Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

As someone who wears size 15 or 14EE shoes, I’m thankful for online shopping.

I don't like buying clothes or shoes online. Partly because I can never tell what something really looks like, and because it's such a pain to return things. Mostly I just wear the old stuff I already have. I bought some shoes online recently for the first time, a size and brand that I already owned, but they still weren't exactly what I was expecting.

the GAP

if you're a woman, it seems like even if you like shopping for clothes you also think it's bullshit.

My wife has thoroughly educated me about how much bullshit the women's clothing industry imposes on women and I wish there were some escape hatch I could show her, other than telling her whatever she does to come to terms with it, I'll support her. This doesn't help much with her anger and frustration, but it does help a little.

i'm a 'stick' cis man and i love clothes and i love shopping for clothes. i do it maybe twice a year though. things rarely fit right, particularly trousers, but honestly.... it's not like some great burden

thrift stores y'all. unbeatable selection. and if you find a good deal that isn't for you, sell it on eBay or something. Technology eh

and hell yeah wires. wires and solder, keep em going. drivers (the speaker bits) don't break easy.

I’m a veteran thrifter and even started a thread about it here on I love style board — thrift stores are not a technological backward step into the pit of despair that is *online* women’s apparel shopping.

Right on. Some of my favourite junk to watch on YouTube is people digging through thrift stores and garage sales, trying to make some money on eBay (used stuff) and/or Amazon (new stuff). I dabble in this a bit (mainly getting rid of my old stuff) but it's nuts to think how just a few companies have this market sewn up and we all just accept working for them if we want to flip much of anything.

Feel like this technological thread has taken a "backward" step.

dentist wants me to buy a water fountain to floss my teeth. oh it grinds my gears.

My dentist is a horse

i don't even HAVE any teeth

and no two designers seem to have a shared idea of what shape a woman is, and despite that somehow whatever your shape is it seems like all the clothing designers have collectively decided that literally no woman in the world is shaped like you

Actually -- technology has kinda made things better here tbh -- you can now find size charts for most designers online -- (the problem is when there is internal inconsistency, and then, ideally, the store's site will note that it "runs large" or "runs small" or they will have customer reviews that point this out). You can also fairly easily find articles (mostly clickbait) that recommend designers and styles based on certain general shapes: column, pear, apple, hourglass, etc.

I feel like plus-size designers/e-tailers are fairly good about this stuff tbh -- and are working to improve where they have issues (e.g. the size 14 model who is 5'11 -- yes, she is closer to what the customers look like than the "normal size" model, but still ... ), because their customer base are generally women/femmes who have been demoralized for years, if not decades, of being treated horribly by the fashion industry. ... Anyway, I like online shopping for clothes, I like it a lot! (women's shoes otoh ... every time I look for women's shoes, I am reminded of why I only wore mens shoes for about 2 decades)

doesn't work like that for women's clothes 99% of the time
if you like it and you get 4 of something, by the time you go to buy 4 more they are loooooong gone and you're searching ebay again

the world of women's pants is like this .... for the past couple years, high waist pants and jeans have been the thing, and I am hoarding them because I know, maybe in just a year, the wheel of pants fortune will turn back to "natural waist" or "low rise" and they will all fit me awkwardly because I'm high-waisted. ... and hopefully I will not gain or lose a significant amount of weight so that my hoard remains useful through the lean low-rise years.

haha! i hoard high rise pants too :)

Hah, just to gloat, I am right now wearing the Koss K6/ALC headphones I got in the 1970s, having once sent them in to the manufacturer along with a $6 check for repair. I vote wires.

Right now, I'm wearing the same Grados I bought 10 years and apart from needing a new set of ear pads a couple years ago ($10 or so including shipping) they keep on keeping on. Wires all the way!

I don't accept the devices mentioned in this thread

You don’t accept pants?

Not from strangers

Possibly mentioned before but Google apricot (autocorrect). Picks the wrong word 50% of the time, see above.

In forever correcting Brad and Dallas whenever I write my shopping lists (bread, salad). It doesn't seem to learn.

Speaking of pants, it annoys me that around 15 years ago I had to migrate my change to a back pocket of my jeans, since I don't want the coins to damage the touchscreen on my phone. (My wallet, of course, is in the right front pocket -- don't get me started on people who keep their wallet in the back like George Costanza...) We've just accepted the fact that we now need to occupy THREE pockets of our jeans rather than just two -- creating one lumpy ass cheek -- which doesn't seem like a step in the right direction.

people dance less at clubs and certainly don't go crazy and mosh about at gigs afaict, and that's largely down to mobile phones (not wanting to break them or be videod dancing like an idiot

Not sure if we've mentioned this yet, but as someone who only watches a bit of TV now and again, it sucks that Netflix, Now TV, Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer each have approximately 2-3 shows I'm interested in and a whole load of dreck I'm simply not interested in.

small wallet and change in the right, no?

knee pocket is the right answer (or left answer - right knee pocket for keys)

My wallet's been in my right ass pocket since I was 13. It's the ideal spot. Keys and small change in the left front pocket, phone in the right. No problem whatsoever.

Good observation though about the dancing and moshing.

stet yes. however if it's a leather wallet the change can wind up 'sticking' to the wallet - i guess cause your leg heats it up?? - and tumbling out comically when you are in the midst of suavely pulling your ultra-minimal sustainable japanese eelskin bifold out to pay for a double-pack of extra-hot peperami

small wallet and change in the right, no?

I like my change to be reachable without having to take out the wallet. And yes there is that body temperature leather sticking effect with coins.

My wallet is the thickness of a novella. There's no way I am going to sit on that all day in the back pocket.

I suppose I could go for one of those wallets with the little buttony change pocket, but then you lose a row of card slots.

regarding wallets, my wife who is chinese told me recently that nobody uses wallets anymore there (at least in big cities) since all payments are made by phones now.
I remember once I was there with cash only. I felt like an alien or a dinosaur !
For that reason wallets sales have dived in China which is a big concern for luxury brands because people used to buy them a lot for themselves but also as gifts.
I still have a big wallet but I must admit that I don't really need it anymore : a small credit card holder would be enough (and I think I only use coins like twice a year now, when I have to go to a boulangerie that doesn't take cards !).

Yeah, I'm increasingly cashless myself tbh. I know it's disenfranchising for lower income people and supports the endless growth of the financial world but also damn it's convenient

when I first got a contactless card I thought it was ~unsafe~ and didn't want to activate it, but someone at a shop activated it without me realising, and now I use it daily for most of my shopping - but it still feels wrong to go out without cash, like there's a voice in my head still telling me I might need 10p for a phonebox like it's 1985 or something...

(also the sandwich van which visits work is cash-only; there are other lunch options nearby now, but I like the lady who runs it and hope she isn't losing too much custom due to only taking cash)

anyway my wallet is as huge as ever, with notes and coins and work ID and ever-increasing numbers of loyalty cards etc, and phones barely fit in pockets any more but I got the smallest phone on the market which just squeezes in (and sometimes squeezes itself back out unexpectedly, eek) as long as I don't have anything else in the pocket, so tissues and keys and a spare hair-tie are all relegated to my back pockets now and the bf tuts about how my pockets bulge out and why can't I just carry a handbag like a normal woman

Relying more and more on phone for everything wrt physical access to spaces (public transport) and payment definitely feels like a backwards step. Ease of losing a single device, connection volatility, battery...

I rarely carry cash but will always want at least two different methods of paying for stuff on me.

Recently lost card holder on the bus (or street, never actually worked out where/how) which included bus pass (Oyster card) and debit card but had separate 'manual' key for hire bikes so could get to/from work easily that way and then used phone to order lunch at work although this meant keeping the debit card uncancelled for a couple of hours which was risky but used app on phone to track recent/incoming deductions and none were made by anyone but me suggesting the card holder may have been handed in or was just binned by whoever picked it up when they didn't find any cash in it.

Going a few days on just actual cash (keep just enough at home for these situations) was also a real throwback of course.

Yeah, for instance, it's sad for homeless people who obviously still beg for coins since less and less people have any nowadays.
And even bank notes, I almost never use them anymore (it's basically only a problem when I have to tip someone... which is not very common in France, anyway).
It clearly poses fundamental individual rights issues since this evolution is a dream for governments and financial institutions...

Always use cash and take a perverse pleasure in waving a note when bar staff stick a credit card machine under my nose.

Yeah, losing your phone is a nightmare now. Almost worst than losing your home keys !

a checkout lady at Aldi was positively annoyed at being handed a note the other day. she huffed that the till was "locked" and that I was holding up the entire queue so I got out my debit card and she sighed that it was too late because she'd already pressed the "cash" button and couldn't change the payment method either

how does that even work, surely I'm not the only person who would try to use cash at a supermarket?

(I do normally use card there, but I was on my way to a class which I needed to pay for with £15 in cash, and I was hoping to get a fiver in my change)

Slight tangent but while I think of it saw a thread/argument on Twitter earlier about car break-ins now being motivated more and more by whether Bluetooth devices in the car have been detected by the thieves nearby with a device capable of finding them. ARGH.

I always keep cash on hand and a small bank of it at home. I always expect some event where I will need it.

how does that even work, surely I'm not the only person who would try to use cash at a supermarket?

I don't see many people using cards in my local Morrisons tbh and I don't think I've ever seen anyone using contactless. That could be because LOL Poor People but is probably because I generally use the self service machines and hardly anyone seems to use cards on those.

tbf it wouldn't be the first time I got an Aldi assistant who was randomly arsey about completely normal everyday things. some of them are great though!

while I'm ranting on here, the door system at work - bought from a relatively major supplier of such things - is remarkably fragile: so many errors that come up; every so often there's an epidemic of a new inscrutable error message; if you work in too many different buildings or someone sets something up wrong then the data on the card gets corrupted and you can't get in anywhere, etc

that's annoying for our non-essential buildings, but some places use them for accommodation (student rooms etc) - feel like someone's going to get locked out at night and have to sleep in the bushes just due to some system glitch, or the system might go down and default to open and leave people's homes and belongings unlocked

really makes me appreciate good old-fashioned metal keys tbh

Every cashier at my local Aldi asks "cash or card?" as soon as they've bleeped everything thru

I use cash for maintaining a budget - go out with that much in pocket (but also a wallet for going over if necessary)

Left front jeans pocket: keys, digital Walkman (though now that the weather's cooler the Walkman goes in my left jacket pocket)
Right front jeans pocket: wallet, iPhone 6 (though now that the weather's cooler the phone goes in my inside jacket pocket), change (in small change pocket provided for that purpose)
Back pockets: receipts and other odd scraps of paper, but mostly nothing

change (in small change pocket provided for that purpose)

I thought that was for Zuzu's petals

finally an every day carry thread

Right back pocket: plectrums (currently numbering three)

I’m finding it oddly fascinating! Xp

Left front: phone and wallet. They're both rectangles.

Right front: keys and handkerchief. If I acquire coins I guess I put them there too, but try to get rid of them as soon as possible because I don't like the jingling.

If it is cool enough for me to wear a sportcoat I get a bunch more pockets and can accommodate more things. Glasses, pens, a notebook, a book, a pocketknife, a flask of bourbon, gloves.

how can one put a wallet in their front jeans pocket ??
mine doesn't even fit in the back pocket... (and it would be very uncomfortable anyway).