Why Smart Devices are so stupid..
Why are smart devices so fucking stupid nowadays?
Do you remember when you bought a device, took it out of the box, plugged it in, and it just... worked? Yeah, those days are gone. Smart devices nowadays are constantly updating, constantly breaking, constantly spying, and somehow every single update makes the apps that run on them feel stupider than the version before. If you have ever screamed at a television because it needed a software update before it would let you watch anything, this rant is for you. Short version: smart devices aren't broken. They are working exactly as designed. Just not for you.
The update that broke your device at 3 a.m.
Let's start with the single most annoying thing about modern smart devices: the updates. Your phone, your TV, your watch, your thermostat, your washing machine, everything runs software now, and software needs updates. That would be fine if updates actually improved things. Instead, the update arrives at the worst possible moment, takes twenty minutes, and then something that worked perfectly yesterday simply does not work anymore.
Maybe the update kills battery life. Maybe it removes a feature you actually used. Maybe your perfectly good printer suddenly refuses to print because the firmware update decided your third-party ink cartridge is now illegal. And here is the kicker: you can't say no. Updates are mostly forced on you. Decline a few too many times and the app just stops working until you comply. That is not maintenance. That is a hostage situation.
And then there is the update-related breakdown you never see coming. Old devices that worked fine for years get cut off from updates entirely, and the moment support ends, apps start dropping like flies. The hardware is fine. The hardware was always fine. But since the whole thing depends on the manufacturer's goodwill and server park, a device you own can be remotely turned into junk. Your dishwasher used to be a dishwasher. Now it is a subscription away from being a very heavy plastic and metal box.
Apps keep getting stupider with every update
If updates only broke devices occasionally, you could forgive them. But there is a second, sneakier problem: the apps themselves feel like they get dumber with every release. You learn where everything is, and then a redesign moves it all for no reason. A simple three-tab interface becomes eleven menus, an AI assistant you never asked for, a "feed", and a shopping section inside an app whose only job is to turn your lights on and off.
This is not your imagination, and it is not bad luck either. There is a word for it, and the word went mainstream for a reason: enshittification. The term was popularised by writer Cory Doctorow in a November 2022 blog post, and it was named word of the year 2023 by the American Dialect Society. Doctorow described the process like this: "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
That is exactly the lifecycle your apps are living through. Phase one: the app is great, because the company needs you to adopt it. Phase two: the company has you, so your attention, your data and your patience become the product. Ads appear. Features you loved quietly move behind a paywall. The app nags you to enable notifications, to rate it, to invite friends, to try the premium tier. Phase three: the app exists mostly to serve the company's revenue goals, and you are just the obstacle standing between the company and that revenue.
So no, the YouTube app on your smart TV is not worse by accident. The grocery store app did not hide its shopping list behind three taps because a designer thought that was cleaner. Every "update" that makes your life harder makes perfect sense the moment you realise the app was never being optimised for you in the first place.
Your devices are constantly spying on you
Okay, so the devices are annoying and the apps are degrading. But here is the part that should genuinely freak you out: a lot of these devices are watching and listening to you while they do it.
Smart TVs are the worst offenders. Many of them ship with microphones for voice commands and automatic content recognition (ACR), which basically means the TV reports everything you watch back to the manufacturer and, from there, to data brokers. This is not a conspiracy theory. In 2017, Vizio settled with the FTC for 2.2 million dollars after regulators found it had collected second-by-second viewing data from about 11 million televisions without proper consent. Eleven million. And that is just the company that got caught.
Samsung had its own moment in 2015, when its smart TV privacy policy suggested that spoken words near the television could be shared with third parties. After everyone understandably lost their minds, Samsung clarified the wording, but the fact that a television's terms of service even had to address "what happens to things you say near the TV" tells you everything about where we are as a society.
And it is not just TVs. Smart speakers sit in your living room waiting for a wake word. Phones carry a microphone and multiple cameras everywhere you go. Laptops, doorbells, watches, even toys, the modern home is a surveillance network that you paid for, installed yourself, and carry around in your pocket. Even the paranoia-inducing stories that turn out to be exaggerated point at a real truth: these devices could listen, the data they do collect is aggressively monetised, and the consent is buried on page 34 of a terms-of-service document nobody has ever read to the end.
So the next time an update asks for permission to access your microphone "to improve your experience", ask yourself what experience is being improved, and for whom.
Remember when devices just worked?
Here is the thing that really stings. Before the whole smart devices revolution, a device was a device. You pressed the power button. It turned on. It did its one job. Forever.
The old television had a tube and three channels and it outlived two governments. The old washing machine had two knobs and it washed your clothes for twenty years. The old radio, the old landline phone, the old coffee maker, these things were dumb as bricks and loyal as dogs. Dumb tech had a beautiful property: nothing could reach it. No server could shut it down. No update could break it. No CEO could decide your appliance now requires an account.
Was old tech frustrating sometimes? Absolutely. You had to actually get up to change the channel. Remotes got lost. The VCR blinked 12:00 for a decade. But that frustration was honest, mechanical frustration, the tradeoff of a device that belonged entirely to you. The frustration of modern smart devices is a completely different animal. It is artificial, it is deliberate, and it is designed to push you somewhere: toward a newer model, a subscription, an ad, or a data disclosure you never would have agreed to.
That is the difference nobody talks about. Old devices frustrated you because physics is hard. Smart devices frustrate you because a quarterly revenue target is hard.
Every device feels designed to piss you off
Put it all together and you get the real thesis of this rant: it is not that smart devices happen to suck. It is that every single device now feels like it was deliberately engineered to piss you off.
The TV that shows you an ad on the home screen of a television you already bought. The phone that gets slower right around the time the new model launches. The printer that demands original ink. The car that wants a monthly fee for heated seats that are already physically installed in the car you own. The speaker that wakes up to the wrong phrase and orders stuff. The app that worked offline in 2019 but now needs internet, an account, and your date of birth to open your garage door.
None of this is a bug. Every annoyance is a business model. The device is no longer a product you buy and own; it is a storefront, an ad slot, and a data collector that happens to perform its advertised function, occasionally, when the servers are up and your firmware is compliant. The "smart" in smart devices was never about intelligence. It was about giving the manufacturer a permanent remote control over the thing you paid for, plus a permanent window into your living room.
So yeah. The devices spy, the apps decay, the updates break, and the whole ecosystem feels like one long, slow enshittification with a login screen. Being angry about it is not boomer nostalgia. It is a completely rational response to a world where you rent everything, own nothing, and have to click "accept" to make toast.
What you can actually do about it
Ranting is fun, but you can also fight back a little. A few honest options:
Buy dumb when you can. A dumb TV plus a separate streaming stick you can throw away and replace cheaply beats a "smart" TV with a ten-year ad contract. A thermostat with actual buttons still exists. A mechanical washing machine will outlive the app that would have controlled it.
Cut off the data pipeline. Disable automatic content recognition and voice features on any smart TV you already own. Decline microphone permissions that have nothing to do with the app's core job. If a device insists on an internet connection for no functional reason, keep it off your network.
Delay and deny updates when possible. If a device works perfectly, an update is a risk, not a gift. Where auto-updates can be turned off, turn them off, and read what an update actually changes before installing it.
And most importantly: vote with your wallet, loudly. Companies keep pulling this crap because it works. Every time a backlash makes them walk back a stupid decision, that is proof that being an annoying, demanding, unprofitable customer is a legitimate strategy.
FAQ about smart devices getting worse
Why do smart device updates break things that worked fine?
Because updates are not primarily tested for your benefit anymore. They ship on a corporate schedule, bundled with new ads, tracking, monetisation and redesigns, and your specific use case is a rounding error. When the device breaks, you blame the update, but the update was never optimised for keeping your setup working.
What is enshittification?
Enshittification is the process, named by Cory Doctorow, where online products and services get worse over time: first they treat users well to win them, then they degrade the experience to profit from them, then they squeeze everyone to maximise short-term profit. Smart device apps follow this pattern almost religiously.
Are smart devices really spying on us?
Many are, within the limits of their privacy policies, which is the problem, because those limits are extremely broad. Smart TVs with automatic content recognition report what you watch, sometimes in astonishing detail. Devices with microphones collect voice data for "improvement". Regulators have repeatedly caught companies overstepping, with Vizio's 2017 FTC settlement being the most famous example.
Were old devices really better?
In one specific sense, yes: they could not be changed, broken remotely or monitored after you bought them. Old devices were often less convenient and definitely less capable, but they were yours. The failure modes of dumb tech were mechanical and honest. The failure modes of smart tech are corporate.
How do I make my smart devices less annoying?
Disable microphone and content-recognition features you do not use, turn off automatic updates where you safely can, keep non-essential devices off your wifi, prefer devices that work without an account, and buy dumb alternatives whenever they exist. Small acts of resistance, but they add up.
Final thoughts: dumb is the new smart
Smart devices are not stupid because the industry is incompetent. They are stupid because stupid is profitable. Annoying you, nudging you, watching you and breaking on schedule are features, for the people selling the devices, not for the people using them.
So the next time your television demands a firmware update before it shows you the news, or your fridge wants you to accept new terms and conditions so it can keep making ice, take a breath. You are not imagining it. You are not a technophobe. You are just a person who wanted their stuff to work, living in an era where that has quietly become a radical demand.
And honestly? The radars, the washing machines and the tube TVs of the world are sitting there, still working, laughing at us.