10 Things That Should No Longer Exist in 2024 But Somehow Still Have a Place in Society

We like to believe that progress is a straight line up, that we are a little better every year than before, but unfortunately, that’s not always true. How else could you explain the fact that in this modern day and age, we’re still waiting hours on hold, being forced to buy so much of our food in single-use plastics, and wearing baggy jeans that we all thought went out of style years ago? The truth is that sometimes progress is two steps forward and one step back. Want to see what we mean? Check out this list of things by Reddit users that shouldn’t exist in today’s world but somehow still do.

#1: That’s Pretty Inconvenient

We’ve come a long way from when everything was on paper; less than 20 years ago, we were all still paying for everything by writing checks. These days, almost everything, from buying concert tickets to paying bills, can be done online.

But if paying for things online has become so ubiquitous, why are we still paying these massive convenience fees every time? It’s not like this is a brand-new and expensive technology; there’s no reason we’re still paying a premium as though it’s some amazing new privilege that we are paying for. Well, no reason except for corporate greed, of course.

At the risk of sounding a thousand years old, when I was a little kid, we had a dot matrix printer that always sounded like the robot apocalypse and that could print basic text and nothing more. Thankfully, things have advanced phenomenally since then in the printing department.

But just because our printers can now do all sorts of fancy things, like print double-sided and in color and then staple our papers together, doesn’t mean they don’t come with their own set of problems. Somehow, no matter how advanced printers get, they still manage to be incredibly confusing to use and somehow always need driver updates.

Does anyone else remember the days when cell service providers would have commercials showing their coverage maps, and you would look closely at the map to see if your corner of Oklahoma looked like it was going to be covered?

We are way past that, and major cell service providers all provide pretty good coverage of the whole country, theoretically. With that being the case, why are there still so many pockets where, inexplicably, cell service just decides not to work?

Celebrity worship certainly isn’t new; people have been fixated on the rich and famous for as long as there have been rich and famous people to fixate on. But you might think that the modern age, when the Internet and social media have brought celebrities closer to us than ever before, would lessen their allure—familiarity breeds contempt, after all.

But you would be 100% wrong. If anything, people are more fixated on celebrities now that they can follow them on Instagram and find out their favorite pasta recipe and their pre-workout protein shake routine. Go figure.

Here’s something that really feels like a relic from a past age: physical mail. There was probably a day when people would actually look through the advertisements they got in their mailboxes, but these days, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t immediately throw the lot in the trash without looking at it.

Think about how many trees had to die to make that junk. Think about the pollution put in the air by transferring that junk from the sender to the post office to the recipient. Think about the money that is going down the tube because we still get junk mail in our mailboxes.

It seems like we are in a constant conversation about tipping these days. As tipping expectations get more and more out of hand, people are speaking up more and more about how ridiculous it is and wondering if we should just do away with tipping altogether.

Personally, I would absolutely be in favor of paying a little more for my food or service if it meant I didn’t have to tip. I like knowing exactly what I will pay upfront and I’m sick of every business I come across asking me to tip for services that used to just be part of shopping there.

Have you ever been somewhere that has taxes included in the listed price? It is delightful. It is glorious. It is so nice to look at the price tag or menu board and know that the number you see there is exactly the number that you will need to pay. It also makes it way easier if you have a limited amount of money and need to make sure you can pay for whatever you’re buying.

And yet, in most places in America, that is not what happens. The business gives you a price, but you have to remember to add money on top of that. But unless you are some kind of genius human calculator, you won’t know how much that is until you get to the cash register. Why can’t we fix this?

Do you ever think to yourself, “Gee, I wish that I was immersed in the sights and sounds of a major corporation from the 1980s right now”? If so, first, you need a hobby. Second, there’s an easy way to make that happen: just go down to the dusty electronics corner of your local thrift store and buy yourself a fax machine!

There’s nothing that feels more dated and clunky than the sight and sound of a fax machine. I don’t know anyone who has one; I have no idea where to go to use one. And yet, there are still a few lingering holdouts who insist on receiving documents via fax machine. Are they stuck in a time warp somehow?

Here’s an idea I can really get behind. There are some ideas that are so entrenched in our culture and the way we think about the world that it seems like they will never change. But if you actually stop to think about it, we don’t have to do things the way we always have, and there might be benefits to doing something new!

Five-day work weeks have been the norm for longer than any of us have been alive, and many companies cling to them desperately, unwilling to consider any other possibilities. However, studies keep on finding that four-day work weeks make employees happier and healthier and don’t negatively affect productivity. Plus, less commuting is better for the environment! This should be the norm everywhere!

Can we say this one louder for the people in the back? If you are reading this list, you’re probably pretty comfortable with computers. And no wonder, because they have been teaching computer literacy in schools for several decades at this point.

But I still somehow run into people who shrug and say that they can’t do things because they’re “bad at computers.” That’s like being bad at using a can opener or a telephone! They are ubiquitous. We have all been using them constantly for years. There is no reason not to know how to use them at this point