Most people go to the supermarket and buy cruelty, torture, violence, atrocity, and slavery.
Smart - anything.
Why do you need a smart doorbell? Why do you need a smart appliance? You’re just inviting waves of survelliance not to mention the bandwidth from all of that shit having to tap into the internet.
Car. I hope I never have to buy a car. They suck.
Holiday decorations. They are just plastic shit. Put a gun to my head, I would already know that every other weekend estate sale is going to have a whole room full of decor that is headed for a landfill. Some psychotics even buy new gimcrack every single year. They are evil, and they need to be stopped.
Besides maybe pretty lights, from the designs and things I’ve seen that are made in any holiday, I don’t know who the hell would fucking buy this shit. Other than the Joneses and families that feel they gotta feel decorative so they force it onto themselves.
Just get a few lights, a tree, maybe a single decor and call it good.
I don’t know if never.
But I don’t want a smartwatch.
I’ve never carried a watch in general and I don’t see the appeal of it when I carry a smartphone all day anyway.
I was in the same boat until I started running. It’s very nice to monitor heart rate so you can stick to a target heart rate.
Smart home devices. IOT devices. Subscriptions to things I paid for at purchase (car stuff like upgraded performance or heated seats)
Digital media. It’s too easy to pirate. There’s no reason not to other than being a good boy. The only way I could see myself going legit is if they started to make really good public digital libraries and I could download anything I wanted from a single source with a library card of some kind. The exception to this would be online games but the ones I like to play happen to be free lol.
I would never buy the subscriptions that most people buy (YouTube Premium, Netflix or similar). It’s just too easy to pirate.
- A car
- Subscriptions of any kind (except a good VPN)
- New clothes (I always buy used)
- If the app is paid or even freemium I don’t use it.
- Food delivery (Really? $40 for a fucking burger)
- Guess that leaves rent and renter’s insurance which I have to have if I want a roof over my head.
Why would you need a VPN? Is it for pirating content?
To look at recipes.
So I first learnt to use a VPN on holidays at my grandmothers lake house in the Middle of now where.
She showed me how to make VPN the traditional way and after that i went on a holiday to France where I perfected my way of making VPN.
That’s not really where the story starts though in this recipe I will show you all the tricks I have learnt. It all started 13.8 billion years ago…
Obviously.
Tickets to sports events. Yawn.
Sometimes, I find it interesting to watch short clips of professional athletes doing exceptional things that most humans can’t do, but I don’t have the patience to sit on my ass for hours watching a ball go back and forth.
And concerts. I haven’t seen a concert since the 90s. I’m lucky to have grown up in the era of cheap tickets.
In the 70s, I worked in a record store that sold tickets for the local outdoor summer venue. Lawn seats were $3, and it took 45 minutes to get there. If we worked the day shift in the summer, and got off at 5, and that nights show wasn’t sold out yet, we could grab a $3 ticket, and be at the show before it started.
I was also a fan of the local orchestra, who played there every week, and never fully sold out. I went to a LOT of those shows.
Hadestown is coming to town, and I’d love to see it, but the cheapest seat in the last row, off to the side, is about $70, so they can go fuck themselves. Entertainment is for the rich. I’ll just pirate the show, if there’s a proshot of it. Besides, I love the original concept album much better than the Broadway version anyway. Hades is far better in the original.
Honestly even at the current going rates of $50-100 a ticket going to some good concerts is still a blast and still worth it. Also usually there’s going to be at least one opener and depending on the show they might have 2-3 bands performing. Personally I’m happy if I get to do 1-3 big concerts a year, and that’s really not that much to budget for even at $100/ticket, and some bands are freaking incredible to see live.
Also worth poking around to see if there’s any free/cheap music events near you or comparing with the cost of tickets to a music festival if you really want to be cheap/picky. There’s a couple of free music events I try to go to every year at nearish cities to me and it’s literally free entry and they’ll have a full lineup of bands for the full weekend. I’ve seen Bobaflex, Powerman5000, The Haunt, Black Stone Cherry, Taproot, Red Jumpsuit Apperatus, Fastball, Fozzy etc. all at these free music festivals
I used to work for a major record company, and part of my job had me handling backstage events at many concerts by many artists of every genre, so before my “retirement” from concerts, I had seen far more shows than the average person. Easily hundreds.
It wasn’t unusual for m to see three concerts a night - a classical concert in the early evening at the concert hall (over by 9), race over to the arena for a big rock show (probably miss the opener, but catch the headliner), then off to a small club for the the second jazz show after midnight (which is always the hot set). I would do that three or four times a month, with plenty of other one-show nights between.
It was a cool job, but I got pretty burned out on shows for a while. In the 21st century, I’ve been more into Broadway shows, which are also quickly pricing out of range.
I’ve been following this cool little band called High Fade, and I saw their post announcing their tour, but I was too late. Tickets were only $15, but they had been to my city 2 weeks earlier, and I missed them. It would have been my first non-Broadway show in decades. I hope they come back soon, they’re awesome.
I’m feeling like live music more lately, so I’m going to follow your suggestions, and start digging. If youre at a show, and see an old chubby guy rocking out next to you, say Hi.
In context that makes a ton of sense for why you don’t want to go to concerts anymore! Burnout is a bitch! But there’s something beautiful about once you’re past the burnout and try the thing again, where it’s been long enough it’s like trying it again for the first time except with the knowledge of what to expect and how to best enjoy it already there.
Rock on and enjoy yourself! 🤘
100%. I think I can finally go to a show again, and not feel like I’m at work.
Not that I’m complaining, it was literally the best job in the world, and I loved every second of it, but it does get tiring.
It took me a long time to view music as enjoyment again, and not as a way to make money. I got back to playing guitar during the quarantine, for personal satisfaction only, no plans to gig, and that’s allowed me find my musical passion again.
Thanks for letting me talk about it. I have nobody else in my life, who shares my love of music, that I can talk to about it.
My local B league hockey team does discount nights with cheap seats and cheap options for beer/soft drinks and snacks. My wife and I will get tickets, have a few drinks and snacks and spend a total of maybe a little over $20. Even on full price nights it’s maybe $50 for the same.
Plus there’s the fights that almost always break out. Or, as the saying goes, there was a fight and a hockey game broke out.
After building my first pc I will never buy a pre built again. I might never buy a pc again (pc of thesius!)
At some point if you decide you want a significantly newer or more powerful CPU or GPU (for example), there’s a solid chance you’ll need to replace the motherboard or the power supply. At that point, we’re playing Theseus.
Then again, mine was a 10 year old budget build and my hobbies changed significantly, so you might not actually need to upgrade at all if your computing needs aren’t hungry.
Yeah, replacing the motherboard is when I begin to consider building a new one and repurposing my current one. Because if I’m replacing the mobo, I’m probably going to have to replace the CPU and RAM, because the sockets will be different. And at that point, I might as well just go ahead and replace the PSU too, so the rating is up to date. Now I can rip out my old GPU and move it over, but that would leave my old build without one… And what if I wanted to use it for something that would potentially need a GPU, like a 4k Plex/Jellyfin server? My cooler can probably be repurposed, at least?
you’re only saying that because you have the one computer
wait until you start running your own servers and whatnot. used prebuilts with some expansion room are the most cost effective
for my gaming pc, though? fuck no. just keep changing parts out as required
wait until you start running your own servers and whatnot
Oh yeah I forgot about that, I’ve already bought several computers by that metric.
I built my PC in 2003. I upgraded it 3 times. I still use the same case.
Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, Hulu, Netflix, Xbox, PlayStation, Disney+, HBO, Tesla vehicles, dating apps,
No drugs tho ? Dudes raw dogging life.
So you’re a teenager in the US… Got it lol
- P*rn premium subscriptions
- Tinder premium
- Paper news subscription or any printed magazine
- Paid tv channels
Paper news subscription or any printed magazine
I’ve only bought printed local zines/papers as a form of donation to alternative media, the same material is published by them online for free anyway.
P*rn premium subscriptions
If you can afford to pay for the content you consume it’s generally better to pay for it, especially with regards to the porn industry which takes every scummy practice of traditional media and is 10x worse because it’s not really happening in the open
any printed magazine
For some hobbies printed magazines are still the Pinnacle of media related to the hobby, so as long as the media company behind the magazine hasn’t changed hands and significantly degraded quality (looking at you Kalmbach publishing!) paying for a magazine so you get something fun to look at in the mail each month/quarter/whatever can be quite enjoyable
The maps are better in the print copy of National Geographic
NatGeo was the finest magazine on the planet for generations, then Fox got their hands on it and made it a religious rag, then sold it to some other company that managed to make it worse.
What an ignominious end to one of the greatest publications in the history of man, and that’s no exaggeration.
- Phones on contract payment plans
- New monitors: Maybe my eyes suck, but my set of two 21-inch LCD monitors from 2005 is still going strong
- Third-party meal delivery: I’m fine sitting down with a microwaved meal or some canned soup if I don’t feel like cooking
- A new car every x years: My car of choice is old and relatively cheap, so I could afford to pay in full in cash. Bonus of being spyware-free, so I’ll just maintain it for as long as I can.
- Stuff from Aliexpress, Temu and the like: the user experience is horrendous, customer service is nonexistent, and discount codes are pure gimmicks
I was with you up until aliexpress.
There’s definitely junk on there, but if you look for high purchase volume plus good ratings you’ll get plenty of high quality stuff (minus the middle-man markup).
Am wondering, how do you complete a transaction on Aliexpress? On Librewolf and Firefox, something always goes wrong for me at some point, usually a bogus security check failing or buttons mysteriously ceasing to work.
Huh… FF is my main browser and I’ve never had an issue. Could it be an extension issue?
New monitors: Maybe my eyes suck, but my set of two 21-inch LCD monitors from 2005 is still going strong
Your eyes don’t suck. You just want to abuse them for some reason. Modern display tech is way easier on your eyes.
How so? I’d expect two monitors showing the same thing at the same brightness would be physiologically identical.
The monitor my work provided me is much more recent and it touts:
- Reduced blue light emissions (thought I don’t know how that should be achieved without affecting color accuracy)
- 90 Hz refresh rate
- Potentiometric brightness control to avoid PWM flicker
Some individuals are much more sensitive to the latter two, but I don’t feel much of a downgrade when I come home to my crappy old monitors, hence I joke that my eyes suck.
I got a OLED monitor and it gives me more eye strain then my old monitor. I’ve tried software and hardware setting and it still persists. Flux, dark mode, high contrast settings, brightness settings. Tried it all, unless there is something I missed.
I use it sparingly now while playing FPS games (picture is amazing by the way, wish my eyes weren’t like this)
My eyes would bleed at the sight of my laptop’s 1366x768 TN panel if I got used to anything better! Those are the “good” monitors haha.
A 144hz monitor has been the biggest upgrade to my computer since switching from an HDD to a SSD. It’s that big of a difference.
I bought a 144hz 4K 32" monitor a few years ago, it wasn’t cheap (800€) but I don’t regret buying it, everything just looks better on it than it ever did on the previous monitor.
Yeah, cant go back from that. I have one myself, 30 inch. Everything looks super crisp and smooth on it.
Not as dramatic of a shift, but going to 4k HDR OLED has made me so spoiled in terms of movie watching experience.
Am I the only one that would never change a car? Like you buy one, shouldn’t you keep it for 60 years? Why should anyone want to change a car? I had to change my car once because I’m Canadian so it rusted. It was awful.
Yeah, my 1st car died a rust death due to its winters in Syracuse (basically a Canadian climate). I’m 40 y/o and my 2nd car is still going strong (much to my wife’s dismay)
my problem is I can’t even find a car to replace my old one. been trying, but when 2012-2014 is the newest model they make of what I want… hard to find for a reasonable price
I just want a small wagon
I might end up looking at newer stuff, but… how tf am I going to avoid shitty touchscreens, spyware, LED headlights, and all that garbage?
As a fan of sedans and hatchbacks…car shopping is very interesting right now
how so? like just because nobody fucking makes them anymore?
Yup many manufactures stopped making anything other than trucks and SUVs in the US, and if that doesn’t make it enough of a challenge, many buyers (especially locally to me) prefer larger vehicles so I have fewer used options to choose from (and I’m too cheap to buy a new car)
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Slate Truck/SUV ends up being just marketing hype, but I’m keeping my eye on it since they promise a minimalist EV where you plug in the smarts in the form of your own smartphone. Otherwise, it’s just a dumb EV, which is how I’d keep it.
I am ready to be disappointed by it, but I’m not ignoring it. hope they can achieve it
This guy frugals.
To this day, I’ve never been tempted to buy a nice display, I’m right there with you. Like, I go to electronics stores for whatever and am dazzled by the bright colours on the modern ones, but not enough to need it when I’m posting on Lemmy, let alone pay an arm and a leg for it.
Alcohol, tobacco
