What kind of pre-enshittification tech do you all use? Stuff where ppl look at you like you’re an alien b/c nobody does it that any more.
Me ->
Oldschool offline mp3 player rather than Spottify or other streaming or phone app, to use when running.
Paper books rather than e-books.
DRM free games I buy on GOG to avoid rootkitting my own comp.
Wired speakers rather than smart speakers.
Old ass pre-connected car.
Prob more but I can’t think of it all rn.
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RSS feeds instead of algorithms
i genuinely don’t understand why people ‘self-host.’ i don’t need a server running some bloated electron netflix-wannabe to vlc myvideo.mp4
Restored a T3 Palm Pilot to work as a my own little portable minigame thang!
I use most of these things. Never get any weird reactions, though. Most people I know prefer them.
I have several hifi’s in my home and over 1000 CDs 😅
- TI-89 calculator. Got mine for college, wouldn’t trade it for any other calculator
- Thinkpad X230, quad core modded
- Librebooted HP Z220 desktop in authentic 2001 beige case and 1600x1200 beige monitor
- 90s-era UI via Chicago95 on XFCE
- Early 90s car with intact tape deck
- Personal website in pure CSS/HTML
- Beige speaker-subwoofer set with added mixer for multi-device connectivity
- Cash. Don’t worry, I won’t waste your time counting out coins; I save them up and deposit into my bank account at the end of each year
- Palm Pilot. Tbh, taking notes on my phone is just as easy, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look nearly as respectable in front of the speaker.
- If I need to deeply comprehend literature, I have to read it on paper. My mind defaults to skimming anything on a screen.
The one piece of old tech I don’t miss are bulky charging bricks. I use my GaN USB-C charger whenever possible, sometimes with the help of adapters.
Old ass pre-connected car.
this is me and i think now that i’m going to keep this thing until i die. lol
same for mine. max amount of electronics i’m willing to tolerate in late stage capitalism is efi. even then i still distrust it with it’s proprietary shit.
Same with my car. I think it’s more important than ever to learn how to fix things. “Buy a new one” is becoming less and less viable for certain types of products if you value longevity, privacy, independence, finances, sustainability, etc.
Vintage audio equipment. It’s purpose built without gimmicky features, high quality, high performance, and built to last with discrete components and service manuals. Really it doesn’t have to be vintage, but it’s usually the old stuff that prioritizes these traits. I usually play local files (mp3/flac) over a bluetooth DAC but vinyl is fun once in a while. The same living room system gets used for movies and whatever else too.
damn i regret letting some relatives get rid of theirs. i should have kept it but never had the space for it.
My family promised to save me their 1980s pioneer stereo system, tape deck, 6 cd changer, turntable, and cabinate. I didn’t go ‘home’ when they cleared out my grandparents house and my uncle sold the fucking thing for a few 100 bucks.
looking online i can find a similar system for like $1000, and only in america.
The one safe space I had as a teenager was sat in front of that thing with headphones blocking out the rest of the world. I will never get over this.
my grandfather treated me like a vulture when i asked if i could take it back in 2019, they hadn’t turned the thing on since the 1990s.
/rant #firstworldproblems
2000 Corolla. Doesn’t connect to anything except the radio. Stopped using the clicker to lock/unlock the doors when the battery in it died ~6 yrs ago. I was giving a ride to my kid and some of her friends, all around 10 y.o., and the friends were deeply confused when the doors stayed locked until I stuck an actual key in one of them. “Why doesn’t your car beep?”
There was a story in the a(us)bc media last week becuse someone was roadtripping in a 2006 corolla and it was amazing locals
i’d still have my corolla from 1994 if it wasnt stolen during the lockdowns :(, had a bunch of my cassettes in it too
Wow, a 2000 corolla has a remote. My mk4 golf (2002) with decent equipment doesn’t have that (but to be fair, it also doesn’t have a CD drive radio - well I could add one for ~100€ but I won’t since it costs money and the original radio works).
It’s extremely reliable (especially the TDI engine). After 178000km, the only problems are the surface rust, (my grandma who owned it before me) had to replace the fenders - which rusted away and I recently had to replace the rear axle. And some trunk door water leaks I still had to fix (and some weird sounds coming from the wheels when steering to the right). My mom’s 2014 golf mk7 is in way worse mechanical condition than my older car.
Also: how do the 10 year olds not know how batteries work (I did basic electronic repairs back then and help my dad wire lights ) and have you thought about reporting their parents for child neglect
I use more post-enshittification tech. I’ve replaced most of the apps on my phone with open source versions.
I’ve never used proprietary software on my Linux computers so there’s no enshittification there. But I have stopped using my enshittified android TV in favor of Kodi on Linux.
For the love of god. I just started repairing a Huawei P10 for my own use (was my mom’s). I had to ADB pm uninstall --user 0 a bunch of Huawei shit and play services. The (last) 2021 upgrade made it so it redownloads some apps I removed occasionally (Facebook, Instagram, Petal, …) fuck this. Why does it keep doing it?
I think I also uninstalled something too much since it doesn’t pair to bluetooth devices anymore.
And why can’t I just unlock the bootloader and replace the os (well, I could with PotatoNV, but i could only get a GSI, so I lose most features and the camera quality). And it’s also stuck on Android 9 - somehow (the phone is from 2017).
Still more usable than my Redmi 4x (4+64) with some motherboard issues, and cheaper than the decent grapheneos compatible phones on ebay (300 - 400€ in EU).
Admittedly a lot of my audio stuff is either wireless or built-in now. Either laptop speakers, or bone conduction headphones since I want to hear what’s happening around me when I’m walking on the roadside. Not clear on what you mean by pre-enshittification tech, but here’s the stuff people either need explained, or look at me weird for:
- Gentoo linux
- FreeBSD
- Thinkpad T430
- GrapheneOS (this one’s weird to me because it feels almost exactly like stock android?)
- A lot of my games are from itch.io for the same reason you listed for GOG, though I do use steam a lot too.
- My files are synced through syncthing between 4 locations, depending on what’s getting synced
- The fediverse in general
- Having my own website? This one confuses me because you’d think that’d be a bit more normal because of the SquareSpace ads, but nope. The idea of just… having your own website is weird to people
- The Linux terminal. I occasionally go to the library and write books in a TTY, it’s a little funny seeing people react.
- Emacs
- Pick any terminal application. Ranger, w3m, cmus, cava, etc etc.
- I occasionally play MUDs/MUSHes
- Browser games that are text/image based. The ones I’m playing now are all 20+ years old, so well pre-enshittification.
- Honestly I’ve had people think it’s weird that I download my music to play locally, even though it’s through a phone app with a relatively modern interface.
We’ll be moving into an owned home soon, and I have some plans for tech, and non-tech stuff. Can’t wait to see how many comments we get about having awnings in 2026.
I wish I had time to use Gentoo, but I barely have time to upgrade my Suse TW and Artix systems (to be fair, suse’s packaging system is shit compared to arch/artix, but it is more stable if upgraded after a long time).
How do you manage to upgrade it regularly? Do you have an extremely powerful PC or just the T430?
If computers count then a phone with GrapheneOS and a laptop and a PC with a custom NixOS config.
i like e-books on an e-reader. i wouldn’t consider them enshittification, can read them offline and even get some drm free books
anyway my boomer and luddite habits and devices:
an e-book reader that’s always offline, with drm free books
gog games just like you (just hoarded plenty of older games yesterday from the sale hehe)
lemmy and mastodon instead of modern social media with addicting algorithms, invasive tracking and ads
a retro emulator handheld (anbernic rgsp) to play gameboy, gameboy classic and gameboy advance games offline. aux earbuds with it ofc if i use it in public
no ai usage
i use qwant instead of google cus it’s a lot closer to an old school search engine
youtube without algorithms (pipepipe, freetube) just like the way it used to be
pay with cash instead of card or google pay etc nonsense
no loyalty cards or loyalty apps even if i lose money monthly from groceries and such
avoid apps and usage of the smartphone in “smart ways” whenever possible
don’t play any games with a rootkit anticheat
no modern car, i use public transportation. i pay for my ticket without an app whenever possible
no consumption of short form contentReticulum.
Nothing but everything I do run people still think I’m weird. Self hosted music, vacuum running valetudo speakers connected music assistant and home assistant.
