Greentext

There’s (mostly) nothing wrong with the technology. It’s the enshittification and profit motive behind nearly everything that’s the real problem.

I'm prepared for the downvotes knowing where I'm posting.

If you hate it that much, why are you using it? It's a tool. It's useful. It also allows you to overindulge, but that says more about you than the tool.

The problem isn't smartphones, it's capitalism.

All of those things would have happened anyway in a different form factor because capitalism is just a race to the bottom.

Except maybe UI design. That has been special in its enshittification.

Ruined photography?

Professionals or hobbyists can still use a proper camera but the old maxim "sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you" often applies and cellphones do fairly well in that regard

You don't hate smartphones; you hate capitalism.

Calling out cops on their bullshit, troublshooting your pc when you bork the ethernet, sending photos of your feces to your friends to name a few

Maps/gps navigation and being able to talk to someone across the world for free (provided you have an internet connection). Genz and younger millennials don’t know how expensive long-distance calls were back then.

I can watch porn on the go?

GPS, music, and I disagree about the camera. I’d love a dumb phone that could do GPS music and a camera and nothing else besides text and calls.

Yeah definitely the smartphone is why I still don’t have a girlfriend yup yup

GPS and calendar.

Ruined pointless but enjoyable arguments with mates in the pub. In the old days you could get a good 15 minutes of entertainment out of 'Was it Matt Damon or Mark Wahlberg in that Three Kings movie?'

Now some asshat with a phone will kill that argument in 5 seconds.

Apparently parents love it as it keeps the kids quiet and relieves them of the stress of parenting.

I like having maps and gps with me

Before modern smartphones existed, I dreamed that they would one day exist and we could use computers and the Internet whereever we are, not just from home/work/school.

There are bad things about them too, but overall I would not want to do without them.

Good for porn?

I honestly hate smartphones as well, not because of any of what OP posted. On my PC, I can install whatever I want, including swapping out the OS. Most smartphones are locked down, and the few that allow alternative ROMs have huge incompatibilities w/ FOSS OSes (i.e. getting SMS to work is a bit spotty).

My phone runs GrapheneOS. I would much rather use something else (e.g. PostmarketOS), but it's the least bad option that supports all the features I need. I am still limited to Android-compatible apps, and developing for my phone is a lot more painful than any other ARM-based device because I'm stuck w/ the Android ecosystem.

The end result is that I don't feel like I truly own my phone, whereas I definitely feel that way about my PC. Yeah, my phone is convenient, and I don't use most of the nonsense Anon is complaining about (I mostly use websites on my phone instead of apps), but I still generally dislike having a thing in my pocket that I don't actually control.

Yeah, none of that is the phone's fault. That is like blaming fast food for being a fat ass.

People either have forgotten or didn't live in the time before smart phones, but the world was fucking boring as, you HAD to talk to someone because you were so fucking bored, that's why we discovered shit, we were bored and had to do something, then turtle neck man gave us smartphones.

The smartphone didn't ruin those things. Capitalism did.

Ruined cell phone keyboards

Ruined cell phone batteries

Take away anon's phone for a day and see how he likes it.

Pocket porn!

Ruined these things for you maybe. I still enjoy them. And don't use my phone for most. One of the things I live about the phone is being able to communicate with my friends and family I want. I also enjoy having the majority of the worlds information available to me. Ooooo and music. Soooo much music at my fingertips.

Add in ruined music to that. Shitty speakers, super lossy codecs to preserve cellular bandwidth, even shittier Bluetooth compression, listening to music on a phone is convenient but it sounds like shit. And we've got generations of people who think that's what music is supposed to sound like.

Damn good summary. Even more BS than I complain about on a weekly basis.

(written from my smartphone when I should be sleeping)