According to some reports, the movie Joker (2019) cost $70 million to produce but had a marketing budget of around $120 million. If there was an argument to be made for the prevalence of hype culture, that was it! But for every "next big thing" that changed our lives, there were a bunch that didn't. So, we decided to comb through the internet and put together a list of the ones that disappointed people the most. Continue scrolling to check it out!
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NFT’s.
Best way I heard them described was that you didn't actually buy and own the "art" you only bought and owned the receipt.
Load More Replies...Why pay all that money when you can download an identicle for free?
I've been in crypto for 10 years and even I knew NFTs was a scam. The whole idea that non-fungible tokens was, in itself, valuable because of the quote "rarity" of it ignored the impact of there being a trillion of these one-off non-fungible tokens. They can't all be valuable.
Yep. So many people fell for this and lost a lot of money. These PNG's are worthless now.
NFTs are a money laundering scheme, like crypto currency. Once the IRS started tracking them, it had no further usefulness
This whole concept, which I just had to look up, makes no sense whatsoever.
Microsoft held a literal funeral procession for the iPhone when they introduced the Windows Phone.
To be fair, the Windows phone was actually excellent (I owned two) but it came to market too late, so that no one wanted to develop apps for it.
I worked in wireless at the time: almost every smartphone run on Windows. Samsungs, Pantech, and so many more. They worked. And most had 3G, much faster Internet speed than the 2G on the iPhone.
Load More Replies...Still may happen in the future. More and more people are relizing Apple products are grossly overhyped.
For a brief moment in time Segways were the future.
I think it was the awkward design that killed them. Electric scooters are basically the same concept but are much more user friendly and scooters are freakin' everywhere now.
Electric scooters "may be more user-friendly", but they seem to be ridden by total idiots who don't know the traffic rules, don't understand traffic signs, have multiple people riding one scooter, run red lights, ride drunk, and scooters are "parked" diagonally on the sidewalk, in front of doors, and in front of stairs. I keep scooter rental apps on my phone so I can report violations quickly. If you park incorrectly, you first get a fine and then a rental ban. I enjoy this rogue parking fine handing out.
Load More Replies...Until the creator went over a cliff on one and died.
I'm going to hell for it but when I heard that I did chuckle a bit
Load More Replies...My boss had a Segway and it was pretty cool to play with. It was also almost impossible to not look dorky, although he got it eventually. He commuted a mile or so regularly, until he was badly injured in a Segway-unique fashion. You know those little dips in the sidewalk for wheelchairs? He didn't see one coming, the Segway dipped, he did not and effectively lost contact with it while going about 10 mph. The poor man fractured his tailbone, a brutal injury to recover from. To the positive, he was right in front of the ER when it happened.
Segways could have been so good for mobility aids (the technology at least)
the $5,000 rechargeable bicycle you can't legally ride on either the road or sidewalk in most communities.
Google+ was supposed to topple Facebook.
Maybe it could have, if it had the same functionality. But it didn't. It was pretty bare-bones.
Bring back bare bones.Dev now justifying their salaries adding silly new features.
Load More Replies...I loved it. Was sad when it went. Too many thought it was a farcebook clone, but the circles to target posts was much better.
I avoided it on principle that far too many "next greatest thing" that Google comes up with will eventually be taken out back and shot in the head. Remember when you used to be able to use any old smartphone to paste together 360° images for Google Maps? Remember when you used to be able to upload images to Google Maps and it would use the embedded GPS coordinates and not sulk because it needed a "named place" and then proceed to put the image half a mile out and then refuse to let you correct it like these days? Or how about this - remember when Google search actually used to find stuff?
It was a pretty fun site tho, something like Tumblr lite. Moved to the real Tumblr after it shut down.
I loved Google+. We actually used it more than FB before they pulled the plug. Had to rebuild connections with friend and family in FB after that.
3D tv. i remember those being sold somewhere when we had to buy a couch, and accidentally renting the 3d version of a movie, but it never took off.
1. They are very expensive. 2. 3D video gives a lot of viewers motion sickness. If you watch a 3D show and look at parts of it without the glasses you will see that not everything is 3D. They do that to minimize the motion sickness. Also, 4 - as it relates to movie theaters, I'm sure the glasses were extra hassle and expense for the theaters.
Never really took off in cinemas either, but the odd film did try it. I still remember going to see Nightmare on Elm Street in 3D Freddy-vision!
It felt 'gimmicky' to me. And also a hassle, plus our local theaters at least charged extra for 3D movies. I saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs in 3D. The effects were mildly interesting but I didn't feel the 3D aspect really added that much to the movie. Because - grandkids - I've also seen it in 2D on DVD and entertainment level is about the same without the added hassle.
Load More Replies...I still have some 3 d movies in Blu Ray, I love watching them from time to time
those augmented reality goggles are the next big thing. buy them today, toss them out tomorrow
I still have my 3d LG 65" oled TV from 2016 and it's still a great TV. Must have 60 or 70 3d movies including some remastered movies from the 50s and 60s and such. It's great. I love 3d movies. The main issue with some are they did digital 3d turning a 2d movie into 3d instead of being 3d from the start. Just wish they had continued to improve on movies. Oh well
3D doesn't work for near sighted people. We need glasses to see far and 3d glasses on top of those. It doesn't work.
BRING THAT BACK I WANNA WATCH MY AVATAR WAY OF WATER FANCILY
About 25 years ago, they thought ostrich meat would be as popular as chicken.
Tastes more like steak, really nice, lean, tender... haven't seen it in the supermarkets for ages.
Everyone in Alabama was going to get rich selling Emu Oil and when no one did, they just released their Emus into the woods. There were wild Emus roaming around here for years.
Really? That's awful, poor birds! Also: I don't want to come across an angry bird that size
Load More Replies...I briefly considered raising emus until I saw "claws capable of evisceration," "runs at 30 mph," and "needs eight foot or better chain-link fence," and I gave up and got ducks instead. Much safer choice.
My mum has chickens and has recently gotten guinea fowls too as they are meant to warn them of foxes etc. I'm curious to know what they taste like :)
Load More Replies...They do have that ‘we ride at dawn’ look, but they’re ostrich
Load More Replies...The version I heard was emus. They are a bit smaller than ostriches and a bit easier to keep contained. There was a local main raising some. My friend and I stopped to see them one day and talked to him. He said even the emus were pretty strong kickers - had instances of having them in the wooden chute for vaccinations and emu kicked right through the boards. I think about him sometimes. I think he said a breeding pair was about $10K. And that was about 20 years ago. For reference, I'm in northwest US, so not many emus. A lot of the cost may have been importing and paperwork fees.
Good. I don't like the thought of eating those interesting birds. Farming them for food!!
Betamax. Superior in video quality but lacked hardware support, thus making it more expensive.
It wasn't about price, just the bigger manufacturers forming a cartel to push VHS instead.
It was absolutely about price. Betamax players launched at $2000 for the base model and $2,300 for the more premium models that actually set them apart from VHS, compared to VHS which cost $1000-$1400. Betamax tapes were also more expensive, and only had a playback duration of 60 minutes....so more expensive per piece and multiple pieces required if you wanted to actually watch or record movies at home. Laserdisc was far superior, whether talking about video quality, audio quality or feature set....but laserdiscs suffered from the same issue of expense, and limited playblack.
Load More Replies...Sony's licensing made it more expensive. JVC gave the VHS format away for free, so that's what every company got behind.
Specifically, Sony gave no licensing for " adult" movies which JVC did.
Load More Replies...Beramax wasn't even intrinsically uperior to VHS, at least not the commercial, end user variant - the issue is that VHS absolutely pushed the limits of quality down in name of duration, recording from two hours on best quality to six hours on the lowest, while Beramax kept around one hour or so IIRC. I suppose if the density were to be the same, quality would be indistinguishable.
The freaking Betamax mechanism was a nightmare, it took a huge amount of tape out of the videocassette and wrapped it all around the spinning drum video head; it was hard to maintain and fix 😆
Wasn't Sears first video cassette player beta? It retailed for $999.00.
Price, and overall length is what killed betamax. As another user said, Betamax often cost twice as much as the same VHS to purchase. However one big factor was length. Specifically how much time a betamax could have on it. Betamax was limited to at most one hour of record time. Where as a VHS could record two hours. Which though VHS was a lower quality, it made up for it in being able to record an entire movie on a single tape.
Hoverboards. Most users actually physically flopped and tanked onto their butts!
They caused a fair number of fires while charging, like e-bikes and e-scooters do.
Load More Replies...Yeah, all the idiots trying them out for the first time around every hard, sharp corner in their house.
Load More Replies...Perhaps the fact that lots of them were poorly constructed and the batteries exploded, had something to do with it
I think it's like skating (any sort from ice to boards). Some people can, while the rest of us just end up on our arsēs.
I have one of these in my house right now. It's my son's. We lost the charger for it a few years ago though.
Kids loved them and I still see people riding them.
Those weird 4D movie with the smell? Does anyone even remember those? They felt like fever dreams.
They still have them in Australia? It’s like a “new” thing, last few years. Smells, seat moves around, fog, water spray, smoke machines etc
They actually just started those about a year ago in my area. I went to one of them with high hopes. Turns out they're really stupid.
It would have been fun a one off, just to experience 😂 I did one in 2000 at Warner brothers cinema tours but I was a kid and hated the water being sprayed and the wind effects too much
The Tata Nano. The company set out to build the lowest price new car in the world, and it succeeded.
Unfortunately, newly middle class Indian families didn’t want the stigma of owning the world’s cheapest new car, so sales never came anywhere close to expectations.
This had nothing to do with middle class Indian families not wanting a stigma of the world's cheapest car. Tata made this car cheap by getting rid of most safety features. This is also why it never came to US or Europe markets. It couldn't meet any of the import safety regulations. This is like driving around in folding chairs. You don't want one.
Yeah, it looks like it's driving on four spare tires, lol
Load More Replies...The Tata could not be sold in most of the world for legal reasons. It lacked most safety and anti-pollution features required by law. Jay Leno has one in his collection but cannot drive it on the streets.
In my day it was the Yugo. Imagine buying a car built in Yugoslavia. Surreal thinking back on it.
In, for example, Bangalore, one does not want a car. All roads are full and even less parking spaces.
It didn’t have airbags or ABS brakes even in its highest trim, so it couldn’t pass safety inspections in the EU or the US. I don’t know if crash tests were ever conducted on it because of that, but I can imagine how badly it would lose even against the most basic Chevy or Hyundai 😂
Oh, that's cute. It's also not that unlike my current car - which is an aluminium frame and a moulded ABS shell (to keep it under 350kg so it passes as a "quad bike" and can thus be driven by people who don't have a driving licence [*]), search for "Aixam" if you're interested. Hellishly expensive, though. * - usually this is either teenagers or people who have had their licence taken away, in my case I never had a licence to begin with. One day......maybe......
I will defend it until my dying breath but Minidisks were supposed to revolutionise music. CD quality, basically indestructible, rewritable, massive storage. I _loved_ my MD player but MP3 players just killed them dead.
The MP3 player wasn't what led to the downfall of the MIni-Disc. It was due to Sony not learning from past mistakes and using a proprietary format that they refused to license to anyone else. The MD was introduced in 1993, and lost out to cheap , mass produced CD-R's, which cost a fraction of the price and could be played in any portable CD player (many of which cost under $50, while the Sony MD Walkman cost $400
MP3 CD players were amazing. You went for 15 tracks to dozens.
Load More Replies...I recently found my portable MD Walkman in a drawer, put in a new battery and it still works! I loved that thing 🥰 so many great memories of me walking down to work in Ålvsjö (close to Stockholm) during winter 😍
I loved my minidisc players - I hunted them down for as long as I could but had to give up in the end.
I believe part of it was solid state memory chips also played a part. Easily transferable and it could do the same thing and they were steadily making them with more storage space. They are awesome though. Worked like a cd but you could erase tracks snd name them. I have a component version of a md player with a remote with a full keyboard for naming tracks.
Bio-hacking. It was supposed to be this big thing and I read an article about a dude that had a bunch of sensors on him, some nifty glasses that displayed the data and he used all this data to adjust his daily things, like eating and drinking. He claimed that "in two years, everyone will be bio-hackers". That was four years ago and the closest we've got are activity monitor watches that people use and ignore. Dumbest next big thing ever.
The "fad" version of this was dumb. But the practical science of this lives on and keeps improving. I don't mean an idiot who has RFID chipped himself like a pet cat. I mean the real medical stuff that is allowing some paralyzed people the ability to control a computer, some blind people to have at least limited sight, cochlear implants for some deaf people who are good candidates - things like that. It isn't as "trendy" but for some folks it is life changing.
It makes me think of a British show, I think it was Years and Years, where a character got upgrade like that. It didn't end well.
Universal Picture's 'Dark Universe.'
The Mummy with Tom Cruise was supposed to start a whole line of movies, but when that one died it took the rest with it.
Also, replacing Brandon Fraser and Rachel Weisz unmatched chemistry with Tom Cruise and I don't even know the female leads name wasn't the brightest move
Completely different franchise and story though right, don't think the 2 can be comparable
Load More Replies...It was stupid from the very first scene with Tom Cruise. He plays a rebellious, criminal, army sergeant yet he is in his 50s. If the character was in his 20s then that personality would make sense. He’s too old to be so play a believable rogue and he would have been kicked out of the army before being promoted to sergeant. And the film was made into a generic Tom Cruise action film set in England rather than making the most of Egyptian locations and mythology.
The problem was there was no O’connel or Evie and her doofus brother 😂
We were given the dvd for free with another purchase and we still wanted our money back.
More informatoin: The Dark Universe was meant to serve as rebooted versions of past monster films that take place in a shared universe. Released: The Mummy (2017), The Invisible Man (2020), Renfield (2023), Abigail (2024), Wolf Man (2025). Canceled/Paused: Bride of Frankenstein, Dark Army, Frankenstein, Creature of the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Scorpion King, and an untitled Van Helsing movie.
I never understood how ANYONE thought this would be a good film to make. Did Tom Cruise just fund the whole thing himself? Bringing back Brendan Frazier and Rachel Wiesz, -ABSOLUTELY! It also could have made sense to reboot with new 20 something actors, maybe spin off as with one of the O'Connell kids. Aging action star and cult member Tom Cruise was just stupid.
This was a remake of the Boris Karloff Mummy from 1932, not the Brendan Frazier one. But I love the Brendan Frasier Mummy
Load More Replies...The lengths they went to make it look like Tom Cruise was as tall as his co-star was comedy gold
Esperanto.
''Rimmer: Holly, as the Esperantinos would say, "Bonvolu alsendi la pordiston, laushajne estas rano en mia bideo." I think we all know what that means. Holly: Yeah, it means, "Could you send for the hall porter? There appears to be a frog in my bidet." ''
Username checks out. Wish I could upvote you more than once for Red Dwarf.
Load More Replies...An anecdote I heard was that the two most “fluent” speakers of Esperanto met up, to much fanfare, and started conversing…and could not understand a thing the other was saying.
In defence of Esperanto: it's still alive. You never know what'll happen in future.
From TV Tropes: Baha'is were rather fond of Esperanto because they believe that a universal auxiliary (i.e. not replacement) language is necessary to facilitate world peace. This changed after they figured that it was too Euro-centric. Nowadays, they're more fond of Lojban, a derivative of Loglan. Tolkien was not a fan of it, pointing out how language evolved around mythology, and were not constructions out of nowhere.
With respect to Tolkien, he was wrong. What gives a language flavour and beauty is it's roots, the things it draws on. Those are the same things that make it inconsistent, and full of idioms and concepts that make sense to one culture but not another. For a brand-new language, consistent and uniform structure is far more important.
Load More Replies...Oh I remember esperanto was a "big" thing when I was in high school. Our IT tech was the Esperanto teacher and our school had a locked wifi channel (that was the only wifi source in the school, but no one could use it). One of my friends actually went to his Esperanto classes and found out the password for that wifi channel: MezLernejaSenkablaReto (basically means school wireless channel). I still remember this 15 years later lol. My friend tried to convince me to go with her to the classes but I didn't se the point of a fake language so I said no and I have no regrets.
Fetch.
ChuckIt is a brand of dog toys that consist of an arm with a cup that holds a tennis ball and allows one to fling said ball much further than usual. The tagine, which I am happy to say I am not making up, is "make fetch happen." https://www.petmate.com/collections/chuckit?srsltid=AfmBOoqK70kH4LfvKOikbF9fLmzZknl6-WPjQ1P-gl0V_yGKFUzTz_ap
There is a streaming service with this name though, might only be in Australia.
Can anyone explain what this "Fetch" business is all about? I did do a search on-line and failed to come up with an explanation.
It's from the movie Mean Girls. One of the characters uses Fetch as a slang term, I think meaning cool, but no one else uses it and one of the characters says "Stop trying to make Fetch happen!"
Load More Replies...
Meta verse.
The meta verse always seemed like trying to sell the emperor new clothes. Companies / some individuals spending lots of IRL money to buy a pretend space in a pretend land. Meanwhile it didn't really add anything practical. If I want to buy online from (store) I will just go to (store) web site. Why would I want to add complexity / time by having to log into a pretend universe and 'walk' down a pretend street to make the same purchase? Meanwhile I can socialize / voice chat / play games with friends in other states on Discord for free.
They missed a huge opportunity when Covid hit. They just didn't have the resources ready at the time
Nah. I mean yes, they likely would have seen a bump, just like other online services did. But people already had other ways to do online shopping / online chatting / online game playin.
Load More Replies...
More recently: Threads. Twitter was supposed to be dead by now.
Twitter was never supposed to directly make money for Musk. It was to serve as Musk’s propaganda arm and speed up the N**i takeover.
Load More Replies...conspiracy theories and rants can be obtained free at so many sites. threads was late to the party.
Beanie babies.
Little bean bag plush stuffed animals from the 90's. People thought they were going to become incredibly valuable collectors items like the original Star Wars toys. Some people went nuts and spent all their money on the things. I remember hearing about a divorcing couple fighting viciously over the collection they'd amassed.
My wife had a large collection, acquired for a price I still don't like to think about. When the craze was over and she had recovered, she wondered what to do with them. She ended up donating them to the police department to give to small children when they were separated from their parents at the police station by some legal process. So I figure we got our money's worth in the end.
Does not belong on this list. Beanie babies didn't "flop". They actually were a big thing. But many successful products fade over time. The aspect of "collect them and they are an investment" was rather silly, but the product itself was huge. ==== "At their peak in 1998, Ty Inc., the company behind Beanie Babies, had over $1 billion in annual sales, and the Beanie Baby craze made Ty Warner a billionaire, with a net worth estimated at around $5 billion. "
My mom bought me a Beanie Baby once, not because it was a Beanie Baby, but because it was a collie and I had a collie when I was young.
Beanie Bubble on Apple TV is an interesting watch, all about the Beanie Baby rise and fall
There's a Judge Judy episode with an older couple fighting over them. They insist on going through them one by one to decide ownership. There's another where some woman is suing a guy seller for selling her 'fake' beanies and Judy tries to assess their legitimacy. It's hilarious.
Submarine Tourism.
Define submarine tourism. Nearly every beach resort I’ve been to in North America has an Atlantis sub tour.
Yeah no, after the Titan implosion I am not going on a submarine tour!
the one that sank trying to reach the titanic didn't advance the couse. they steering system was evidently a playstation controller????
Zune, I remember everyone who had one telling me it was gonna replace iPod.
Infinitely superior to iPods. But, once again, too late to the game. My Zune still works
"Infinitely superior to iPods"? Ah yes, the thinking of an Apple hater. iPods have excellent sound quality as it happens. It was more that MS was doing its usual trick of coming up with a fully MS platform which was incompatible with the rest of the world. I mean really incompatible with the rest of the world: Zune was US only from 2006-08; MS did release it in Canada in 2008, but there was never support for text other than Roman or Cyrillic. MS had its own music store with its own anti-copying technology. Zune only worked with MS Windows PCs. The software really wasn't great and the hardware was bulky. And it was going up against well-established competition. Also, the iPhone came out in 2007 - that was the writing on the wall for MP3 players, but MS didn't sell Zune outside the US until 2008...
Load More Replies...Zune had an actual hard drive in it, which would irreversibly fail if you dropped it. Ask me how I know.
To be fair, iPods died out as well. Technology moved on and my cell phone can do more with music than my ipod could
iPods were rolled into iPhones. "Music in your pocket on an Apple device" remains a thing. Me? No, I don't have one. But I can see that lots of people buy portable Apple kit despite it being expensive.
Load More Replies...Fantastic devices, and a great app - really easy to use, fantastic audio quality. Just to late to the party.
It literally says "Zune" right below the screen (on the right side)
Load More Replies...Part of the problem is that almost every auto manufacturer started taking the round port out of cars. I have a real nice MP3 player sitting in a drawer, works fine. Can't use in car.
If you mean a headphone jack there's an adapter for that.
Load More Replies...
Curved TVs.
You don't really sit close enough to a TV for it to improve the viewing experience. Curved montors on the other hand... currently sitting in front of two of them and love them.
Curved monitors are awesome. I'm still getting over neck & shoulder pain from having multiple monitors.
Load More Replies...I don't know about curved TVs but I do like my curved computer monitors!
Pepsi Blue. I tried it once and really liked it, but no one bought it so it vanished overnight.
Not gonna drink anything that looks like windshield washer antifreeze
Blue Gatorade and Powerade are still around and taste great IMO. Mountain Dew looks more like antifreeze and tastes like c**p IMO. I wonder what all these drinks with bright colors if RFK gets his way?
Load More Replies...Pepsi Blue was brought back in 2021...for a limited time. Also, that is a picture of a Japanese exclusive flavor which is completely unrelated to the Pepsi Blue sold in the U.S.
Oh dammit - why does Japan get all the good stuff? I would be interested in trying pineapple and lemon cola.
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Juicero. Was going to be the keurig of fresh squeezed juice but the "pods" were proprietary bags with a full glass' worth of specially diced fruit amd the machine would squeeze them.
The Dollop podcast has a great episode for all the details.
It failed because people discovered you could just cut the pods yourself and squeeze the juice in a glass and get the same result without needing an expensive machine that only worked off wifi and phone app. Even got to the point that the company owner was telling people on Twitter to stop hand squeezing the pods.
I'm sure posting that on Twitter worked wonderfully well.../s
Load More Replies...It's the classic Venture Capital story of funding a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
The claim was that they needed something like 400Lbs of pressure in order to properly extract the juice. The company basically fell apart when I journalist demonstrated that you could simply squeeze the bags yourself and get the same juice out. Also, it was internet REQUIRED in order to use it, and it also checked a code on the pod and could refuse to squeeze it if, for example, a best-before date had passed.
Even Nespresso knew that wasn't going to work, I'm sure they considerd going down the printer cartridge route. They've done quite well despite allowing generic pods. Although I swear pods have less coffee in than they used to.
Load More Replies...As a 3rd world country citizen, the whole concept was stupid to me
I'm thinking meal plans will go the same way. Especially the ones where you have to buy the oven and scan a qr code. Cooking is not that hard if you can read a recipe and pay attention. I don't even use recipes any longer, but as a learner, I read the books like novels. They were far better than the six pages of drama online now when all you want are the ingredients and steps.
And it's not juice.... this was a terrible idea that never made a lot of sense.
Quibi
It’s like they forgot that we already all had YouTube….
NEVER HEARD OF IT. But internet tells me it was only live from APR-DEC 2020. And it wasn't really a youtube replacement since it was targeted at phones and max video length of 10 minutes. To me that sounds more like it was trying to be a tik tok competitor than a YT competitor.
It was sort of the same idea of TikTok, to cater to short attention spans, but it was kind of like big-budget movies compressed down to ten minutes.
Load More Replies...A streaming service that died while everyone was forced to stay inside by there governments. If you can’t get people to use it when they literally have nothing to do then it is probably going to flop
Are Dippin Dots still the ice cream of the future?
Our area amusement park has a water park where every 100 yards is a Dippin Dots kiosk. It’s a family tradition that once we settle into a little cabana by the wave pool, we go grab our Dippin Dots.
It's an Amusement park staple in my area. Random kiosk's in malls too. I do love Dippin Dots tho!!!
Load More Replies...Still around. Not even sure what it is and why it’s special, apart from the fact it’s ice cream
Sea World in San Diego has them all over. They actually taste pretty good.
Laserdisc.
Great uncle had one of these. The quality was great, but only as good as the CRT TV's of the time. And they were HUGE and you needed to swap/flip them to get through an entire movie. So a bit ahead of their time I would say, to their detriment.
Don't forget Laser Rot or whatever it was called. (I used to have a couple of dozen LD's.)
Load More Replies...They were impressive for their time but DVDs and everything that came after give you smaller space / cost / higher quality. Perspective changes with time. The first time I watched a movie on laserdisc was on my aircraft carrier in 1980. One of the instructors had one and let us watch a movie on it. Even on the TVs of the time, the laserdisc looked a lot better than VHS, which was the norm at the time. Now of course you have bluray, 4K, 8K and a ton of storage that can fit in the palm of your hand. But at the time they were impressive, if expensive.
Student loan forgiveness.
You repay the loan at a rate determined by your income - less than a certain (fairly generous) amount you don't pay anything, then in increments. We also don't charge the insanely punitive interest rates that American colleges do. My student loan is 20 years old and they added maybe 1 thousand onto the original 12 (I'm long-term medically ill, so my income has never hit the higher end of the repayments scale). If after 30 years you have not repaid the full sum, they waive it, the argument being that the education did not sufficiently benefit you to have been worth the debt. If it got you a well-paying job, then you repay it.
Load More Replies...If the election goes their way, the Australian Labor Government will be doing this, though it sounds like they are only forgiving about $5000 each. It doesn't affect me anyway, as I'll never earn enough to reach the threshold for repayment anyway, which effectively means the government takes on my $20000+ debt.
Trump has actually found something that benefeits ALL Americans. It concerns people who got Govt. student loans. Some people actually got decent paying jobs while at college. Then they did not not pay their loans back. medical doctors who've been practicing for ten years did it. trump wants to garnish the wages of those doctors.
One more time: choose an income dependent repayment plan. Make minimal (sometimes $0) payments for TEN years and the remaining balance is forgiven. I ended up with $204k in student loans. I made 1 payment of $497 before I consolidated the loans, then filed proof of income every year requiring $0 monthly payments. If I had continued the entire amount would have been forgiven in my 10th year with no further payments. As it turned out I was awarded SSDI and that eliminates all your student loans (SSI, too.)
Part of the reason it failed in the US, was poor management for it. When the idea was first floated, it only covered a few specific cases, and was intended to make it easier on people by cancelling out between 10k and 20k debt. However the Dept of Education kept "modifying" that, and by the end of things it was so convoluted that people had a 50/50 chance that it'd either wipe all debt clear, or not pay for a single thing. It didn't hurt matters that government watchdog groups had raised serious concerns regarding the plan. Specifically ineligible people could receive money from the program.
Shia LaBeouf's set up to be the next Indiana Jones.
Nintendo Virtual Boy.
I believe some company tried this back in the eighties. It also failed.
Awkward, kind of horrible to look at due to the weird colors. Probably helped pave the way for some things that came later but I wouldn't want one. I got to use one once. A friend's next door neighbor had dedicated most of their house to their collection of various consoles and related cartridges and that was one of the items they had. Sort of novel at a time when VR goggles were not really a thing, but I'd rather play a game on a standard flat screen without the weird colors and eye strain.
Lytro. It was a light-field camera that allowed you to change a picture's point of focus after taking the image. It had a cool design and neat features capturing an Apple like aesthetic of form and function.
Huge failure but I was obsessed with them for a while.
I just found mine this weekend, while I was looking for something else. Left it where I found it.
Most of google projects, google+, google glasses and the list go on.
Yet some projects are even bigger than we could ever have imagined - Streetview, Gmail, Gooogle Docs, Drive.... not everything they create is going to be a winner, but they do produce a lot of useful stuff and most of it is free to use (selling one's soul aside).
Corvus, You are correct, but the product called "Glass" was Google glasses. One is a product name, the other is a noun description of the product that was called Glass.
Load More Replies...Google glasses were dangerous from the start, and that's mainly what caused them to d*****f. People are, honestly, dumb, so invariably they'd try driving with the google glass on, and get distracted. However, they have seen something of a bounce back in recent years, though not how you'd expect. Some doctors have been utilizing a variant of the google glass for people who have suffered temporary hearing loss, whether through injury, or surgery. These variants detect speech, and display the words on the inside of the google glass, to allow the person to be able to communicate.
Sega Dreamcast.
Amazing console. Ahead of it's time in a lot of ways (internet connectivity straight out of the box, keyboard and mouse support, VGA output, all in 1999!). But sega didn't have the marketing power to compete with the PS2.
Bought one b/c I couldn't decide btwn that or PS1. At the time, Sony wasn't known for gaming, only music. I had been used to to Sega so I got the Dreamcast. 1 week later I was an owner of my first Playstation console and former Dreamcast owner.
Dreamcast was great, but it didn't get the game line-up it deserved. I still have mine and some JRPGs
The Dreamcast was an awesome system. Now the Saturn, THAT was a disaster.
Harry and Meghan.
Although an argument could be made that only they thought they were the next big thing.
They just wanted to be left alone to live a normal life. I hear and see more of them now then I ever have.
Back when the Daily Mail wasn't trackerwalled, my mother used to whizz down the main page in news mode (not showbiz) to count up how many articles there were slamming Meghan (in particular). Between that and creeping on Charlotte like some sort of institutional pervert, that's at least half of the so-called "news".
Does anyone remember when Yahoo tried to do streaming shows?
Watched some of their shows. Fabio-something. An Italian chef. It was quite good.
Fabio Vivani (the show was 'Ciao Chow'). You can find him now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cookwithfabio/videos
Load More Replies...YouTube premium.
BP is now creating an egg currency. Buy your points!
Load More Replies...I just use an adblocker that works on youtube ads.
Load More Replies... Juicero
By 2017 they raised $120 million dollars from big name VC firms and used it to create a $400 machine that would “fresh squeeze” overpriced and overly complex fruit filled packets.
How do you overly complicate a fruit packet? Instead of printing an expiration date they added a chip or code that would be read by the machine. The machine would then send the expiration date to your phone.
Bloomberg ran an article showing you could squeeze the packets faster, and better, then the machine could.
Carbon Fiber Submersibles.
California Bullet Train.
In America, people don't get on bullet trains. Bullets get trained on people.
Ok, I'm pro gun and usually get tired of the hate on here. But this comment is well crafted. Kudos, sir!
Load More Replies...Oh, hey, now, wait a second. If they could just be given another $7 billion dollars, to go with the $100 billion, they could start to lay some track
Same with the Texas high speed rail project, which connects Dallas and Houston.
This is actually still in progress. Just takes time to update infrastructure.
Nope. Most recent Shinkansen 4.6 billion USD. Cost Space Shuttle: 10 billion USD. Cost for still incompleted California High Speed Rail 100 billion USD. This is not about 'time'.
Load More Replies...I think the Wii U should be mentioned. That disappeared as soon as it came out.
Drinks with little edible balls suspended in them. Late 90s, I can't remember what they were called, but there were several brands
Edit: it was Orbitz and Skittlebrau as some commenters said. I know about boba tea, but this was nothing like that. It was *definitely* gross and weird, by all accounts.
We used to get something called PopABalls which were supposed to be put in drinks especially cocktails. They were much less exciting and tasty than they looked. However they made a very good garnish for salads.
Hungry Jacks, the Aussie version of Burger King, sells them regularly today. Orbeez.
Cryptocurrencies.
The crypto market is on a dip at the moment, mostly because of the Fanta Furher's rubbish, but the overall trajectory looking at the charts has always been upwards. Yes, some are trash but it can't be denied that if you bought Bitcoin, ethereum, ripple etc 10 years ago, you're a buttload richer today - even with dip.
I’m not going to pretend to know whether the current ones will last, but in the future some form of global digital currency will ultimately rule. The big thing standing in its way and making it happen is the US as the reserve currency. My guess is the current rounds of US tariffs and sanctions will push folks into digital to bypass reserve currency
Load More Replies...Truth social.
Recently? VR, NFTs/Crypto, hyperloops, almost any scam from silicon valley that depended on the free money flow of zero interest rates.
Edit 1: when i say VR i meant the meta verse thing Mark Zuckerberg blew 10 billion on. The technology of VR is interesting but I don’t believe we are there yet in a way mass consumers will adopt it, you need to deal with real world space, eye strain (most people can last between 15-30 minutes, there are some outliers but that cannot be good for you), theres your proprioceptive system (balance) that gets thrown out of whack and that’s why you feel nauseous.
I think a mix of VR/AR might work but until you can recreate a plug so that your VR inputs match those you brain is identifying I don’t think you’ll have the matrix or that ready player one world people are dying for.
WOW Chips. "In 1998, Frito-Lay introduced WOW Chips, fat-free chips made with olestra–whose molecules acted like a laxative when people ate too much.".
It didn't act as a laxative, if it did it would likely still be around. Sugar free candy acts as a laxative too, and that's still around. The issue was Olestra. It wouldn't solidify in your body, and made its way through your intestines where it would gather in your r****m and leak out of your a**s.
I had a bag of these with spinach dip... I made my goal weight that week in weight watchers... I couldn't go to work for 2 days but I dropped some pounds,
A good chip that didn’t make you poop that I miss - red rock delis rice chips, cheese and herb flavour. I used to go nuts on these as a kid
Google stadia.
It was a cool idea, but--IIUC--they never developed a competitive selection of games. Plus, they were entering a crowded market, so it was going to be tough no matter what.
Goes to show that even in the US, there’s a fixed market for entertainment
Load More Replies...When Garth Brooks tried to re-create himself as a brooding rockstar with a goatee..
Chris Gaines. Created as a character to feature in a film that never got produced. He wanted to explore different genres and styles whilst making a film that documented it and told the story of Chris Gaines. Not an attempt to to recreate Garth Brooks.
I think filming actually started on the movie, but he couldn't get any TV channels (it was to be a made for TV movie) to be interested in a fake documentary.
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The idea that we should learn Chinese because it was supposed to supplant English as the next global language.
"Chinese" isn't a language. Mandarin and Cantonese are the most common Chinese dialects but there are hundreds of others.
Mandarin and Cantonese aren't dialects; they're mutually unintelligible languages that use the same writing system.
Load More Replies...English will always have the advantage of being much, much easier to learn than Chinese.
No natural human language is harder or easier to acquire than any other. If a language seems "easier", it's because elements of the language are similar to another language that you're familiar with.
Load More Replies...It makes sense in Australia, they are our neighbours, but it’s hard, Japan already got me first and early so their (China) language is so hard for me 😂 I know hello and dad and weed and thank you.
At my Aussie high school in the 90s we learnt Indonesian. We were told it was the 'business language of the future'. I used a few words once while haggling for fake Oakleys in Kuta.
Load More Replies...We were told this, but also that the likelihood was that 'panglish' (pan-English) would overtake that. Never heard of it since.
When I was young it was German or Japanese. Mom took a third option and started to teach me Spanish. Now I live in France and oh my god my poor frazzled braincell.
In terms of pure numbers speaking 'Chinese' (since there are multiple dialects), that wasn't a bad idea. Equally, Spanish is not a bad choice as there are so many places where it is spoken (albeit by fewer people overall) that you are likely to encounter Spanish-speakers regularly if you do a lot of travelling. The major problem with English is that there are SO MANY exceptions to any given language rule, and this can be maddening for people learning to speak it.
I don’t know anyone who said that Chinese would supplant English. Folks did say that it would be one of the 3 dominant business languages. Chinese is supposedly fairly easy to learn to speak. It’s the writing that’s tough if you don’t grow up with it.
It's the most spoken language in the world, then Spanish and then English.
By sheer numbers, but nowhere near the most widely spoken language. Big distinction.
Load More Replies...Pepsi clear.
I put Pepsi clear along with Zima. They were really popular for like 2 weeks in 1994.
OP probably means Crystal Pepsi. Pepsi Clear is a different product that was sold in Mexico
Or OP is one of the dozens of people who live in Mexico & meant Pepsi Clear.
Load More Replies...Hydrogen cars.
Once there’s a method for creating hydrogen that isn’t as polluting as petroleum, doesn’t use lots of electricity, and doesn’t waste water.
Load More Replies...They are a bad idea. Regardless of your belief in anthropogenic climate change, they put out "clean" water vapor, which would lead to trapping a lot of heat under 200 feet above ground level, as water vapor is the #1 greenhouse gas. And, create more artificial humidity.
Xbox Kinect.
It was a good idea, but the fundamental imprecision of motion-tracking compared to thumbsticks/buttons/mouse and keyboard (yes, on console) meant it was only suitable for a VERY limited selection of games.
Limited functionality but I'm not sorry I bought a used one. We only used it a bit but it made it possible for my youngest granddaughter to play some games with us. She didn't have the hand size / coordination for a controller but she could stomp on the imaginary spots on the floor and wave her arms and stuff.
Zipdisk.
Yep, used both Zips and Jaz at one of my jobs for years.
Load More Replies...Great until click click click click click click click click click click click click...
This was great during my university days as I didn't have internet in the student housing (not really a thing back then) and the next best thing were the disks immortalized in the save logo that really can't fit anything. For example this one astronomy program took 16 traditional disks iirc! Good product for it's time, but the spread of internet connections and usb sticks made it obsolete
WUPHF.com!
Streets ahead. It was going to be verbal wildfire.
Whatever happened to graphene and amazing battery technology?
If you don't realise that the Amazing Battery Technology is a reality, you're clearly too young.
So true. Batteries of my youth (60s/70s) were trash compared to what is common today.
Load More Replies...Graphene is a single layer of graphite atoms one layer thick. YOU can actually make this at home. Take a graphite pencil, and color a little circle onto a piece of paper. Press nice and hard! Now take a piece of scotch tape and press it against your little circle. The tape has picked up some of the graphite! Now take another piece of tape and press it against the layer of graphite the first piece picked up. Now do it again with another piece. And again with another piece....eventually, you'll get to the point of 1 atom thick layer of graphite....that's graphene. This is the same basic method being used to produce graphene at scale. It's slow, extremely expensive and results are inconsistent. Graphene batteries have been made, and have an energy density 5.55x higher than lithium ion batteries (1000wh vs 180wh/kilogram) For now, silicon carbide batteries are already in devices and have 21% better energy density than lit-ion with graphene anode.
Patience, still in development. Medium term is more than a week, OP.
Neil Youngs Pony music player, and losless music files.
CDV - Kinda like a disc that plays on cd player, or dvd player, I believe.
DAT - required a player more expensive than an entire stereo at that time
space exploration, we were supposed to be colonizing the moon by now
During pandemic, several bands were saying livestreaming shows was thier only live appearances, going forward.
My wife bought a large cricut to make vinyl decals for cars,etc. nevedr happened.
Driverless cars, never happen on a mass scale.
DAT was used quite extensively as a backup medium in IT. Video-CDs didn't have the capacity for a whole movie, so were pretty much useless.
I haven’t tried the car version, but one time I finished a photoshoot in Perth and a small bus pulled up and had a billboard across it asking the public to trial the new driverless bus around the block, so I did, it was ridiculously slow and weird 😂 but cool idea in theory.
Pickleball is headed that way...
It's pretty popular in my area of regional Australia. I don't really get it though- when I was a kid we had a bat tennis court, which seems like the same sort of game, I'm not sure the difference or why pickleball is the one that is popular now.
I played pickleball this morning with a bunch of my neighbors, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s. Had a blast, and will play as long as I can!
Pickleball has gained popularity in my state and my area of the state has many young families residing here.
Load More Replies...Clubhouse 😂.
ET for Atari.
Not ever the next big thing. Just a tie in game. And it was a lazy boring rip off.
The main problem with that one was the short development time given to get it to market by Christmas.
Load More Replies...Moviepass.
Kony 2012!!!
Wasn't there a new cell phone that came out that had massively long battery power, but the downside was the thing was like a freaking brick?
My old Nokia 3310 needed to be charged like once every two weeks. Battery lasted forever, and so did the phone. The only issue was if you dropped it off your dining room table, it would crack the hardwood floor.
Duracell made a phone with an 18,000 Mah battery. About four times as thick and heavy.
I don't know what phone they are referring to but my Moto G Power can go about a week between charges if I'm not using blutooth / wifi. But if I wanted longer I'd just carry a battery bank I have that is roughly about the size of my phone ( a tad thicker) and will fully recharge my phone about three times. That seems like the biggest downside to a "long battery" phone. Why carry the extra weight all the time when you can just have a battery pack in your bag?
I guess it depends what you mean by early. If you mean the '90s phones that were quite literally the size and weight of a brick, no, those had terrible battery life. many of the last generation of phones that were just phones, not smart phones, in the later '00s did have great battery life. They were as solid as bricks, but significantly smaller.
Load More Replies...Therenos.
Disney's Star Wars.
To me Star Wars began with... Star Wars ( later re-baptized A New Hope) and ended with "Return of the Jedi" And that's all I have to say about it.
IMO, Rogue One is the only Star Wars story that is worth adding to the original three movies, and that is so closely tied to Episode 4 that it ends about twenty minutes (in universe) before Episode 4 starts.
Load More Replies...Still alive and producing new content. So the haters were proven wrong on this one.
Yeah, but not worthwhile content. Soul-less and derivative content.
Load More Replies...Cyberpunk 2099.
How can you say it flopped when it's still a couple decades away? Mmmmh? Mmmmmh? Didn't think of that, did you?
At the rate things are going, 2099 will be a dystopian hellscape. Not unlike the release of that game.
Load More Replies...
Nuclear. We were going to have lots of power, nuclear powered airplanes, nuclear space travel and there even were suggestions of widening the Panama canal with nuclear explosions.
What stopped the construction of nuclear reactors was Three Mile Island and Chornobyl.
Load More Replies...Australia is still waiting for theirs to be finished
Load More Replies...That's not going to happen by the nature of the fuel source. About 97% of the waste can be recycled into fissile material. However that process is very expensive, and produces a lot of toxic substances too.
Load More Replies...Nuclear power is still very much a thing. I was a nuclear plant operator in the navy in the 80s. Just because your toaster isn't nuclear powered doesn't mean "nuclear" was a flop. Aircraft carriers, subs, some destroyers, civilian power plants, most space satellites and certain other devices.
If Peter Dutton becomes Prime Minister and actually follows through, Australia will have nuclear power, possibly down the road from me. Not that I believe he really wants nuclear, it's just a way to hold onto coal as the main fuel for longer, because reactors won't be ready for years, by which time hopefully he has been ousted.
I think the post means portable nuclear power, in the style of Fallout. Nuclear power plants and weapons work well - the technology is well-proven. The issue is that you need a certain (not small) mass of reactive material to generate power, and you need FAR MORE mass to convert it into electricity via changing the temperature of water and spinning a turbine. A nuclear 'battery' isn't really feasible for lots of reasons including safety but mostly because they just don't put out as much power (mass for mass) as a LiOn or NiCad battery on that scale, so nuclear-powered cars, ovens etc just don't work.
I feel as it I've never actually been part of anything ever LOL. I have never heard of 80% of this stuff. F**k I'm old.
Me too. But I already knew I was old, so no problem
Load More Replies...and remember when we used to pay subscriptions for everything?
Load More Replies...Aps cameras that allowed you to change film mid roll. You could put in a faster film the put the partially used roll back in and it would go to the point where you stopped. It would also be able to take portraits an panoramic shots with the same camera. Just eclipsed by digital.
WOW Chips and Alli weight loss pills. I guess a**l leakage was a bridge too far.
How about the Inventor Tesla's "Free Energy?" There is theory that he was taken out for his invention. It worked and would not require wires and allowed every home to have free electric power.
It didn't work! He built a tower, but if a person walked near it he would be electrocuted.
Load More Replies...I feel as it I've never actually been part of anything ever LOL. I have never heard of 80% of this stuff. F**k I'm old.
Me too. But I already knew I was old, so no problem
Load More Replies...and remember when we used to pay subscriptions for everything?
Load More Replies...Aps cameras that allowed you to change film mid roll. You could put in a faster film the put the partially used roll back in and it would go to the point where you stopped. It would also be able to take portraits an panoramic shots with the same camera. Just eclipsed by digital.
WOW Chips and Alli weight loss pills. I guess a**l leakage was a bridge too far.
How about the Inventor Tesla's "Free Energy?" There is theory that he was taken out for his invention. It worked and would not require wires and allowed every home to have free electric power.
It didn't work! He built a tower, but if a person walked near it he would be electrocuted.
Load More Replies...
