Have you ever heard the expression, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Well, that expression is famous for a reason. Greatness is not a never-ending upward slope, but a delicate balance on the peak of a mountaintop which at any moment may tip and fall down the hill. These companies took their products on a downward sleigh ride.
u/rambos_left_bicep asked:
What perfectly good product was made worse when they "improved" it?
Here were some of those answers.
They Are Decidedly Not Sorry
Giphy
The board game Sorry. Used to love sorrying my opponent and getting that sweet win at long last. Got it for my sister for Christmas and apparently now there's only 3 pawns and the cards are all way better. Heck you can get out of start with any card so a sorry doesn't hurt at all.
It Ain't Magic No More
Citrus Magic discs. For anyone unfamiliar with them, they're cheap little scented discs that you can get at the grocery store with a sticker that covers the top. The disc is about 1 to 2 inches thick and has a scented wax type material inside.
The old Citrus Magic discs (the white ones) were SUPER potent. Got a small bathroom with no ventilation? Get a Citrus Magic disc, peel the sticker off it and stick that bad boy on the back of the toilet! Your bathroom will reek of citrus for DAYS!
Now they redesigned them and added a couple other scents. The citrus scent comes in this awful avocado green color and has no where near the potency the old ones had. In fact, it's barely even scented at all. Definitely high up on the list of disappointing sh*t in my life.
Anyway, that concludes my rant about Citrus Magic discs. Hope you enjoyed yourself. I didn't.
Rubber Teeth
This one's kinda obscure.
In Taiwan, there was this toothpaste called "Black Man's Toothpaste." Originally, the toothpaste was actually really good, having a refreshing and slightly sweet minty taste. But then they redid the formula and the new taste is mint plus this really nasty chemical/rubber taste.
The End Of An Era
Yahoo. They f*cked up the entire website. Answers and games were both good ways to kill time, they remodeled it and I never went back.
For those asking about how Answers changed, once upon a time Answers was this clean green user friendly interface. It was easy to navigate, wasn't cluttered and just simple. They remodeled it, took the green away and changed the structure and view of the page. It was a cluttered, ad filled mess that made little sense. I tried it for one day and said goodbye to my years on answers with Top Contributor status and never went back.
Mmm, Mmm, ...Not So Good
Giphy
Cheez Whiz was reformulated so it would melt easier in the microwave oven. But that changed the flavor and texture, and it's never been as good as before the switch.
Campbell's condensed soups have all had their recipes changed. Now the chicken noodle one has little or no chunks of chicken in it, and the broth tastes like water that rolled by a chicken once. Yech.
Cardboard's For Kids
About every single cereal that I remember from my childhood has been "improved" and cost-optimized to taste like over-sweetened cardboard.
For those who think it is just my palate changing preferences, there's lots of examples where businesses have been swapping ingredients to cut costs.
They have also responded to public pressures to remove artificial ingredients and colors, and people hate it because it changes the taste.
[Honeycomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb_(cereal))
The Reason Reddit Exists
I was an early employee at Digg through nearly the end so I can speak to this. Digg V3 was losing evermore traffic to Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Staying the same was not an option. At that inflection point in particular, Twitter was very hot and the idea of 'following' people was thought to be the way forward. When V4 was mocked up and beta testers were let in the engagement was actually really quite good - better than V3 for sure. By the end we had opened beta to I think 40K people and the feedback was encouraging.
A big problem we had in V3 was always flirting with near write-saturation of our databases (reaching the limit at which we could write data to the single machine master) so for V4 we decided to switch to Cassandra which is "highly writable" (can write to many machines) and wouldn't have that problem. Cassandra was very new and not yet tested at the levels of Digg and sadly when V4 launched it completely fell apart. The dev or ops teams had very little sleep for about 4 days as we tried everything possible to mitigate the problems. We eventually did, but the damage was done.
While it's easy to say 'boy, you guys did something stupid' it only looks that way because from the outside you don't know that things were trending downwards and we had to make a major technical change (even if we stayed on V3) if the site was going to grow. You can argue the changes for V4 were ultimately what the public did not want, but again, many of those changes were made specifically based on user feedback and an extensive beta. There was a whole team of Product people trying to give the public what they were asking for.
If I could mention one thing that I think the uppermost management did wrong (likely driven by the investors) was to try and make Digg the next CNN (in terms of being a large media company) and not allowing 'self posts' (like Reddit does) which makes it more of a forum system. There were those of us that thought we should do that, but honestly there wasn't likely to be any money in it (see how Reddit struggles) and at that point it did seem like you could have a user-driven wisdom of the crowds media company which would compete with the big guys. Of course it's easy to look back and see that was the wrong way to go, but no one knew for sure then...
I Can't Believe It's Not Bubbles
F*cking scrubbing bubbles bathroom cleaner. Not only are the containers smaller, but you have to spray for a goddamn hour before the foam comes out. And now I actually have to scrub the bathtub when I clean it, IVE NEVER HAD TO DO THAT WITH THE OLD SPRAY, THE DIRT JUST CAME OFF
I don't want your new citrus scent I want my old bathroom cleaner that f*cking worked.
Edit: For those seeking an alternative; Clorox bleach, Kaboom, Melamine foam (had to look this up), and Comet liquid or powder are all legit. Also u/F*ckMississippi, a true intellectual, recommends using a cheap broom to stand and scrub your tub instead of bending over to do so.
The Hallmark Of Puzzle Games
Tetris on the original Nintendo Game Boy.
I think I've tried all of the iPhone variants of Tetris, web versions, and nothing comes close to replicating the feel of the original.
On a smartphone, it doesn't help that there are no hardware buttons. Tapping on the screen obviously will never feel the same.
Oh, and the Game Boy never popped up and asked me to pay for boosters with fake in-game currency.
FM To Funeral
Giphy
Car radios. Hear me out.
About a year ago, we got a trailblazer, early 2000's model. Good SUV, I got no complaints, except for the f*cking car radio the previous owner installed. Everybody was going on and on about how this radio is a great, top of the line, brand new radio. Its sh*t. Want to know why?
This f*cking radio has a touch screen. There are no knobs that control it. Want to increase the volume? Touch screen. Change the channel? Touch screen. Switch to CD player? Touch screen. Want to preset a radio channel so you can flip to it without searching the channels? Touch screen.
You know what you can't do while driving? LOOK DOWN AT A F*CKING TOUCH SCREEN. The entire screen feels the same, there's no way for me to non-visually orient myself to figure out what does what. If I want to turn up the volume, I have to look down. If I want to change the channel, I have to look down. If I want to do ANYTHING with this f*cking radio, I have to look down. If I turn on the radio and I don't like what i'm hearing, I have to ask the passenger to fix it because I can't without risking my life and the lives of everyone on the road. and If there is no passenger? I have to wait for a red light, or at least a stop sign. I live in Kentucky. Do you know how often I drive on LOOOOOOOOOONG stretches of roads with NO STOPS? ALL THE F*CKING TIME.
RADIOS WERE FINE. THEY WERE FINE WITH KNOBS AND BUTTONS.
Nobody needed to reinvent the f*cking wheel! Touch screens aren't some be-all end-all technological improvement that makes our lives better. Just give me a f*cking radio that doesn't put me in mortal danger!
What could possibly go wrong?
It turns out there are so many variables that can contribute to making the bride and groom's celebration a major matrimonial miss.
Curious to hear examples of weddings gone wrong, Redditor lolf**kno asked:
"Those who have been to a ruined wedding, what happened?"
Dramatic brawls and speeches plagued these weddings.
Catty Attendees And Booze
"Very beautiful wedding in a huge barn at this apple orchard. They must have spent a ton of money on the decorations and catering because it looked like something out of a magazine. The ceremony was great, the flower girl did her thing, the vows got everyone choked up. Everything seemed to be going well. Not even 15 minutes into the reception the mothers of the bride and groom getting into a full out brawl, hair pulling, red wine being thrown. Their sons jump in to defend their honor, chairs start being throw, tables are flipped, parents are grabbing children and running for their lives."
"​The bride and groom are horrified and leave immediately and head back their honeymoon suite. My fiancé and I left after this as well but we heard from some other friends that most people ended up staying and getting wasted at the open bar on the bride and groom's dime. Apparently, the fight started because one of the groom's sister complimented the bride's grandmother's dress. The bride's mom thought she was being sarcastic and called her a b*tch, then the drama ensued. Mind you they had all been pregaming the wedding pretty hard."
– AdmiralWackbar
Playing For The Drunk Uncle
"I played a wedding where as we started playing the set, everyone ran outside and nobody was to be seen for the rest of the night."
"I originally assumed it was because nobody liked us but the bride came in afterwards and said there was a huge fight involving multiple members of both families and everyone basically went home upset, injured or in a police van."
"We couldn't stop playing since we were payed and it was our job, and the only person watching was the drunk uncle dancing on his own asking for requests we didn't know."
– TornApartByLisa
Maid Of Honor Speech Goes Off The Rails
"Was a guest of friend of the bride, did not know anyone attending. Very expensive over the top place, several hundred guests of this very Italian wedding. Maid of honor grabs mic at the cocktail hour begins her speech, rambling, drunk. Quickly devolves to stating the recently deceased mother of the bride was against this wedding and that's basically what killed her. Plus Vinny will never give up sex workers. She is tackled by several people and dragged away."
"The happy couple is separated and divorced within a year."
– Rocky1268
This is what happens when bad luck crashes weddings.
Tumbling Into The Sunset
"I work at a golf course with a lot of history behind it. We do wedding venues inside the clubhouse and the actual ceremony is held outside by the historic water fountain and large pond."
"First problem was the weather. I live in the high desert and it was very warm. A solid 90 degrees that day and it was also pretty windy. So everyone's outside, no umbrellas, no ezups."
"The next problem, and probably the worst, was the golf cart incident. The bride and groom wanted to 'ride into the sunset' on one of our golf carts. Drive around a little bit on the golf course. To be fair, it is beautiful on the course during sunset. However the cart had somehow gotten a nail in the tire, tire went flat, battery on the cart went crazy and the cart ended up freaking out. It came to an complete stop from 15mph to zero. The wheels and mechanisms locked up, almost seizing. Both the bride and groom (fairly overweight mind you) both fell out and rolled over a few times. They were totally okay, just a few bruises and perhaps a bruised ego or two. So retrieving that cart was fun."
"And last but not least, the power inside the clubhouse went out to do the high winds. There was no after party available. Only the cake was cut, hardly any food was given out. Yeah, not a great day to cover for someone on your day off."
– Itsallover_
Foggy Memory
"I was not born yet, but my parents rented the observation deck on the Hancock building in Boston for their reception. Tallest building in the city, beautiful view. My dad pored over historic weather charts to figure out what day was statistically most likely to be nice out. Day of the wedding comes and of course, thick fog unlike anything they'd ever seen before. Couldn't see a thing out the windows of the room they had picked specifically for the view."
"Worked out well though, they were happily married for nearly 30 years before cancer took my dad's life a few years ago."
"There's one other funny anecdote from that wedding: The wedding was held in Kings Chapel, which is an incredibly historic church here in downtown Boston that's somewhat of a major tourist attraction. To close that on a weekend afternoon for a wedding, it turns out, was not very expensive. The tourists waiting outside to see the church didn't know that, though, and someone started the rumor that my parents were incredibly wealthy, maybe even Kennedys. As a result, there were tons of people taking photos of them when they left the ceremony. Not sure if any of them ever figured out that my parents were most certainly not rich or famous."
– mimicthefrench
Morbid Surprise
"I was best man at my sister in laws wedding (stepped in for the brother of the groom, that's another story entirely)."
"For a whole year of planning all the bride (SIL) wanted was a dove release while they said handwritten vows to each other. Very small, non denominational (most of the family are atheist anyway) wedding."
"Day arrives (early summer) and something is off with the bird handlers. They show up a bit late and are sourcing help from the wedding party to get everything in line. When the time comes to say their vows I help the handler carry the chest with the doves in it over to what is to be the altar where the bride and groom are standing."
"Vows are just about wrapping up and the handler gives ME the signal to open the chest. I open it and see 20-30 DEAD DOVES IN THE CRATE!!!! I immediately close it to try and limit who knows what happened. Too late. The look of horror on the bride's was all that was needed. We spent the next few hours trying to cheer everyone up but by the end of the reception the entire wedding party had organized and filed animal cruelty complaints on the handler. It was all anyone could focus on."
Tragic losses unfortunately befell leading up to or at a couple's nuptials.
The Wedding Guest Who Left Too Soon
"When I was 6 or 7 I went to a cousin's wedding. Everything was fabulous for little me, so much sugar everywhere, basically heaven. The reception was in a big community center that was reserved for the occasion. Went to the girls' bathroom, passing by the men's room to see my uncle on the floor. Went back to the main room to tell my dad my uncle was looking weird. Well, uncle had a stroke and had died."
"The bride spent the rest of the afternoon crying, and everyone except close family left."
"Bright side is the mariage is still going strong 20 years later, despite what happened that day."
– DecadentOrange
A Terminal Diagnosis
"Leading up to my friends wedding his father had been battling cancer after a terminal diagnosis. And it was touch and go whether he would be well enough to attend the wedding, in the end he was too unwell to attend despite wishing that he could."
"Just as we got to the wedding reception my friend was informed that his father had just passed away. It was devastating."
– boatson25
Wedding Crashers
"Happened to my classmate. He is successful middle level manager, divorced, about 35yo or so. Found a girl of his dreams but from a provincial poor town. The girl insisted to have the wedding in her town to show off her 'success.' The wedding is crashed by her old friends including male friends who are not that sophisticated and have some tense feelings towards the successful groom from the city. Somebody starts a fight in the middle of wedding, groom is trying to stop it and got stabbed in the back. Died right there. And he was my classmate."
– anarchyinuk
​An Unfortunate Trespassing
"The wedding was at a state park that's famous for its giant gorge/waterfall. I don't know whose idea this was, but someone suggested a photo overlooking this gorge and everybody was game. The wedding party went around a stone security barrier and the maid of honor literally fell off the cliff to her death. It was like 500+ feet."
– SingzJazz
With a lot riding on a wedding to go off without a hitch, the mounting pressure is one where something is surely to buckle.
And because wedding guests are usually inebriated and high on the buzz of celebration, they throw caution to the wind and make some choices they wouldn't make under normal circumstances.
People's ill-advised actions can have regretful consequences, but no one expects death to be an outcome.
Fortunately, the weddings I've attended or heard about from friends were not as catastrophic as the anecdotes mentioned above.
While the Redditors' stories are sorrowful, it gives me a sense of relief these devastating examples are rare occurrences.
Have we met? That is an actual question I asked a gift giver once. (Who shall rename nameless) Football tickets. FOOTBALL TICKETS?! Who? What? I can't.
Looks Familiar
Broad City Wow GIF by Comedy CentralGiphy"My own scarf. Yes, that's right, my mother went into my room took my only scarf, wrapped it and gave it to me like it was a new scarf."
Devastation!
"Thought I was getting a bike for my 15th birthday but my foster parents announced that they were sending me to a group home after living with them for 11 years. Devastation! That place was a wake up call. More independence then at my foster home but those kids had it really really bad, 12 year old heroine addicts, abuse... what the entire hell! I hurried up, graduated from high school at 16 and got the hell out of that place. I turned out ok, work in the legal field, live in Las Vegas. I did forgive my foster parents before they died."
The Forgotten One
"My brother and I worked for a farmer one summer, and he paid us with a used car. At the end of the next year, my brother graduated high school, so my parents paid me out for my half of the car, and that was his graduation gift. I gave them all a big discount compared to what it was worth. So like $500 for my share of a $2500 car."
"2 years later, and I needed $50 for some graduation fees, so I borrowed it from my mom until I could get to the bank. (Before mobile banking and ATMs everywhere.) Later, when my mom is telling me they invited all their friends over for a 'graduation' party, I asked if they had gotten a gift for me. "Well I gave you fifty bucks."
"I paid it back the next day, and she didn't blink. The 'graduation party' was just my parents friends, who said congratulations to me, but it wasn't really for me. A few years later, my little sister graduated, she got a car. They bought a used car for her, and our other little sister got the same when she graduated. My parents are mostly nice, and I never felt like they singled me out at birthdays or anything. Just my graduation seemed like I turned invisible."
Office Party Fail
"HR complaint from two subordinates fighting over how to throw me a surprise birthday party."
- BBoySlim
"I've never worked in an office environment, but the stories I've heard of people being required to buy a cake for the whole office and to celebrate their birthday with their coworkers would be enough to keep me in blue collar work for life, were it not for the fact that I love being active and working with my hands and could never sit at a desk all day anyway."
Basics
law school finals GIFGiphy"My Asian mom's gift was "no extra Kumon homework after school homework" so my birthday gift was that I didn't get extra homework from her."
Regifting is trash behavior. Do better. I'd rather you just say I forgot. Or... I just don't care for that much. But regifting? No.
season 4 lint roller GIF by Veep HBOUnlucky 13
"Stomach flu and my first ever period, at the same time. I think it was my 13th birthday."
- kelpself
"Omg, exact same story for me. It was my 13th birthday and my family took us kids to visit our relatives in Subsaharan Africa for the first time. I was sick, jetlagged, overheated and riding down a bumpy road in a Jeep driven by my dad in the complete darkness. We had just eaten at a restaurant where I found a giant scarab beetle in the bottom of my soup bowl. I have flashbacks to this day."
Lazy Thoughts...
"My grandparents have been gifting me (and my brother) the same set of three vice grips for almost 10 years. Collectively we have 60 vice grips. I don't know if they bought a pallet of them, or where they are coming from. GET A GRIP GRANDMA!"
"I had a friend who's father was famous for doing Christmas shopping at the last minute. One year she complained that she went downstairs on Christmas morning and found, sticking out of her stocking, a spatula. Her birthday was a few days after telling that story, so myself and her friends all decided to get together and get her spatulas for her birthday, as a gag gift."
"Well, when it was our birthdays she retaliated. Which lead to a counter-offensive. And soon a new tradition was formed. And guys, I have so many spatulas now. Everything from dollar store cheap plastic, to hand-carved spatulas, a golden spatula, and even a replica of the famous Malaysian fighting spatula."
"I've got seasonal spatulas. As in, today it's time to pack away the Christmas spatulas and bring out the heart-shaped Valentine's day ones, followed by the bunny-shaped Easter ones. We've also been passing around this clip from the Weird Al Yankovic movie UHF. "Spatula City, we sell spatulas, and that's all!"
Their ultimate whack-a-doo move...
"A pair of homemade custom pajamas. Only problem was that they weren't made yet. It was just the fabric and a promise to make them for me. I had to give the fabric back and I never got the pajamas."
"Holy cow my parents do crap like this. It's so freaking weird. Their ultimate whack-a-doo move was to give my wife and I a few acres of their property."
"Nothing legal just at our wedding they gave us a card that basically said 'have some land.' When the dust settled I asked what they thought we would do with it, they said build a home. I said ok, gonna need legal ownership for like building a house. They said sure we will get right on that. Then they decide to sell out and retire and never mentioned our wedding 'gift' again."
Gross...
Disgusted Steve Carell GIFGiphy"My grandma got me a hairbrush with a plastic horse head handle. The horse head was all chipped up and there was hair in the brush."
Bummer...
"My Godfather sent me a Birthday card each year which said, he paid 100 bucks to a bank account which I was supposed to get, when 16yo. He then got into alcohol, used all the money and died."
Oh for God sake, why even bother giving anything at all? Lint rollers, used brushes, homemade pjs... y'all ever hear of a gift card? Just put five bucks on it and call it a day. You can't hide cheap, so stop trying.
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I definitely wouldn't turn down an excursion to AREA 51. I'd like to poke around and get a sense of the place. I've never personally been up close and face to face with a "non-Earther." Not sure I'd like to be...
TV Truth
x files monkey pee GIF by The X-FilesGiphy"UFOs/Aliens are a cover for all of the secret projects that the government is working on. Actually stole that from the X files."
Birth
"How human birth parallels alien abductions:
- Babies are taken from their home (womb)
- They still developing sight, so they see bright lights and grey figures.
- They hear an "alien" language they don't understand.
- They suddenly feel cold after leaving their womb.
- They are in a surgery room being poked with tons of instruments.
Long story short: some people suggest that abductions are just people who had memories of their birth."
In the Mind
"I just don't think anyone will ever see this. But I think that UFO's are the projection of our unconscious collective mind. Everything that exists in reality, also exists, in our immaterial mind. Is it possible that the insides of our mind are also just one drop in the ocean of consciousness... and together we create the material reality were in, simply by experiencing it in a real way, inside-out through our senses."
Flyover...
"My father was an aircraft mechanic and fabricator for test and spy aircraft for the USAF. He spent 75-85 working with test aircraft. He said that when they were going to do a test, that could possibly be seen by the public, they would make a betting pool on how many UFO reports local authorities and flight towers received."
Under the Sea
sci-fi ufo GIFGiphy"I like the idea that some UFOs aren't machines. Instead they are some sort of Upper-Atmosphere Jellyfish. I found the issue of Fortean Times that had this article. Here's the cover: http://ft.gjovaag.com/q/images/a/ae/FT291.jpg"
- BigD1970
Interesting. There are some ideas we can look into. None of it proof, but possibilities. There are certainly plenty of future film ideas.
Like 2012...
"We are like that un contacted tribe and everyone agrees not to bother us."
"I've heard it explained from a channel (idk if you know what channeling is) kinda like this. First of all, we as a species tend to freak out, shoot first and ask questions later. Most humans would have a literal psychotic break. You have to believe in vibrational energy as it relates to our consciousness."
"The aliens (certain ones) are at such a higher level that it would be jarring for us to come in close contact with. We are slowly getting there but it's a process. Like 2012, end of the Mayan calendar, wasn't the end of the world it was the end of an energy cycle that we as the human race had never made it past before."
"Previous civilizations have been destroyed or destroyed themselves before they got this far. We passed a point where we are very unlike to destroy ourselves anymore. This doesn't mean we won't see some real bad hardships yet but we will keep progressing."
- falecf4
"train your eyes"
Dancing GIFGiphy"I was a firm believer in t em when I was in high school and kept googling theories and info in my spare time and during my study halls. They said their bodies were so lightweight or something that the reason why you can't see the evidence is that they disintegrate before hitting the ground."
"And then LOL it was so funny, some people would swear you could "train your eyes" to see rods... HhhahAHAHAHA. Like there were these experts. Video showed him walking around with a serious face, then pointing. And he's like, "that was one just there." "You can't see them, you have to be used to them... like me."
"I've spent many years immersed into hunting them finding them. That's why I can see them." And then one day China, who loves occult stuff, had like a lab that set up a nighttime camera to capture footage of rods at night... then realized they were normal bugs at overexposure. lol"
Lurking
"The Dark Forest theory. Basically the theory that the reason we haven't made contact is because all the other civilized life in the universe/galaxy knows not to broadcast their location. They've learned that there's something awful or predatory lurking in the dark forest of our galaxy, and that it's better if they keep to themselves."
Unknowns...
"That the universe is so vast that we haven't been discovered yet."
- neoastic
"This makes sense to me because traversing the distance to or from even our our stellar neighbors would require technology that is not known to us now or likely to be known by us anytime soon if it's even possible at all. To assume without evidence that aliens could possess this technology and have visited us does not meet my skeptical standards."
- KZED73
Back and Forth
back to the future great scott GIFGiphy"Time travel exists, and UFO sightings are actually future humans coming back to our time. That is why they are so discreet, and never openly make contact."
I hope time travel exists. Now that I'm onboard for. If aliens do exist... just come on out guys. We could probably use your help.
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