. It's a very small step from where we are right now to a place where we are charged for checking our emails.
Roman Arendt 14 hours ago
I just read that BMW has many of its cars built after 2020 and with certain Operation Systems play some kind of trailer for the new Spider Man movie when you want to start the car. They say it's just a one time thing for a short time. Sure, Jan! 🙄
#9
The mess we've created with microplastics. We literally cannot even accurately study their effects. There's no control group. Imagine we wanted to test whether they cause cancer. We'd have to look at rates of cancer in people exposed to microplastics vs. people not exposed, which no longer exist. So yeah, there's a chance they do nothing. There's also a chance that they're currently the biggest threat to our health. More likely, it's something in the middle. The problem is, we have no idea and no way to tell.
#10
Antibiotic coverage (and herd immunity for vaccine preventable illnesses) are slowly slipping away.
Ace 10 hours ago
"Antibiotic coverage"? The way they're putting this next to the vaccine point implies they think... actually I'm not sure what they think, but it certainly doesn't describe any actual issues with the still thankfully rare antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerging in recent years.
#11
Our total lack of privacy. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the younger generation is already totally comfortable with being surveilled. Like the location sharing feature on phones, where you can track your partner's location in real time, for instance. I was born in the 1980s, and I find this distasteful on principle, not because I'm hiding something, but because I just don't like the idea of being tracked 24/7, even by someone I'm close to.
#12
The loss of hobbies. And by that I mean real hobbies. As kids we used to build thing. Models, radios, soapbox racers, all kinds of stuff. Now, it's exceedingly rare to find someone under 20 who's hobby isn't posting stuff online. Yes, I sound like an old fogey, but these things kept us together, and kept us happy. most of the stuff kids these days post online is about manufactured drama, fights, hate etc... It's so rare to see a video that's genuinely fun and happy by anyone these days.
Ace 10 hours ago
Your use of "by that I mean real hobbies" does indeed mark you as an old fogey. I bet your (great-) grandparents thought exactly the same about these new-fangled plastic model kits (What's wrong with good old-fashioned balsa wood?) and the younger generation's fascination with "the wireless" (singing around the piano was good enough for us!).
#13
Dynamic Pricing= price gauging
Never being able to buy anything to own because everything is either rent or subscription.
#14
Climate change. Sure, it's totally normal that it doesn't snow in the winter anymore, we shouldn't worry about that.
#15
Pollution. The planet is becoming more and more toxic to animal life. We’re not going to survive another century or two at this rate.
Jojo on the Gogo 2 hours ago
LOL a century or TWO? We're not going to make it to 2100 at this rate.
#16
ADS EVERYWHERE!!! Like how YouTube puts an advertisement in every video every five minutes. They're often 90 seconds long and unskippable. I barely use it anymore because it's just too annoying.
#17
Flock cameras effectively being able to track you as good as an attached GPS tracker.
Chich the witch 11 hours ago
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
#18
AI.
I feel like the caveat here is the a decent chunk of people are against AI, but it just keeps getting shoved into every facet of our lives. Like at this point I feel like the frog has tried jumping out of the pot several times now, but AI makes someone money so it gets shoved back in.
#19
Healthcare in the US. People still working desk/computer jobs 5 days in office.
I think it's wild how much money the suits take from healthcare, all while making healthcare worse for all of us. They don't care for any standard of care; they only care about how much money they can stuff into their own pockets
Andrew Keir 10 hours ago
The healthcare industry - not just the discovery and making of useful drúgs, but the 'financial wizardry' that gives accountants the ability to prevent citizens from getting those drúgs - is a poster-child for capitalism at its bloodthirsty extremes. "Moderation in all things" would be a better motto than "What's in it for me?"
#20
Insurance. Of any type. Car, health, home etc. you pay a bunch of money monthly to these companies for emergencies, and then when it comes time to use it, you have to pull tooth and nail to get a claim approved. They’ll fight the claim to pay out the least amount of money every time.
Because they’re the middleman too and sometimes you don’t see the final price of the service, it also creates this ability for the services to raises their prices for no real reason other than they can just get away with it because the insurance will pay.
Simple example: I pay $600/m for insurance. I wanted to go to a chiropractor. My copay was $100. I asked the chiropractor for the cash price because I was curious. If I went through insurance my copay was $100 because they were charging the insurance company $300 for the visit, while the self pay (no insurance) would’ve been $75.
#21
Worldwide: the impact of the climate, billionaires, antibiotics being a cure-all
In the U.S.: where do I start? Conservatives firmly embracing fascism?
Andrew Keir 4 hours ago
Start locally, build up gradually, be vociferous, despite the opposition's lies. Get out and be seen (and heard).
#22
That for some reason working an entry level job means you don't deserve to make enough to pay rent.
Wait, that already happened.
That the rich actually deserve more.. No, that too.
That corporations are actually being generous by allowing you the privilege to intern at their company in exchange for exposure?
Andrew Keir 3 hours ago
That last is a sort of 'tragedy of the commons' - if people continue to work for no pay, then 'no pay for work' gets normalised. And as for #2 - I personally wouldn't pay even "the Deity of your choice" more than 1 million dollars a year - before tax. Nobody *needs* that much. What have billionaires done for us, that's worth even a hundred times the median pay in their companies?
#23
Giving everyone a platform and treating all opinions as valid.
It's cooking us slowly.
#24
The cost of healthy food. It should not be cheaper to eat from fast food dollar menus every day than to purchase whole vegetables and meats from the grocery store once a week. It’s by design, an unhealthy population is easier to control.
Andrew Keir 3 hours ago
Sorry, but 'fast food' *is* cheaper by design. Where you can cut prices is by dong as much of the preparation yourself - avoid Domino's, buy frozen pizza from a supermarket and microwave it yourself, get the imperfect ones that the supermarkets refuse. Beauty contains no vitamins. If you can, grow your own potatoes, veggies, etc. If you can't , buy from farmers' markets. Learn to cook (at least a bit). But you can't just pass a law saying that something should be cheap - people work to produce it. They deserve pay.
#25
Echo chambers.
Over 10 years ago when Facebook went mainstream and grown ups were let in, everyone was worried about echo chambers, algorithms, and destruction of the monoculture. This was a genuine concern and people took it seriously. No one cares anymore and instead have all drunk the KoolAid.
Now people create their own echo chambers with impunity. They block people they typecast as 'one of them' based on a single comment, they build Discord servers were they can have their biases confirmed, they kick people off subreddits, they refuse to engage in good faith and are constantly angry thinking a comment they don't like is some 'gotcha' waiting to pounce.
The monoculture is done. There was a time when people would go to work (remember that?) and talk about the latest episode of the West Wing. There was a time when we used to look forward to September and the start of a new season of Breaking Bad. There was a time when the idea of being trapped in your own home and living the world through a screen you couldn't turn off was considered a dystopia.
Those days are gone now, and all that's left is people feeling isolated in an increasingly atomised society, and their solace is to hate everyone and blame them all for their anxiety and depression, typically curled up on a screen which gives them the view of the world they agree with.
We are all sitting in front of our own personal Mirrors of Erised, like Narcissus or Faust.
#26
In the UK, our freedom and anonymity is being stripped away bit by bit "for the children". The Online Safety Act was introduced to stop kids looking at sketchy stuff online, but it'll always be easy to find.
So companies have to check IDs or face fines. Papers, please. Some companies just pulled out entirely to avoid the trouble, like Imgur and Civitai. Fair enough, honestly.
Now, more stuff is going through to stop under 16s going on social media which, of course, will involve checking the rest of us are of age with face scans and IDs.
I ain't doing it, for anything. If I can't get around it somehow, I just won't use the service, or I'll VPN or whatever. I'm surprised there isn't more protests about this. I've never cared enough to join one before, but I'd take the train into London and take the day off for this one. Some 1984 nightmare.
#27
You mean…. Plastic? We are INSANE with plastic use.
Don't watch what gets thrown out in hospitals, it's crazy. They have single use devices that contain batteries, LEDs, motors, etc, that get used once and thrown in the bin. You can't recycle them because it's now "medical waste"
Ace 9 hours ago
Don't target those very few areas like hospitals where there are often very good reasons for it and which represent a tiny proportion of overall use. It's usually both economically and environmentally much worse to try and clean and recycle medical devices than to accept that they're single-use and design them accordingly.
#28
Loss of the rule of law? Income disparity due to corruption? Grift at all levels? Binding of our intelligence experts to Israel?
#29
Being at each other’s throats on social media, unfortunately I am also to blame for this situation. It really feels like a setup to divide and conquer. Social media started out quite innocent with people posting cat pictures and such but bad actors have deliberately caused this anger among neighbors.
#30
There are still a ton of people starving in the world while enough food to feed them many times over is just thrown away. This kind of problem exists for every aspect of life and at every level, and we mostly just turn a blind eye to it.
#31
Repeated COVID infections. Each infection gives you a 10-20% chance of a new chronic condition. Each infection is rolling the dice and you get more susceptible over time, not less. This is true for children, too. Long Covid in children is now more common than asthma.
#34
Technological and scientific acceleration. If you guys aren't paying attention, stuff is poppin, and *recent* technology and theory is looking more archaic by the month.
#35
It's not a matter of being unaware so much as being overwhelmed every day, and then the next day there's a dozen other things. I don't even necessarily think it's "by design" (distraction!) as is often alleged, it's just that the corruption is that prevalent and there are so many people rushing to get their hands in the trough while the getting is good.
#37
Mass surveillance via a combination of things: cell phone gps location, facial recognition in most if not all modern day cameras, the flock cameras for tracking, digital online surveillance via ai.
#38
The massive amount of control that the government has over everybody.
Roman Arendt 11 hours ago
If only it was the government. It's the people and corporations in the politician's background, their "donors" who ultimately have that control. The three branches are mostly just middlemen who are very fine and comfortable with this.
#39
The long-term society-wide effects of Covid and Long Covid. Pretending that a mass disabling event isn't still ongoing is insane.
#40
They won't be shocked that we accepted it. They'll look upon these as the "good old days," because their future will be so much worse.
What do you think ?
Seedy Vine 2 minutes ago
Using war and starvation as a tool for population control when birth control hurts no one
Seedy Vine 2 minutes ago
Using war and starvation as a tool for population control when birth control hurts no one
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