Comments on: From Tribalism to Pet Rocks

By: IndigoRain

IndigoRain — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:49:51 +0000

This whole thread reminds me of Marshall Brain’s Sad Tech.

By: Misha

Misha — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:41:35 +0000

Electric scooters (louder than motorcycles and not as fast)

President Bush and the Bush family political legacy (idiotic idea and way too successful in terms of years in office)

High Fructose Corn Syrup (sweetener of the devil)

By: dbl

dbl — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 15:59:05 +0000

anti-bacterial soap. We’re breeding a race of superbugs.

By: mdn

mdn — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:50:06 +0000

The secularization of Christmas.

Hey! You mean the Jesusifying of the Yuletide?

I never really understood how a lot of online companies became profitable - I guess I could put that up to “advertising” in general.

Fast food. Mass produced stuff in general, but especially food…

By: dbl

dbl — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:34:11 +0000

The secularization of Christmas.

By: Marie Mon Dieu

Marie Mon Dieu — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 12:47:39 +0000

Credit cards, genetically modified crops, 80’s fashion.

By: markare

markare — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 05:00:55 +0000

Disco music and all the crap that was related to its popularity.

By: FelliniBlank

FelliniBlank — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 02:26:11 +0000

OK, I’m going to arbitrarily define “bad” here as “probably not helpful in the long run for the species or planet”:

agriculture and selective breeding, romantic love, medical science, maybe electricity, motor vehicles (especially fucking snowmobiles), explosives, elastic

By: autarky

autarky — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 02:06:45 +0000

Soft drinks. Pornography. Alcohol. Drugs. McDonalds.

By: kuujjuarapik

kuujjuarapik — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 18:23:27 +0000

Opposable thumbs, agriculture, plastics, television.

By: Kickstart

Kickstart — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:23:53 +0000

My vote would be vote advanced military technology. It’s reduced the ‘horrors of war’ with high altitude bombing, long-range guided missiles, etc. such that war is now relatively clean. Veterans of WWI and WWII (and Korea, Vietnam, for that matter) understood afterwards how horrible war is whereas the overall impression I’ve gained from the wars in the middle east is that while the danger is there for a good many, low body counts and distancing from direct warfare for most participants has meant that we are going to have the next generation insulated from the horribleness of warfare and therefore much more willing to enter into circumstances where it is the result.

I think. I haven’t completely made my mind up about this topic.

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:52:35 +0000

It seems like the secret is to take something with short-term sparkle and no real shelf life — something that should die out inside of a few years on lack of merit — and then find a way to embed it in the substrate of life such that it doesn’t get a chance to die off after all.

How about Fax machines? Why on earth would you see anyone still using fax machines these days? It’s a terrible, ugly transport mechanism which may not have been specifically bad when it really crept into the market of affordability (in, what, the late 70s, early 80s?) but which is absolutely rotten now.

By: starman

starman — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 15:26:17 +0000

…or do you mean ideas that were bad that worked out well?

By: starman

starman — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 05:52:00 +0000

Asbestos, fluorocarbon gases in aerosol, DDT… Hitler.