This 21st Century Life - Digital Annoyances

Since the advent of the internet and the personal computer, the pace of change in the digital domain has accelerated at an incredible rate. Unfortunately, so has some of the most useless annoyances ever invented.

NOTE: The following are in no way a full list of deserving examples.

Facebook -
What began as a place for students to interact has become a major public common where the concept of privacy has been raped and burned at the stake. Today, even one's employers will snoop on their employees and then turn their private time against them.
I personally avoid Facebook like the plague but do keep a half dozen accounts for when there is a need to swim in their cesspool.

Commenting -
Comments were basically invented by blogs and offered the average Joe (and Jane) Doe a chance to talk back on news stories and a host of other topics. The Main Scream Media immediately adopted this concept to counter a major grassroots movement of amateur writers while hating the very concept of the general public being given as much latitude as those so-called professional writers on payroll.
As time has gone on, the media has now begun backing-off allowing public comments at all but... in still a few other cases, requiring commentators to sell their personal info. Fox News is the one recent example. If you want to say a few words to what they published for the public to read, you have to give them the right to say anything they want on your private Facebook page.

On Line Bill Paying -
You'd think that businesses would love this era where people could pay their bills easier across the digital spaces. But instead of that, both those businesses and the banks have been soaking the public for every dime they can get. My own person experience is with a local utility company that charges a 'convenience fee' for paying your electric bill online.
Power bill: $197.00
Convenience fee: $7.00
Annoyance: $9.99 (The cost of a six pack of Dirty Bastard (brand) beer)
It's like, they'd rather you send them a check in the snail mail and then have to process it by making a physical deposit and waiting for said check to clear. The banks are even more guilty because anyone who has an ounce of understanding knows that it's cheaper for these institutions to process accounts electronically than by way of either cash, check or money order.

Bing and MSN -
One of my daily routines is to scan the latest news via Google's news aggregate page. However, on occasion, I'll end up on Bing clicking on a headline.
WRONG!
The top story for most subjects leads directly to MSN where if you don't sign in to this micro cybertyranny, you don't get access. Anywhere else... even Yahoo will allow the average user to stop in and read a story on one of their pages without having to enlist in their track & monitor programs. Not Microsoft. If you wanna read their advertisements and host their cookies, you had better have an account or be ready and willing to get one.

Debit Cards and the Corner Store -
One local grocery store has now placed a set of totals you must spend to get x-amount of cash back when paying with a debit card.
The minimum purchase for cash back? $10.
The maximum you can get back for that sum? $10
It finally makes the $5 ATM fee feel less like being anally molested and more like some good deal.

That's a start...

I just try and moderate things.

Facebook, I use this to share news (actual news, not what I ate for breakfast) and pics with family and friends all over. That's it.

Online Bill Paying, don't really do it. I mail off a check vs. paying a fee AND making it cheaper for them.

Debit, hardly use it, I almost always use cash.

Here's another annoyance though...My wife, stepson, our ranch hand gal, and I are all watching TV last night while eating dinner, only we aren't all visiting. The stepson and ranch hand gal are both busy on their phones. Why bother? Kids today are almost never off their computer or phone. I know, I'm on here a lot, but I have a lot of downtime between tasks sometimes. When at home, I'm HOME.

reply to post by Gazrok

The stepson and ranch hand gal are both busy on their phones. Why bother? Kids today are almost never off their computer or phone. I know, I'm on here a lot, but I have a lot of downtime between tasks sometimes. When at home, I'm HOME.

Can identify with the situation. My wife gets really ticked when we have the family together at the dinner table and people start tinkering on their phones and such. Her words are silent as each violator has holes burned through their hearts as if by some hellish laser. The phones immediately disappear and they all remember how to form words into sentences for family conversation.

It's pretty amazing, lol!