Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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But they’re not wrong. Look how many people use Uber instead of calling a cab. Look how many use Doordash instead of calling to order from a restaurant. Look how many use self checkout instead of going through an ordinary cashier lane.
People don’t want to interact with each other anymore. They don’t want to make phone calls with strangers. They don’t want to deal with strangers in person. They just want to push a button and get whatever it is that they want.
I think this is some kind of mass stress response to the alienation we all feel from living in modern cities. Of being sequestered into suburbs and having our lives regimented into school/work schedules. We’ve lost the sense of community we had from when we used to live in villages and walk around to get places and we knew everyone around us.
socially speaking, how is uber any different from a taxi? I'm not expected to share either of them with other passengers and both include a driver.
doordash offers delivery for many restaurants that dont have their own in house delivery, and again i don't see much of a difference socially speaking either way.
i find most people only use the self check out when it is actually faster, if the line is shorter i frequently see people prefer a cashier. I use the cashier the vast majority of the time as i tend to get items with expiring soon discounts that need employee confirmation anyway. I often see people with a similar amount of grocceries beat me time wise by using the check out.
Overall i don't think you are wrong and we are becoming less social with strangers, i just think some of the examples you used aren't great.
Uber is different because you use an app instead of calling a person on the phone to order a cab. Furthermore, with an Uber you don’t even have to talk to the driver because they already know your destination.
DoorDash is similar: you use an app instead of placing an order over the phone. This is meaningful enough that many people switched to it even when their favourite restaurant already had delivery because they didn’t want to talk to someone on the phone.
And when the big collapse comes (not if, when) everyone will be doubly fucked because there is no solidarity or human kindness to wrestle the crises (plural).
Any close reading of the subject of small villages shows they were/are hotbeds of murder
By "close reading" you mean Agatha Christie novels? No seriously, where did you get that from?
Yes, and I was also humorously referring to the entire murder-in-a-small-town genre, including Midsummer, Cabot Cove, Shetland, and innumerable villages and small towns in.... Wales, South Africa, Australia, France, Norway, all over the rural US, in both present and past eras.
The insularity being a contributor to motives for murder, between land disputes, scandalous secrets being hidden until they fester, and people who don't have the option or opportunity to get away...
I wasn't referring to the horror/slasher genre, but some of those fit as well.
The bigger question is why? And is it universal or is it specific to some places and/or some times.
Like I doubt small Japanese villages are hotbeds of murder. At the same time I fully believe American small towns have a lot of murders. So it’s a pretty strong claim to leap to the conclusion that small towns cause murder.
Hmmm... lately I've been reading a couple Japanese authors, Akimitsu Takagi and Seishi Yokomizo, in case you're interested. (Not all set in remote places, but part of the classic murder mystery genre within a very different culture from Agatha Christie.)
Now that sounds really interesting! I saw the movie Yojimbo recently and that one depicts a Japanese village full of lawlessness and banditry, but that was set during the samurai era. My impression of Japanese villages today is that they’re rather idyllic places, albeit boring and lacking job opportunities (hence the exodus to Tokyo).
I will check out those authors though. Thanks for the info!
Because people are to unpredictable. The self checkout computer may have issues, but they're the same issues every day. It doesn't have emotional breakdowns, it doesn't freak out over some product I'm buying, it doesn't bore me with small talk while not scanning my shit. The only thing I don't like about self checkout is you have to go bag everything yourself after paying and making everyone else sit there and watch you play tetris with your groceries. This same line of thinking applies everywhere because the root of it is the people.
As I'm typing this out it occurs to me that maybe we've done this to ourselves with too much convenience. This is what happens when convenience seeps into the service market. I want my interactions to be as seamless and convenient as possible. This necessarily means eventually removing the human element. The most unpredictable variable in the whole chain.