Every now and sex thú sex thúthen it's nice to be reminded that other people make mistakes, too.
It's this simple truth that, if you've been doing things correctly, has gotten you through the trials and tribulations of the past decade. And, my dearest of friends, fortunately there is one industry in particular that continues to overperform when it comes to making a mess of things.
That would, of course, be the tech sector.
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So lean back, turn on your noise-canceling headphones, and take a moment to revel in the beautiful failures chronicled by this list. Because before you know it, 2020 will be here to make you feel sad all over again.
Hoverboards
Classy. Until it explodes. Credit: Robert Alexander / getty The rise of hoverboards can be traced back to 2015.
It was that fateful year, at CES, that the IO Hawk took the trade show by storm. Before everyone knew what was happening, the oddly named devices were seemingly everywhere, promising to usher in a bright, new future of mobility.
However, even the unbridled joy gleaned from watching people fall off the two-wheeled fire hazards failed to balance out the fact that these things were dangerous.
Like, super dangerous. Faulty hoverboards had a tendency to burst into flames and people died as a result. In 2017, two children perished following a fire started by one such poorly made novelty device.
Don't hate. You've done this, too. Credit: Alexander Spatari / Getty Images Instagram was little more than a photo-sharing app when it launched in October of 2010. Oh, how the times have changed.
Now, owned by Facebook, the immensely popular social media platform is known as much for its role in election interference as its ability to propel certain types of houseplants and ash ponds to prominence.
Like its Mark Zuckerberg-spawned big brother, Instagram both feeds on and births into creation the content needed for surveillance capitalism to thrive. The app is a net negative, and we are all worse off for it.
It's also given us all kinds of rather unpleasant gifts — think propping up WiFi truthers and mainstreaming the concept of the "personal brand" — that we'd rather return unopened.
Google Glass
Yah. That's the look you're going for ... Credit: NurPhoto via Getty Images Remember these things?
In addition to spawning the delightful term "glasshole," Google Glass displayed a small image in front of a user's eye. The idea was a sort of mobile, heads-up display that was connected to a smartphone.
Google promised anyone and everyone who would listen that this face computer was going to change the game. However, even before these abominations were sold to "Glass Explorers" at the ridiculous price of $1,500, the internet realized they were dumb as all hell.
That, plus the super creepy and invasive nature of the front-facing camera, was enough to tank what amounted to an overhyped toy. And, yes, an enterprise edition still exists, but even Google admitted it screwed things up the first time around.
The Facebook phone
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The Facebook phone, or, more precisely, the Facebook phone mobile operating system, crashed and burned almost immediately.
Unveiled in 2013, Mark Zuckerberg promised the $99 device would "turn your Android phone into a great social device."
It didn't exactly work out that way. Instead, shortly after it went on sale, the price dropped to 99 cents. The operating system was called out as mediocre, and early adopters complained that it was counterintuitive and hard to — of all things — place a phone call.
By 2014, the New York Timesreported that Facebook had disbanded the engineering team working on the mobile OS.
People back then perhaps thought better of letting Facebook on their phones. Toward the end of the decade, its seems we've started to come full circle.
ICOs
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Ah, the initial coin offering.
Known now as a frequent refuge of scammers and crooks, the first ICOs were offered way back in 2013. The premise was more or less simple: A company in the blockchain space would crowdsource funds through the poorly regulated sale of digital tokens. Those tokens, the logic went, would be an integral part of the company in question's business and thus have some sort of value at a later date.
Except it didn't always work out that way. A 2018 study found that an unsurprising 80 percent of the ICOs in 2017 were, in fact, scams. We're sure the 2020s will come up with some even wilder shit than ICOs, but that doesn't mean we have to keep the shady fundraising tool around in the meantime.
Smart speakers
Bye, Google. Credit: ROBYN BECK / AFP via Getty Images Smart speakers are the tech equivalent of that one frenemy who constantly stabs you in the back.
You may believe for some unfathomable reason that your Google Home or Amazon Echo, released in 2016 and 2014, respectively, is a great piece of technology that adds to the rich texture of your life. That evaluation, however, likely doesn't take into account all that those devices take from you.
Like, for example, your privacy. Remember when over 1,000 Google Home recordings leaked? Or, perhaps, when news broke that real humans were listening to and laughing at your Amazon Alexa recordings?
Unfortunately, these tragedies are only growing in popularity. That doesn't mean, though, we have to give them a pass.
Amazon Prime one-day shipping
Too fast, too furious. Credit: INA FASSBENDER / AFP via Getty Images Everyone loves getting stuff quickly. Acknowledging the human cost of that speed? Well, not so much.
Amazon launched free one-day shipping for Prime members in June of this year, and while the convenience is undeniable, so is the suffering experienced by Amazon warehouse employees and contract drivers.
The next time something shows up at your door in Prime packaging, picture the delivery driver peeing in a bottle while sitting in a truck immediately prior. Or, if that image is too graphic for you, maybe call to mind the Amazon warehouse workers striking to protest "inhumane conditions."
To make matters worse, the ongoing implementation of robots — designed to increase efficiency — at Amazon warehouses might actually reduceworker safety. So let's leave this innovation in the rearview mirror as we progress to the bold and daring world of the next decade.
Now, having safely tasted the failings of others from a distance, don't you feel better?
Awesome! Now please get back to worrying about the near extinction of koalas, the against-all-odds measles comeback, and the simultaneous acidification and warming of the world's oceans. Do so while you still can because come 2030, those concerns may seem rather quaint.
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