Jul 28 2008
Everything Eventually Sucks
Listen up, kids, because today I’m going to tell you why you should take crazy chances. Why you should make that move, pursue that engineering degree, have that fourth drink.
It’s because everything eventually sucks. Secondarily, it’s because it takes people a long time to figure out that something sucks.
If you think I’m going to go on some long spiel about how life is short and you should enjoy yourself, you are wrong. First, it is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims, and I am merely making an observation. Second, this is not about enjoying yourself. It is about not screwing up the world for the rest of us.
Most things follow a path that may or may not include a short period of improvement but that ultimately ends in a long, slow decline into suckitude. The period of improvement is not mandatory, and a very large number of things have never gotten any better than when they were first created. The personal computer has never really been any better than the Apple ][, for example. The first episode of Fawlty Towers was just as funny as the last.
People think technology is great because it’s creating great new things that are making our lives better. That’s true, but those great new things only stay new and great for a little while before they begin to suck. Gradually our lives become inundated with things that suck but that will not die. For example:
The internet
Cellular phones
Romance novels
Processed meats
Soft drinks
Christianity
Despite neo-Luddites who like to make claims to the contrary, there was a point in time at which each of these things did not suck. Now that the eras of USENET, cell phones that actually make calls, Daphne du Maurier, high-quality bacon, Coca-Cola in small glass bottles and hippie Jesus (respectively) have passed, all of these things suck and should be shunned. Make no mistake: none of these things will ever not suck again. They may be replaced by something similar that does not suck, but we will be able to tell the difference.
Have you ever driven through a small town in the middle of nowhere and thought to yourself, “Man, this place really sucks“? Do you think the people that founded that town sat down and said, “Now, let’s build us a really sucky town on this here land“? Of course not. The town sucks because the people who live there haven’t realized how much it sucks yet and are contributing to the problem. The towns that don’t suck are the ones that are constantly reinventing themselves, be it through the leadership of clever people or a steady flow of people in and out of the town.
Everything works the same way, so the next time you find yourself confronted by an idea or an impulse, act on it before someone else makes it suck. And when it does start to suck, stop inflicting it on the rest of us. Even better, speak out against it.
Come to think of it, this blog is starting to suck….
It can’t suck if it was never good.
Hah!
“The towns that don’t suck are the ones that are constantly reinventing themselves, be it through the leadership of clever people or a steady flow of people in and out of the town…”
Which explains, in large part, why college towns/cities are usually pretty cool places to live. They attract tons of different people, many of whom choose to stay but some of whom choose to leave, creating space for new different people.
i think the iPhone is one of those things. or at least it pretty much proves your point that phones used to be good and now they are starting to restrictions and integration with 2.0 sites that will be discontinued when they decide it’s time for you to buy a new phone
I have mixed feelings about Apple in general, and by extension the iPhone. I think that Apple goes to great lengths (and always has) to deliver products that are superficially non-sucky. If I could somehow be ignorant of how much functionality I was missing when buying an Apple product, I’m pretty sure I’d find the experience of owning the product to be pleasant. “Wow,” I’d think while admiring my new iPhone, “I can browse Youtube with this.” I’d never consider that I’ve been able to do the same thing with my Treo for a long time, or that I couldn’t browse any video sites except Youtube.
I think that might be it: Apple has always delivered an experience that doesn’t suck, even though the products they’re selling have themselves sucked for years. People savvy enough to concern themselves with the product rather than the experience are always disappointed in Apple.
I secretly wish I could own a Mac and an iPod and just forget everything else. But I suspect that one day they’d find me hunched over a typewriter with “make dep clean modules modules_install bzImage” typed out over and over.
Also, Dan: Your pico-ITX server is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
w0w thx.
some of apples products used to be decent. like the ipod mini - has firewire support, upgradeable storage, battery easily replaced, custom firmware available. of course since they realised that people were modding and extending the life of these things they put more effort into making sure everything they produce is designed from the ground up to be an unserviceable piece of junk filled with epoxy and solder that will definitely break on time.