What's something you once had a lot of respect for but now have no respect for?

The worshipping of the self-made man and entrepreneurship in popular American culture

I think I was just too young and fashionable, maybe I was one of those guys that saw themselves as a "temporarily embarrassed billionaire"... then got old enough to see through the nonsense

The United States government and the United States citizens.

Growing up I was taught about all these checks and balances. How the government is slow and that's good because it makes sure people get what they really want. Come to find out in just one presidential term, this one guy just executes executive orders left and right and just gets things done.

I thought U.S citizens would vote in their best interests but they would glady vote for a facist who's against their best wishes.

Republicans. When I was a child, slogans like “fiscally responsible”, “family values”, “smaller government “ sounded like good things. Republicans always claimed the moral high ground. But they’ve spent my entire adult life proving it as manipulative bullshit for personal greed and power, holding themselves above the law, the worst in humanity, rising to our current flirt with fascism.

Grown ups.

Liberalism

Google. It was once a good search engine. Now I find myself getting only the most irrelevant results based on my keywords and more often than not an advanced search turns up nothing of value

Corey Doctorow's podcast Understood: Who broke the internet? does an amazing job of explaining this. It's only like 5 episodes and worth everyone's time.
It went downhill when they got rid of search within results, I don't know why they did that
- Me neither! Really frustrates me when companies remove good features for no apparent reason

I took to kindly, although I was not entirely onboard with, the idea of American exceptionalism.

Elon. Turns out he was always a conman and liar.

Google. Do no evil

Nintendo.

Things got worse once Bowser got ahold of the American castle.

The fun dissolved with Iwata and Reggie gone.

The line to far for me was their retroactive bs patents used to attack Palworld. It's one thing to be strict on your own systems, but another to do it to others. 80s Nintendo is back and possibly worse than before.

I haven't played with a switch very much but I think the joysticks are worse than what they made for GameCube. I am under the impression that switch has what amounts to a directional pad underneath a joystick. Like that Gameboy peripheral with the lights, magnifier, and joystick that clips over the D pad. The joystick is there on the switch but output is only an analog 8 directions.
Pardon me if I'm wrong here but what I see with Nintendo is them making bad hardware. I know it's made for kids but even they deserve better. The switch version of any big AAA game that got a switch port is generally really really dumbed down and looks and runs like garbage. I can't wait to hear about Cyberpunk 2077 looking and running like garbage again. 5 years after it came out.
It wasn't Bowser, it was the finance guys that were placed at the head of the company after Satoru Iwata's death.

Neil Gaiman. He poisoned so much...

In 1994 Neil was at a signing at my university campus. It was a big to-do. My friend, a big fan, came for a signing and whispered a few words.
Suddenly Neil is vaulting the table trying to choke the living shit out of my friend. Friend's backpedaling, eyes wide, Gaimancs face a rictus of rage and fury, and the many people jump in and slow it down
Friendo booted, things fall down, minimal mention in the uni rag. Never learned what was said, but now I suspect it was a pretty badly-kept secret for a long time.
- You friend didn't tell you about what was said?
Hu? Oh No, do I want to know?
- Predator.

Humanity.

Hey, I was a fucking kid, OK. I eventually learned.

USA.

You used to be so cool
- A butterfly complaining about change is low key really funny

Religion

Jk Rowling. She was (I think) the only billionaire to ever debillonaire themselves without dying (i.e., she donated so much wealth to charity that she was no longer a billionaire).

But then she decided to dedicate herself to making trans people's lives miserable...

I'm curious which charities she was donating to before she turned into a massive cunt. Cause all she donates to now are hate groups.
- Good question, I never actually looked into it. According to her Wikipedia page:
  She established the Volant Charitable Trust in 2000, and co-founded the charity Lumos in 2005. Rowling's philanthropy centres on medical causes and supporting at-risk women and children. In 2025, Forbes estimated that Rowling's charitable giving exceeded US$200 million. She has also donated to Britain's Labour Party, and opposed Scottish independence and Brexit.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling
Can she just die already? I normally don't wish death on anyone. Just people that do extremely evil things.

Parents (my own)

This was my first thought as soon as I read the question.

A certain elongated muskrat comes to mind. I love space so the thought of a reusable rocket to make space affordable was awesome. I also believe that electric cars are the future, and tesla did make pretty good charging standard and help to "prove" the concept. But now I just hope he somehow winds up dirt poor, and irrelevant. Just oh, my, god

Many moons ago I thought Israel was just defending itself. For two decades now I’ve come to believe they are the problem, and are now committing wanton genocide

Airbnb. I used to think they were a perfect business. Saw a gap in the market, created a decent product, invested in their users (back in the day they would even send a photographer to take good photos of your property).
Unfortunately the consequences turned out to be awful.

Yeah, I'm pretty torn. In my small community (on an island), housing and rent are insanely expensive, and also pretty scarce. There are people who have full time jobs living in tents in the woods or in their cars (in Alaska) not because they can't afford a place to stay, but because there are no places to rent.
It's also a major tourist spot, and the population more than doubles regularly on days during the summer, and for those that fly in, the hotels book up quick. So there's a huge AirBnB market. Which means houses are getting bought up and then set up as AirBnBs instead of renting to residents, so housing becomes even more scarce. So I hate AirBnB.
But.... I just bought a 4 bedroom house, where one of the beds is in a built in 1-bedroom apartment, with its own kitchen and everything. We wanted a 4bedroom house so we could have a guest room for people visiting, as well as just have extra space for us. Well, once I retire, one of our plans is to rent that out as an AirBnB during the times we don't have guests staying. It doesn't deplete housing in the area (we wouldn't be renting it out anyway), and it helps pay our ridiculous mortgage.
So I hate it... but if it's used properly/ethically, I feel like it could be pretty good.
AirBNB would work better if the owner was required to live in the property 160 days out of the year. Where it went wrong was in letting corporations buy up housing and use it to skirt hotel taxes and regulation.
AirBnB is almost directly responsible for the surge of housing prices in my local town, and they should die in a fire.
🌈.°`E N S H I T I F I C A T I O N'°. 🌈

Police

Cops (1989) ruined america, taught us to trust these ass holes and they royally fucked us over.
Not making light of everything before 1989, but even after all that shit, the show painted them in a decent enough light to where people spill their guts and trust them, just because they have a uniform and they took full advantage of us.
- Police propaganda goes way back before Cops (1989). Dragnet started in 1951 and inspired dozens of police procedurals that made cops look like street smart scientists who studied at the intersection of crime and humanity. In reality they are just a disappointment. ACAB

Humanity.

Institutions. Courts. Media. Religion. Law Enforcement. Politicians.

The institutions are captured. The courts, media, and politicians are corrupt. Bought and paid for. Law Enforcement are just class traitors. The enforcement arm of Capital. Protecting the interests of the ruling class and taking a bludgeon to the people. Religion is a tool of control. Used to control the ignorant and guide their ire.

Idk I'm starting to think dystopia began when we figured out agriculture
- Most life eats other life to live. It's been a bad time from the very beginning.
- When aristocracy discovered mercantilism and mutilated it into capitalism.
Ironically this take is entirely self-validating, since this is the primary mechanism for that degradation.

I would have to say organized religion. I grew up in a pretty strict christian home, but as I grew older I began to see how much of what I had been told was just patently false and designed to manipulate and control. I have done a lot (decades worth) of studying and reading and I'm confident that the conclusions I have arrived at are correct. Of course, your mileage may vary.

The US. Believed in the "American Dream", but the more I learned about the country, the more I grew to dislike it. It's all a facade.

And I used to have a lot of respect for old people, but that also changed. They are just as flawed as the rest of us.

Old people who are assholes were probably always assholes. They were once young assholes and got older. Conversely, old people who are good, were probably good people when they were younger, they just got old.
Most people don't stray far from their roots. Few are those who make a meaningful change. Some choose goodness as a goal, some get their asses kicked by life and turn bitter.
I guess the lesson is don't be an asshole. if you are one, work toward being less of one until you aren't one anymore. Try not to let life get you down. If all else fails, drugs.
- I disagree with this as it's a prejudgement with little to no knowledge about anybody's roots, circumstances, history, etc. It categorically puts people into boxes and is the flawed reasoning of racists, anti-semites, homophobes, and so on.
  For example, Islamic terrorists aren't born terrorists. Some of them are born into the wrong family and fed hatred all their lives. Some had to live through hardships you and I can't even begin to imagine surviving. Others are bullied, ostracised, and made feel worthless only to find belonging and recognition in the only group that would listen to them and make them feel seen.
  Ask yourself, if you grew up and had to go through the same things as some people, would you still be the you that typed what you typed?
  Yes, some people have always been assholes and never changed, they do exist. I'm not denying that.
They are just as flawed as the rest of us.
Or even more so! They also know a few social tricks to get what they want. Oh, I've seen it. Lol

Apple, and a number of the other big tech companies as well. Shit used to be easy to use, repair, customize to your liking, etc.

Now they don't want you to be able to fix a damn thing, plus all too many services and features and stuff have gone to the subscription model.

Fuck all with that, give us our stuff back and let us just use what we paid for.

Right To Repair!

You have to go back like 30 years to get to a pro-repair Apple
- More or less yeah. Though back around 2013 or so, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised by how they designed their Mac AIO desktops, they actually were somewhat repair tech friendly.
  The front glass was magnetically attached, so it only took a suction cup or two to start disassembly, and basic screwdrivers to remove the screen and get access to the motherboard, hard drive, RAM, DVD drive, etc.
  And yes you could replace or upgrade parts as necessary, none of this newer soldered on storage shit they do these days.
  I've lost a lot of respect for companies that solder on important parts that should rightfully be fairly easy to replace or upgrade.
  Plus, now the big companies have taken to forcing encryption on the storage devices, effectively locking the drive to the system. Well isn't that just cute for the backup operator that's trying to recover your late grandmother's family photos...
I’m gonna say Tim Cook.
The way he signaled his authority was by sending out an email to the entire company announcing that he was expanding the company's match program for employees who wanted part of their paycheck to go to NGOs. I thought that was a classy way of saying, "I'm in charge." I had a lot of respect for that.
But his leadership with the App Store and regulators has been abysmal. He led Apple to make all the wrong moves, ensuring a (now active) fight with regulators instead of just making some small concessions voluntarily. It was completely unnecessary, but he just couldn't help feeling entitled for Apple to do whatever it wants to make money. I still believe there are people in leadership positions who would choose to do the right thing, but the buck stops with Cook.
Apple might be worthy of my respect again when he's gone.
- Apple have always done what they wanted. In the Jobs era the biggest Apple Store in the world was on Regents Street in London, and Apple paid the local council vast fines each month because Jobs decided that the required illuminated fire exit signs would have ruined the carefully designed interior.

The Internet. Social media in particular.

I used to be a "information wants to be free" pure techno-optimist who thought the availability of data at all times would immediately cause a massive boost in awareness, education and intelligence worldwide.

I was super wrong. It was all a mistake and it should be burnt to the ground. Yes, including this place.

Ive been crashing out thinking about the internet. Its so beautiful in its ideas and so simple in its core design but its grown into something truely horrible. I love the internet and I spend time in the out rim of the internet still finding websites and meeting anonymous stangers but thats dying and the cancerous megalopolis in the centre is thriving and no one seems to care.
Why do 100s of millions of people still use Facebook that site has been outted as a psychological lab countless times. Yet people wre perfectly fine spending their time there.
- Because people don't think about anything that way. Individual action won't make large scale changes.
  That isn't news, either. We just happen to also suck to find ways around that problem, in general.
I was having good time until Smartphones got invented. Letting the masses (morons) get access to instant communication effortlessly and cheap fucked us.
I mean, in a lot of ways the social media takeover is the antithesis to freedom of information. It's all siloed off echo chambers where it used to be free flowing, publicly available, indexable and searchable.
I still believe in the freedom of information goal more than ever, but fighting for it in the post information era is increasingly difficult (and important)
It's the Web 2.0 model of corralling people into walled garden platforms, where they're driven insane. One day people will look back at this time and wonder what we were thinking.

The video game industry. (Indie games are on fire lately, though.)

AA is where it's at now. There's still insanely good games coming out, there just not by companies like EA and Activision anymore.
In some ways I think the good development studios are the same size they've always been, it's just that a new class of mainstream games has risen to profit on the masses. If you ignore those, it's not so bad. At least not until one of the AAA publishers gets their hands on them to ruin the IP and layoff the original devs
- A lot of AA studios have been cramming in a ton of microtransactions still, whereas indie is mostly devoid of it, but it definitely gets a lot better the more A's you remove.
I am screaming at this sentence both internally and externally.

In the past I liked how easy it is when one company offer products to basically everything (i.e. Google), but now that I see the consequences, I'm somewhat disturbed.

Christianity and the Democratic Party.

When did any religion deserve respect?
Sure, respect the person (to a point), but not the belief in fairytales
Same goes for any superstitious woo
- Things are different when you're raised in it.
- Whether you agree with religion or not, religious groups do a lot of good in the world on a daily basis.

Americans.

Hulk Hogan

Romantic relationships as promoted by society. After dating so many different types of men and always being let down, I've decided it's not worth my time.

And after hearing so many stories of cheating partners doing shady shit, breaking people's hearts, perpetrating abuse, gambling life savings away, etc., I've decided it's a bunch of BS that either works for very few people, or you need to seriously compromise and overlook a lot of shit with the average person. And I'm so done with that and I'm also frustrated and jaded.

So now when I see a couple all lovey dovey i see them with derision and I start to wonder how long they have until the inevitable breakup or if one of them is doing some shit on the side.

On average, only 14% of those in a couple say they are not very or not at all satisfied with their relationship with their spouse or partner, while 84% say they are somewhat or very satisfied.
And this
The failure rate for first marriage is roughly 48%, 60% for second and 70% for third marriages source], but at the same time, in 2019 for every 1000 marriages, only 7.6 resulted in divorce, which is the lowest divorce rate in the past 50 years.
So I would not say it is that rare to live happy married life. But it is not like everyone is getting this life. With a hard work I think it is totally possible and is not that rare at all... Although none of those studies give a direct answer on how many happy lifelong relationships there are. One can conclude somewhere between 30-40% of relationships are happy lifelong relationship. And even if this number is lower like 10-20% this is still a very significant number.
When I talk about relationships with my sister she has similar view as you. She can almost never see a truly happy relationship. While I can see it everywhere
It turned out our environments are drastically different. For example she met all of her partners at parties. This is not a general population. While I met my wife in school.
I made most of my friends in school or at work or from being a neighbor (ie owning a house). Most of them are educated and with higher income. If I remember correctly those also have better statistics for relationship success. While my sisters friends are none of that.
I believe it would be wise for you to check if your environment screwed your view too.
- Whoa, that's a very nice reply! Thank you, and thank you for taking it seriously, too. I was being downvoted and I was hoping you hadn't taken the question the wrong way. I'm glad that's not the case because I'm genuinely curious.
  Ah, I should've stated that I'm gay. That's the biggest factor. It feels like it multiplies all those percentages by a way smaller fraction because the dating pool is a puddle. I honestly don't see many people that I like who would be interested in a monogamous relationship because I think queer culture in my country has different priorities, so it feels like it raises the stakes and the pressure every time I give a relationship a go with someone who seems compatible. I've even changed my views to match the culture, but no luck yet.
  And let me just vent this, but my luck has run so ridiculously bad that even the guy who bragged about having had three different 5-year relationships and got me starry-eyed left out that his last one had been abusive for years and tried that shit on me too. These things tend to linger in my mind, y'know? It's rough out there.
I'm in a similar boat on the opposite side of the aisle.
- Oh, interesting, how do you mean?

Other than the usual ACAB and distrust of government.

Probably parents.

I used to think they actually looked out for my interests.

Now I know the harsh reality is that:
No one, not your parents, not your siblings, not even your "best" friends, literally no one will care about you. Its every person for themselves

Aaron Rogers.

Ur m0m.