How about struggling but still extant written internet journalists? “Dumb” or simplified smart phones or e-ink devices? Modern iPod clones? The upcoming Slate car? A local LLM/voice assistant?

There are tons of neat alternatives to tech bros, the problem is attention. People just don’t know about them, so they don’t hit critical mass.

…I don’t have a good solution to this, but the attention economy is broke and following the herd is not working anymore. And there are solutions better than going backwards, but no mental energy to find them.

These technology phobes are the next generation who will be scammed out of their pension fund, inheritance or investments just like current boomers who refused to advance along with the world, and they deserve to be hacked, scammed, robbed because they refuse to keep learning.

Learn or get left behind.

Please use windows XP and connect it to the internet and see what happens LOL

I wouldn't consider OBD-II computerized.

90s cars had GPS already. They're pretty advanced, other than economy cars. 00s and on, they're chock full of computers.

Calling somebody using a retro MP3 player "Amish 2.0" is as moronic as calling you a tech bro neuralink implanted Musk boy just because you're defending technological progress. Both would be equally ridiculous statements, but the difference is, you actually wrote the moronic comment.

No. The capitalists are the problem. Not the tech grunts.

I suppose that depends on the model you get. On my truck there is no GPS, no On Star, simple CD player deck, which I replaced with 3rd party deck.

Only if that email can pry my attention away from my email based multiplayer game of Civ 4.

Most my cars have been German. Even when there was no internet, they still had a fucktonne of computers. Think there's about 25 ECUs in my 2007 shitbox.

I'm going to take a risk and say you write faster than you type

Even my 80 year old mother in law can type faster than she writes. Come on.

Because fuck centralized software.

And there aren't many good option, there is only one, and Signal still required phone number for some reason on my phone so I could not give a fuck about it.

I have. Nothing happened.

The idea that we can even DO anything about capitalism at this point is a forgone fantasy. Not to say we shouldn't keep trying to push for a better, more equitable world until the time becomes more ripe to do away with personal gain above others, but we don't get there all at once. There will be no revolution, nobody is coming.

But if we were to work together and firmly, decisively push actual, selected representatives into power who are committed to getting MOTHERFUCKING MONEY OUT OF POLITICS, that would bring a thousand miles closer to that ideal world we all want. Other countries have done it, but our problem in America is we have a population way too comfortable and atomized to ever band together and do this critically important thing.

I don't have a way to reach enough people without some kind of massive disaster that forces people off their couches and makes food out of reach.

Try to exist in any kind of life above "hippy with hemp clothes living in a yurt on their parent's property and a trust fund" without things like a smartphone, a car and a computer.

The junk products are not the problem, they will be phased out in a few years anyway, like all the ones before them.

The problem is the political system that is completely subservient to corporations that allows them to create accepted social standards like "you have to have the newest phone and a computer to even dream of getting a job interview" or the manufactured consent that much of America adheres to that things like social programs, welfare and universal basic income are tools of the devil.

Or the epidemic of planned-obsolescence that every last democrat and republican representative profits from as much as the tech-barons they work for. Other countries have laws about making products that last so citizens don't have to spend their every last dime to just to keep having basic appliances and connection to the world.

If we made a unified push to install representatives that also want a better world and aren't blithering morons who want to get rich, it would go a long ways to healing the system, but I don't know how that's going to happen since we all allowed our population to also become blithering morons.

With the recent destruction of PBS and their associated programs, this is going to get even worse. But don't worry, kids will be able to ask Grok for history facts.

Cutting out the middle man does not involve technologically regressing.

But then how can you performatively sit in Starbucks with a mechanical typewriter and then post it on social media so everyone knows how progressive and anti-establishment you are???

There’s absolutely no argument to be made that requires accepting all tech simply because it’s tech.

False dichotomy and a stupid comic strip making a stupid point all the way down.

If we cared about this issue we would be pushing for the installation of representatives who want to ban planned obsolescence and systems that require you to have the newest, most expensive vehicles, appliances and gadgets. Our current entire government is subservient to and employed by companies that make billions on this manufactured consent to always "needing" to spend our labor on useless junk.

To say nothing of the inherent, massive problem that we made it legal to buy and own politicians.

Yeah no. You just didn't understand the comic and made a stupid point. It happens.

Okay, ya'll kids keep arguing about "devices" while millions of people are forced to buy the newest phones so they can get their email and attend job interviews, while mountains of money get poured into politicians who are affording their fifth homes because Samsung pays them in wheelbarrows of cash to keep consumer protection agencies neutered or destroyed.