[loudtieblahblah]

I feel like, supporting them or not with their store, it was always a no-brainer to not purchase smart, cloud connected doorbells and wire-tape speakers and litter my house with them.

I kinda hate my Roku even having a microphone button and my kid figuring out how to use it.

We're crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, ripe for corporate/state abuse and we already have history and experience about the usage of tech being grown to continually spy on people one nudge at a time, that we shouldn't be fooled by this stuff.

but here we are, plenty of smart, educated, technical people who know that history, salivating at MOAR GADGETS THAT DO STUFFS.

[ostenning]

People need real hobbies

[loudtieblahblah]

its a combination of things. People want convenience and that desire is never ending and never sated.

in the age of consumerism, people want to consume MORE but live more minimally. This gives way to more cloud, connected services, more "renting". More.. processing by someone else, somewhere else.

And yes, people spend less time creating and doing and too much time just consuming as their main hobby. They need to spend more time outdoors, doing stuff with their hands, being creative and constructive.

And lastly - my more controversial, generalized but hyper-specific point - is up until COVID and tons of protests turned riots, people were moving into cities at a high rate. They moved into gentrified areas, down played the crime, downplayed the smog, downplayed the endless mismanagement of tax money by old corrupt city governments. They'll go as far as to call people who don't want to move into the city as being racist (for wanting to avoid the crime) or for destroying the environment b/c they don't want to live packed in like sardines in a smog filled urban center.

Well for all those hipsters who think crime isn't such a problem and only something "racists" point out - they all seem to have this incessant need for RING doorbells to keep people stealing the never ending array Amazon and other CongloMo Inc packages from their middle class porches.

They go out in the streets, pumping their fist in the air for BLM, then go home, waiting for their packages from amazon, hopefully protected by Amazon RING doorbells which are expanding the private/public partnership in an ever growing police and surveillance state. They get online and finger wag in one direction and allow their money to vote in another. They're an awful lot like rural republicans voting against their own economic interests, but at least on the Republican side there's a bit of a bait and switch going on. here, it's just direct hypocrisy.