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Society has undergone drastic changes over the past decades. Technological advancements and shifted values have led many to believe things may be taking a turn for the worse.
These changes also ignited a recent Reddit discussion, with someone asking, “What worrisome trend in society are you beginning to notice?” People got candid about the alarming evolution of artificial intelligence and overconsumption while pointing out the decay in moral values.
It’s quite a gloomy topic to open up but an eye-opener, nonetheless. Scroll through to find the readers' responses, and feel free to chime in below.
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#1
The sheer lack of empathy people have now. It's genuinely startling.
JK 2 days ago (edited)
I'm so glad this is the first post. Today I had an interview in the SW US for an admin position with a worldwide disaster mitigation and recovery company. I brought up empathy in direct dealing with victims of disaster. She said that was one of the characteristics they were looking for in the candidate. Then I flip on my tv to find the LA fires. I hope I get the job and can make a difference. Edit: I was home when I saw the coverage of the LA fires.
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#2
Anti-intellectualism, part of the distrust of 'experts' and 'elites'.
#3
Parents aren't parenting anymore -kids need rules, consistency, and structure!
keyboardtek 2 days ago
We spent a ton of our time with our daughter. But guess what, peer pressure, phone use, social media, and the internet has a greater role in shaping their brains. Sadly.
#4
People can't spell. Most often noticed in online postings, but even novels and professional articles are frequently riddled with typos or other mistakes.
keyboardtek 2 days ago
If people used spellcheck and at least proof read what they typed, it is easy to catch mistakes.
#6
Instead of helping someone in need, whip out that phone camera and record it.
#7
People don't believe in facts when they don't fit their opinion. They also don't make any effort to look something up if they don't know it, instead, they make up their own "facts".
#8
Wages are not keeping up with prices.
Libstak 2 days ago
The worst is, if wages go up finally by say $20 a week, every govt dept from water, to rates and every utility raises their price by 20 to $30 EACH, they ALL want 100% of that increase each plus then some and the prices of food and goods all go up as well. Its effing ridiculous.
#9
Overconsumption.
iseefractals 2 days ago
Americans account for 4% of the human population, but 15% of emissions, despite the fact that 92% of the country has access to clean water at the tap, account for 10% of plastic water bottle usage (60 billion) the EU has similar access to clean water with double the population and consumes 47 billion. 29% of U.S emissions are from transportation (cars, trucks, vans) which is 4.5% of global emission total.....global share of emissions from cars, trucks and vans? 10%. The U.S accounts for 21% of global beef consumption, 30 billion pounds worth. China accounts for 28% of global emissions....but they also have 4.2x the population of the U.S, meaning per capita they're producing LESS THAN half the emissions of the U.S. Australia, a country with a population of 26.4 million people, accounts for 4.5% of global emissions, 1/53rd the population of China, but only 1/6th the pollution, nearly triple the per capita output.
#10
How much the rich people treat us like expendable puppets. Getting us fighting each other over the dumbest s**t, keeping us distracted, bribeing our governments, and of course invading our lives at every angle they can get.
#12
Illiteracy- it’s an actual pandemic.
Nathan Lewis 2 days ago
I don't know what this says but I'm gonna take it as a personal insult
#14
Death of Expertise. Everyone's opinion is now valid.
Lucas Jackson 2 days ago
Yup look at the pandemic people arguing with actual doctors and scientists because Facebook told them otherwise
#15
Lack of humanity, empathy and community.
Being primitive, ignorant and sociopathic is becoming more and more of a virtue. Society is becoming more and more mean-spirited.
keyboardtek 2 days ago
Right wingers and Republicans want an all White country again. Well I was raised in an all white suburb. Even among an all white population, humans separate themselves into us vs. them groups based not on color of their skin, but on other petty qualities. At least half of my neighborhood kids were probably sociopaths.
#17
No business takes responsibility anymore. You just always get the run around. If you have a problem, there is, in many cases, nobody who will fix it.
This month, I had $700 overcharged on my phone bill. I called customer service, and after waiting an hour on hold, they said I needed to go to the store. I went to the store, and they said I needed to call customer service. I convinced them I had and they told me someone would have to do it another day. Ended up having to go back a few times to get it fixed.
Or a couple years ago, I ordered groceries from the website of the grocery store. Something got messed up and I called the store. They said I needed to call some other company who actually does the shopping and have them fix it. The other company wouldn't even take my call! Just a robot that wouldn't help.
It used to be that if you had a problem with a business, you could just settle it with the business. See a person and they'd work it out. If you didn't feel like going in, a customer service agent on the phone would fix it. It wasnt even that long ago. Hell, I remember in 2015 or 16 having an issue with Amazon and getting offered a free month of prime. No chance that would happen today.
It really wasn't that long ago that things were much better.
#19
Authoritarian personalities being accepted as ok again. As if we don’t have endless examples from all eras of history showing how bad that turns out.
keyboardtek 2 days ago
Americans do not learn a true version of their history. All gets whitewashed.
#20
Everyone is on their phone and missing the life right in front of them. Children feel ignored because their parents are staring at screens instead of them.
Lucas Jackson 2 days ago
Yeah we need to get back some level of control but I fear we’ve just gone too far already. I see increasingly younger and younger kids now with phones and iPads of their own. Is scary
#21
Me-ism. It's become all about what someone wants, everyone else can go to hell.
Nicole Weymann 2 days ago
"Don't let anyone stop you from fulfilling your dreams" yeah, right. My dream is flapping my arms to fly - stupid physics 😤 . And while MY delusions are relatively harmless there's a number of psychos, egomaniacs, and plain desperate people out there, who would like nothinhg better than making one lasting impression or another, make someone "pay" for their misery, or make their homicidal fantasies come true.
#22
Our brains being cooked by short internet content, 6 seconds at a time. Find it harder a harder to pick and focus on a book..
#23
Every damn person in the U.S. is expecting you to tip them.
#24
The difficulty of using the internet. Yes I accept the cookies, close the advert, skip the sponsor, oh no this video is 30 minutes on how to toast bread, find a 5 minute another one, no dislike button, ah yes let me favourite it, on no I was auto signed out for security reasons, get my phone to 2fa, oh I need to also type in the code from my email, 2fa into my email, no I wouldn’t like an office 365 subscription, complete the recaptcha, oh my password expired and can’t be set again as the old one? I’ll just login to YouTube using google. or was it using my Apple ID? Or Facebook? or twitter, or Microsoft account… oh god I can’t remember which one I originally used. Oh and while I’m ranting, search engine results have definitely gotten worse over time.
#25
Social media making people feel like their lives are "less than.".
General Anaesthesia 2 days ago
People letting "social" media tell them what their lives are supposed to look like. E.g. the absence of critical thinking.
#26
The embracing of ignorance, trolling and being uneducated.
#27
Misinformation. If their beliefs are proven wrong, they cling to anything else that does even if it’s false and spread it like a virus.
#28
The rise of manufactured outrage as a business by professional grifters.
Find a group of people who feel disenfranchised, tell them the source of their woes is because of X group/thing that is unfairly targeting them or keeping something from them, and to never, never, never ever question themselves because they have a massive victim complex.
It's become a multi billion dollar industry at this point.
#29
The bystander effect. Instead of helping people when they're in a dangerous or harmful situation, no one does anything. They just watch, or they take out their phone and just record. It's really concerning.
#30
People voting for hate.
What do you think ?
Dread Pirate Roberts 1 day ago
Ikr? Wtf is with that hate boner he has for Nathaniel? Nathaniel is funny!
Load More Replies...
Uncle Schmickle 2 days ago
The "dumbing down" of society. What's going on here ? Education standards are so low, I don't know how anyone gets a job. So many ignorant people. If I was a conspiracy theorist (which I'm not), I'd say this has pervaded society to the extent, there must be someone, or some "force" ( Government, big business ? ) behind it. The "mushroom syndrome" ..... keep people in the dark and fed on BS.
Sand Ers 1 day ago
Right-wing attacks on public education. The poorly educated are much easier to fool. That's why the orange one loves them.
Load More Replies... Nicole Weymann 2 days ago
How about "none of the above"? From this list my first concern is the "my ignorance is as valuable as your knowledge" attitude, with all the side effects: Dunning Kruger, misinformation, lack of ACTUAL critical thinking (NOT blind opposition to any authority, including science, OR blind trust in incompetent/biased sources), and the impossibility to DISCUSS different ideas without getting yelled down because of being in the wrong party/faction/friend group/bubble.
Sand Ers 1 day ago
Overconsumption is going to render the planet uninhabitable for humans. The other three are trivialities compared to that.
Load More Replies...
Papa 2 days ago
If this was mentioned above and I missed it, I apologize, but I'm mildly concerned about how it doesn't seem to occur to some people to figure out something for themselves, but instead jump right to asking someone for the answer. I have been very active on forums related to the software I use at work, and I am constantly surprised by the frequency of seeing a question I don't know the answer to, but I figure out with just a few minutes of experimenting. The person who asked the question could have done the same thing, and gotten the answer faster than asking and then waiting for an answer.
StrangeOne 1 day ago
Not everyone thinks the same way, in the same sequence.
Load More Replies...
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 2 days ago (edited)
Nice to see my stalker trying to call me out for my apparent lack of critical thinking. The irony is so strong the magnetic North Pole is shifting.
Tamra 2 days ago
I've reported him multiple times for harassment, but until BP actually tries blocking his IP address, he'll probably be back.
Load More Replies...
Jessica SpeLangm 1 day ago
Campy, if you went back 50 years, people in general would NOT be complaining about most of these things. They would be complaining about other things relevant to that time.
Load More Replies... Dread Pirate Roberts 1 day ago
Ikr? Wtf is with that hate boner he has for Nathaniel? Nathaniel is funny!
Load More Replies... Uncle Schmickle 2 days ago
The "dumbing down" of society. What's going on here ? Education standards are so low, I don't know how anyone gets a job. So many ignorant people. If I was a conspiracy theorist (which I'm not), I'd say this has pervaded society to the extent, there must be someone, or some "force" ( Government, big business ? ) behind it. The "mushroom syndrome" ..... keep people in the dark and fed on BS.
Sand Ers 1 day ago
Right-wing attacks on public education. The poorly educated are much easier to fool. That's why the orange one loves them.
Load More Replies... Nicole Weymann 2 days ago
How about "none of the above"? From this list my first concern is the "my ignorance is as valuable as your knowledge" attitude, with all the side effects: Dunning Kruger, misinformation, lack of ACTUAL critical thinking (NOT blind opposition to any authority, including science, OR blind trust in incompetent/biased sources), and the impossibility to DISCUSS different ideas without getting yelled down because of being in the wrong party/faction/friend group/bubble.
Sand Ers 1 day ago
Overconsumption is going to render the planet uninhabitable for humans. The other three are trivialities compared to that.
Load More Replies... Papa 2 days ago
If this was mentioned above and I missed it, I apologize, but I'm mildly concerned about how it doesn't seem to occur to some people to figure out something for themselves, but instead jump right to asking someone for the answer. I have been very active on forums related to the software I use at work, and I am constantly surprised by the frequency of seeing a question I don't know the answer to, but I figure out with just a few minutes of experimenting. The person who asked the question could have done the same thing, and gotten the answer faster than asking and then waiting for an answer.
StrangeOne 1 day ago
Not everyone thinks the same way, in the same sequence.
Load More Replies... Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 2 days ago (edited)
Nice to see my stalker trying to call me out for my apparent lack of critical thinking. The irony is so strong the magnetic North Pole is shifting.
Tamra 2 days ago
I've reported him multiple times for harassment, but until BP actually tries blocking his IP address, he'll probably be back.
Load More Replies... Jessica SpeLangm 1 day ago
Campy, if you went back 50 years, people in general would NOT be complaining about most of these things. They would be complaining about other things relevant to that time.
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