It is tough, isn’t it? The news, the way it is covered, the enshittification of everything, the toxicity of the majority of online comments; a lot of what I used to love on the internet has become unbearable. This is not new, of course. Maybe I am the one who has been changing the most, getting older, yelling at the cloud and all that. Or perhaps we are now at peak shittiness.
This ambient shittiness is the main reason as to why I’ve been silent on this blog since November. I felt more annoyed than inspired, more tired than energised, more “what’s the point?” than “let’s comment on this.”
For 2024, I had the goal of publishing a blog post per week, aiming for 50 posts. I ended up with 36. Skipping the last five weeks of the year surely didn’t help. It’s fine though. One article every ten days is still a good pace for me, all things considered. Also, not writing anything for the past month and a half made me realise how much I’ve missed it and how much I need it to, I want to say, ventilate my thoughts.
So, what’s better to get the engines going again than a good old rant?
One of my favourite articles from last year came from Bradley Taunt, My Coffee Maker Just Makes Coffee:
I snagged the cheapest and most basic coffee maker I could find. It cost me $12. It has no clock, no programming options, no base settings or cleaning functions. Hell, there aren’t even level numbers on the water reservoir tank.
[…] And it’s been running perfect for over 8 months now. I clean it every so often by brewing with a small mixture of vinegar and water. That’s it. […] The points of failure get reduced as well, since the machine is bare-bones. Nothing can break when there is nothing to break…
Reading this (and reading it again today) particularly resonated with me, as I struggle daily to limit my dependencies on technology that can fail, rely too much on charging batteries, or die too soon. I switched from an Apple Watch to a mechanical watch for that reason (one less battery to charge!), and bought a simple nightstand alarm clock that doesn’t need an app, doesn’t have a screen, a Wi-Fi connection, or an unremovable battery.
I like when things work as they are supposed to — crazy, I know — and the simpler the things, the less susceptible to failure they are.
This statement apparently didn’t resonate with decision-makers at Total, the oil company that also operates a lot of filling stations in France, including car wash stations. During the holiday break, I went to wash my car at one of those automatic washers. After parking the car in the right spot, I went to the command centre device thing, and started the operation to order my car wash.
Let’s just say that things turned out for the worse, and two weeks later I still can’t believe this is real.
First of all, I couldn’t order or pay directly on the machine. Not with cash, not with my Visa, not with Apple Pay, not even with simple tokens that one could buy at the gas station. No. I had to order and buy my car wash online, via a smartphone app, that I had to download. Not only that, but I had to create an account, with my personal data, name, address, email… I even had to confirm my freaking phone number to activate the account.
When I finally got to the point of paying for the service that I managed to order through the shitty app, the payment page wasn’t really following best practices. The in-app browser didn’t let me use the autofill feature, so I had to take my wallet out of my jacket, look for the card, and fill out the numbers. Fantastic user experience!
Once I managed to pay for my car wash, it wasn’t over. I had to localise my station to start the actual wash and activate the machinery. On the app, I could either share my location to help me pinpoint where I was on a map, or type the address. Basically they printed a QR code on the terminal to direct users to the URL of the app, but they didn’t use a QR code to let users simply scan it and be automatically located.
Needless to say, I was fuming, which was actually quite handy since the temperature and wind were freezing and the whole operation took a little less than 10 minutes, almost as long as the car wash itself. Good thing that no other car was waiting in line.
How mad is that? How is that legal? Paying for simple services or products that take place right in front of my eyes shouldn’t require the creation of an account and personal data. Imagine going to the grocery store and the cashier says: “This will be 43 euros, this is the QR code where you can download the app, create an account, give us your phone number, fill out your card number, pay, and share your location.”
To me, this was a prime example of enshittification. The obvious answer as to why they are doing this is not to save money on payment terminals: it is for data and retention, so that a few people in their office can get high on spreadsheets and feel like what they are doing is so important.
Screw that. And if you want to know, because that was the sole purpose of the whole affair, no, the wash itself wasn’t even that good. Cherry on the cake, they justify using the app by saying this, you know, as one of the seven supermajor oil companies:
The dematerialisation of Wash cards is part of our efforts to protect the environment and our planet. Using the Wash application saves plastic and physical card components.
I would laugh if it wasn’t so sinister.
During this holiday break, while staying at my mum’s for Christmas, I stumbled upon episode 4 of the 9th season of Columbo — I can’t believe the whole series is not available for streaming in France, in which our dear lieutenant reacts to the increasing price of real estate and ends up saying this:
The world is going to hell with itself, you know that, don’t you?
I didn’t know it when watching it, but this feels like it will be a great catchphrase to use all year long, starting with the car wash experience. I also now just realised that I am writing this post while drinking coffee from my The Onion mug, with the message “Plan to be more positive off to shitty fucking start” printed on it.
Happy New Year everyone.
