It can be hard for writers to find the right words to nail just how crazy our modern world has become. <\/p>\n
This is especially true when it comes to the rapid advance of technology<\/a>.<\/p>\n Writer Katherine Argent tweeted a long screed this week about what digital life is like today \u2013 comprising endless ads, subscriptions, log-ins, AI, password resets, system updates, 2-factor-authentification \u2013 and how it all adds up to making our lives more complicated, not less, as we were once promised by our tech overlords.<\/p>\n Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Katherine Argent (@effthealgorithm) April 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n It reads:<\/p>\n \u201cSearch is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. <\/p>\n \u201cAI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won\u2019t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there\u2019s an update making it worse. <\/p>\n \u201cIn a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don\u2019t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code\u2026 Welcome back! <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. <\/p>\n \u201cTime to work? We\u2019ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed \u2014 your laptop\u2019s broken now. It doesn\u2019t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. <\/p>\n \u201cGo to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can\u2019t handle this update. Now it\u2019s useless. Go get the newest phone. <\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn\u2019t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It\u2019s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn\u2019t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you\u2019re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you\u2019d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There\u2019s a class action suit. You can join. It\u2019ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We\u2019ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. <\/p>\n \u201cOh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here\u2019s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don\u2019t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You\u2019ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???\u201d<\/p>\n Katherine\u2019s words have clearly struck a chord; at the time of publishing, her post had 39,000 likes and had been retweeted almost 10,000 times. Here\u2019s a taster of the response:<\/p>\n 1.<\/p>\n This is the updated version of Billy Joel\u2019s song, \u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Kelly McGugan (@KellyMcGugan) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 2.<\/p>\n All of that and then this https:\/\/t.co\/60GcYRpmMK<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 ;semico1on (@sem1co1on) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 3.<\/p>\n And I remember a certain martech company in the 2010s insisting that “advertising was dead.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Samuel Scott \ud83c\udfa4 (@samueljscott) May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 4.<\/p>\n And they claim that all this tech will make life easier lol. I sure haven’t seen it.<\/p>\n \u2014 S. Jack (@SteffenJack84) April 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 5.<\/p>\n Give this the Pulitzer. https:\/\/t.co\/e8aUgFEz7d<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 \u029f\u1d1c\u1d0b\u1d07 \u0299\u1d00\u0280\u0274\u1d07\u1d1b\u1d1b (@LukeBarnett) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 6.<\/p>\n This is 100000x more important and poignant than \u201csomething big is coming\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/GxHTAJESk8<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ed Zitron (@edzitron) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 7.<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much room for new companies to come along with the simple innovation of \u201cwe\u2019re not gonna be assholes about it\u201d https:\/\/t.co\/53k64lEtag<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 gianmarco (@GianmarcoSoresi) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 8.<\/p>\n Worthy of every view it gets. https:\/\/t.co\/jyDIgNo3mk<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 9.<\/p>\n And that satisfaction gap leaves us scrambling for more serotonin as we put in unpaid shifts on social media for their profit.<\/p>\n \u2014 Katherine Argent (@effthealgorithm) April 30, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 10.<\/p>\n I deliberately smashed my phone the other day because of an entire maddening day of this hell you describe so eloquently. (I still had an older one that was less annoying to use.) Anyway it felt so good.<\/p>\n \u2014 David Milner (@DaveMilbo) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 11.<\/p>\n Yes.<\/p>\n \u2014 Katherine Argent (@effthealgorithm) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 12.<\/p>\n I\u2019d just entered my password, waited for 2FA via text, then got told to check email for the code there, too. And after entering all that, the site wouldn\u2019t load.<\/p>\n \u2014 Katherine Argent (@effthealgorithm) May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 13.<\/p>\n The car wash that I have gone to for years in Pasadena now charges like a subscription service. A monthly fee to go to a car wash? A car wash? It\u2019s the enshitification of everything. Please watch this helpful video for more. https:\/\/t.co\/Dnk61HpRsl<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/CoA8kpwb7G<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Chris Gore (@ThatChrisGore) May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 14.<\/p>\n Tom Waits\u2019 \u201cStep Right Up\u201d needs a reboot for the internet age. This is a pretty good start\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/xX7MWwz7aG<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Dave Troy (@davetroy) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 15.<\/p>\n hang it in the louvre https:\/\/t.co\/kyKtEiQebm<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Matina Stevis-Gridneff (@MatinaStevis) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 16.<\/p>\n Being back in an old car has been a revelation. Every time I’m here, im reminded of how shitty tech has made modern life https:\/\/t.co\/oo54ZOD0hP<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/i3kz4jMftQ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Boss351Pilot (@Boss351Pilot) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 17.<\/p>\n As someone who\u2019s often on their laptop or phone, I\u2019ve thought about this a LOT lately. I consider myself a fairly tech-savvy person, but I\u2019ve been getting more and more frustrated navigating anything digital these days. It all feels increasingly anti-consumer and anti-human. https:\/\/t.co\/JhiH8NCTLZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 David Pepose \u2013 Comic Book Writer (@Peposed) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 18.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an ouroboros of efficiency. An economy of funhouse mirrors. The Seven Layers of Enshittification. In pursuit of frictionless profit, every movement trips a wire. Participation is a minefield. Access and egress are barricaded with riddles. Every walled garden is a psych ward. https:\/\/t.co\/rShOReGqb7<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Lee Hepner (@LeeHepner) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 19.<\/p>\n silicon valley has made all aspects of all of our lives substantively worse and it doesn’t seem like it is slowing down anytime soon https:\/\/t.co\/C9MlSSmLbm<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Ashley Fitzgerald (@RizomaSchool) May 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n 20.<\/p>\n Choose life (the third version)https:\/\/t.co\/r1pkyKQCp0<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Miguel Delaney (@MiguelDelaney) May 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Source: Twitter\/X\/effthealgorithm<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t