Nah, the 12 dead laptops undef my bed I use for hardware salvage and experiments are device hoarding. The multiple disassembled game consoles in my closet is device hoarding. None of it is sorted, the retro stuff isn’t sorted, the new stuff isn’t sorted.
I’m device hoarding. The average consumer is absolutely not.
Godspeed, you future museum contributor!
The hope is to eventually open a repair cafe/lounge with the
carcassesdisassembled dead retro units as display piecesMy sibling in Aiyuna, that is a museum with extra steps <3
If you make it there and happen to recall this interaction, I would be glad to hear of it!
In a heartbeat, friend!
The MSP I briefly worked at kept a bunch of notable obsolete computers in the main entry way as a kind of “museum” but they didn’t really have the vision to make it look like actual displays, so it kinda almost looks like it’s warm storage for hardware that could be pressed into service any day now
Is it hoarding or simply a step of Reduce, Reuse Recycle?
My pallet of used office PCs I got for $200 but have barely handed off any is device hoarding, keeping your phone for 2-4 years before upgrading is just being financially prudent
i refuse to upgrade, because newer phones are objectively a worse experience than older ones. They keep removing features in the name of “innovation” while putting more stuff in there that the market is actively telling them they don’t want.
I miss the 90s early 2000s, where every 2 years the new products were much better, not only specs wise but categorically so. and a new phone did not cost a month of rent.
I have a 2020’s phone, and besides battery life being weaker now. I see absolutely no reason to upgrade for a marginal spec bump.
When was the last time a new feature was added? like something that would make want to have it? they are afraid of any risk and so there is absolutely no innovation. the closest thing to any risk they took is when they removed the headphone jack to sell 300$ headphones.
The whole industry is being enshitified.
You might even change the phone because of the battery and find out that your new device has an absolute power hog of a screen with no battery upgrade to match and your battery life is even worse now
Hey now, they saved half a millimeter of thickness with that smaller battery. You should be thanking them.
Spec bumps are pretty irrelevant now anyways. Phones are currently in the land of diminishing returns for performance. They’ve been ‘fast enough’ for some time now, and the only thing that breaks them is software, not hardware. Newer hardware is marginally more efficient, so that’s the only real world benefit.
I miss the old days of android where they were trying all manner of wild ideas. I want variety where one company has an eink screen protector. Put a laser pointer on a phone because… Because. Where are the projector phones? Maybe some crazy transformer phone with modules that all clip together to turn into a robot. Sure, they never sold well, but they were cool to see.
I love my flip open smartphone. That was a new feature worth paying for. It’s so small in my pocket.
Or if you go for the “full-size”, a tablet that folds into a standard phone size.
Foldable are nice either direction you want to go.
They keep removing features in the name of “innovation” while putting more stuff in there that the market is actively telling them they don’t want.
I always put off buying a new phone for this exact reason. It feels like every iteration further strips users of the ability to remove telemetry, AI bullshit, or bloatware. I’m not paying out hundreds of dollars for a dedicated advertisement displayer that spies on me.
Can we get a headline about bazillionaires hoarding wealth?
Some journalist should start calling them all Smaug. The problem is a bunch of us asshats would then be like “Smaug did nothing wrong!”
Why should dragons pay tax. He earned that gold fair and square!
#temporarilyembarrasseddragons
Better yet, let’s get the heads of those bazillionaires and put them on pikes, and then run headlines about the excellent new trend of beheading the rich and putting their heads on pikes.
They all have a severe case of OCD, manifesting itself in hoarding behavior. If they hoarded cats as intensely as they hoard money, we would take ALL their cats away, redistribute them to more responsible owners, and hospitalize the OCD victim until their medication kicked in, and they can contribute to society in a positive manner.
They don’t hoard cats, they hoard money, but the solution is the same - confiscate their stolen treasure, redistribute it to the people they stole it from, and incarcerate them until they learn to behave positively among society.
Money hoarding by billionaires is literally destroying the entire world
If you want people to buy a new phone every year “for the economy”, the $1800 phone must be reduced to $50, and the quality stays at flagship levels. The citizens are not here to make the oligarchs wealthy. Fuck your economy.
For real… “device hoarding”. Lol. What about “saving”, “environmentally friendly”, NOT wasting resources for nothing"? No, we need a negative term for that!
It’s funny how thrift and frugality will ruin the economy for everyone but gambling with other people’s homes and retirement funds is good business sense.
Hoard cool cars in a secret garage never to see the light of day ever again? Collecting.
Keep your phone for 5 years until you’re forced to upgrade? Hoarding.
Rough housing with your cousins at Thanksgiving? Horsing.
Having hobo sex in a brand new Prius? Soup kitchen.
Goddamn Dirty Mike and the Boys
blaming the consumer again?
Instead of the billion/trillionaires that are hoarding wealth that they’ll NEVER be able to spend?
how fucking sad is it that there are people sleeping on the street, worried about their next meal will come from, meanwhile gaben has a billion$ worth of megayachts
We need to keep spending money, so that billionaires continue spending on mega yachts, so that mega yacht companies do not start firing their work force due to lack of sales
Why attack steam? Why not any other billionair? Or is epic paying you
There is no such thing as a good billionaire.
why not gaben? He gets a pass for some reason, so why not attack him. Why did you ask why i attacked him and not some other billionaire? is gaben paying you?
You’re right, he definitely needed to buy another new yacht last month. Oh, and the company that makes the yachts, because why not.
That’s real, btw.
What, is Gaben a “good one”? Please. He deserves the criticism as much as any other. Steam is the most unethical platform of its kind.
Capitalism is a cult. Must produce for the sake of production. Must consume for the sake of consumption.
If no need for something exists, it must be created. Solutions in search of problems.
Better to produce something and throw it away than to miss out on a sale, or heaven forbid give it away.
Weren’t these the same people saying that we should stop buying new iPhones and avocado toast?
You see, here’s the thing.
When this whole smart phone thing started, smart phones sucked. They ate a lot of power, so the battery didn’t last, they were slow, both in computation, and loading data, the screens were pretty trash (dim, low res, huge bezels)… Everything needed improvements.
Now-a-days, my phone, whether new, or a couple years old, has an all day battery life, it’s pretty quick and snappy, apps load quickly, data appears almost instantly on it, the screen is bright, with minimal bezel area… Nothing I care about changes.
So why am I upgrading? Slightly better camera? Slightly better everything else? Stuff I don’t perceive has been “improved” and I don’t actually give a shit.
My reason to upgrade isn’t there. Currently, my reason to upgrade is: this phone will no longer get upgrades, I should get something that will… For security. That’s it.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
I’d start questioning an economy that relied on getting rid of perfectly good things.
As is right.
The ability to repair your stuff has been all but eliminated. Just throw it away and buy a new one so some billionaire can make more money.
Also 1k or more? Fuck that. I usually get 1 to 2 year old phones. My pixel 6 pro is still doing well.
Nothing wrong with that. I might get a pixel 9 second hand to replace my 7 when it finally goes.
Why would I need more? The 9 has what? 5+ years of updates that Google has committed to… So I’ll still have ~4 years of security updates if I switch right now.
Same. Plus you’re upcycling.
If you turn your phone off at night and just leave it unplugged the majority of the time, it will last for many, many years.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
Hell yes.
Brick phone plus tablet is the combination I am using currently, the tablet was £15 second hand. I could consider spending a bit if I got a significant upgrade out of it but probably not/can’t be bothered to.
Yeah, I only use my tablet to read e-books and stream video, so it’s pretty cheap too. No need for anything more.
I had to buy a new phone recently. There were 4 or 5 different AI bullshit things trying to hassle me, I managed to remove most but one or two I couldn’t uninstall.
I haven’t intentionally got a phone to upgrade in well over a decade. I get a new phone because the last one no longer works in some way that matters enough that I will go and get a new one to replace it. The most expensive phone I have ever bought is a Pinephone.
It’s been that way for a long time. I went Nexus 6P -> Pixel 2 -> Pixel 6
I don’t break my phones, so I basically buy the device with the longest software support and keep them as long as support lasts.
I’m the same. Went from the Nexus 5x to the pixel, to the pixel 4, to the pixel 7.
I didn’t really like the 5x, they screwed up on that one. Went to the 4 because the pixel wouldn’t get updates anymore, went to the 7 because the 4 lost battery capacity and the local shop I usually use to replace my pixel batteries got bought out by dickheads… They refused to ship a battery in for me, I couldn’t find another shop that would do it, so I just got the 7.
The 7 is still going strong. We’ll see how much longer it lasts though. I expect to replace it sometime next year, but I might go with a used 9 rather than a new 10/11 or something.
The poverty caused by funneling money to the top in the kleptocracy we have will cause most people to “hoard” their devices.
Maybe if any of the good features coming out today wasn’t paired with the monkey’s paw that is:
- it’s behind an app
- it’s a subscription service
- it’s planned obsolescence
- I can actually fix it with third party vendors
- it’s selling your data
Maybe then consumers would actually get excited by new developments. All these trends are doing is turning the new generations into luddites.
I love it when people are called “Luddites” for hating the enshittified tech because guess what? The OG Luddites weren’t actually “Luddites”, either. They weren’t afraid of progress per se, but its use against the average person. Unfortunately, the propaganda against them worked too well.
I’ve learned so much about the Luddites in the past couple of years. I’ve found it super useful to connect our current struggles to historical analogues.
It makes me think of the writings of philosopher and political theorist Frederic Jameson. He argues that one of the best ways we can resist the cultural logic of late stage capitalism is by making these connections to history — a quote he’s known for is “always historicize”. By reclaiming and reconnecting to our history, it’s easier to understand it as a dialectical process.[1]
[1]: this isn’t the best summary of Jameson’s points. He’s a pretty dense writer, and I’m still working through his stuff. If you’re someone who enjoys videos, Michael Burns is an ex-philosophy professor who has a few good videos on Jameson
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Photographers are the worse. They are still buying lenses from 1930 and all the decades between then and now. Just because glass still works regardless of how old it is.
So it’s got some fongus dirt…opens it up, washes the glass and puts it back together!
So its got a scratch or the fongus ate the surfaces… No problem! Now it has character! Need more character? Add jelly! Its great for porn! Oh, I guess its good for porn in many ways. Jelly.
Dude photographers are about the only ones anywhere near as bad as computer enthusiasts about scavenging treasures from other people’s trash!
Light leaks? It’s art!
Fongus amongus.
its in response to planned obsolescence.
