I would love to really understand if I will ever change my outlook now. Until 2019/2020 I was super into tech, gadgets, and keeping up with trends.

At some point in the last 5-6 years, I have pretty much adopted an opt-out view on tech.

I just don't care anymore, and I don't think it is because I got older... I got into tech in my mid/late 20s so I wasn't a born nerd like most of you guys tinkering with stuff since childhood.

The rate as products/services enshittify has intensified, and most products/services I use have so many issues that require workarounds, hacks, or just dealing with terrible UX.

I used to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on tech back then, like the latest stuff both software and hardware.

These days, I just use whatever free smartphone I get from Verizon for 2-3 years. When I look at old photos I can't really tell the difference between photos from my iPhone 7 and my iPhone 15 or whatever (I don't even know the model).

I bought a used M1 Max for $950 and I'm still using that, and I feel like this will work for me for another 3-5 years. I still use my beefy gaming/workstation with a 5950x and 128gb ram. I used to drop like $5k on a new mac..

I used to have Teslas and cool cars, I sold them all and just walk. I bought better shoes instead.

My last home was filled with smart home tech and other stuff, now I live in a completely analog old home which is nice (and much smaller!).

The only subscriptions I have now are Prime and Youtube.

I've tinkered enough with AI with 1b plus tokens spent to build loads of cool stuff, but if I'm being totally honest I feel like I now know its limitations and benefits. I don't really find it that interesting anymore because it sucks ass at image generation (what I actually want, regardless of # of iterations and time spent), reliably organizing notes, and stuff like that. It is great as a code slave but that is again boring when it doesn't work..

So what's next? Or do I just opt-out completely at some point like I've already started?

user:	AkiraHsieh
created:	April 9, 2026
karma:	1
about:	Former automotive journalist. Building decision support tools.