Redditor Reeceqld wanted to discuss some of life's biggest flops, so they asked:
"What was supposed to be 'The Next Big Thing,' but totally flopped and tanked?"
Farewell
iphone GIF by Product HuntGiphy"Microsoft held a literal funeral procession for the iPhone when they introduced the Windows Phone."
KaityKat117
"As someone who's worked as a software engineer since the mid-1980s, an industry where rapid change is the norm, one thing has remained the same: Apple is doomed. Any minute now."
UlrichZauber
Movie Fail
"Universal Picture's 'Dark Universe.'"
"The Mummy with Tom Cruise was supposed to start a whole line of movies, but when that one died it took the rest with it."
doowgad1
"The real tragedy is that a Dark Universe is not a bad idea. Various Universal monsters exist in the same universe? Sign me up! However, it played more like an action film than horror, because Tom Cruise cannot be in anything other than an action movie. We might have gotten Javier Bardem Frankenstein’s Monster, that is a perfect casting right there."
ChiefsHat
Negative
"Google+ was supposed to topple Facebook."
Regnes
"This was one of the worst product launches of all time. They had like one week where everyone was super excited about it and wanted to try it and they limited it to invite-only. Very few people could get in. By the time they opened it up to everyone, nobody cared anymore."
PMMeUrHopesNDreams
Never taken off...
"3D TV. I remember those being sold somewhere when we had to buy a couch, and accidentally renting the 3D version of a movie, but it never took off."
Stupid-ForYou
"This isn't anything new. The major issue seems to be that it gives a certain amount of people a headache or they find it otherwise uncomfortable. Add to that the need for the glasses even in the current iteration and you can start to see where there's an accessibility issue too."
NativeMasshole
Get Turkey
"About 25 years ago, they thought ostrich meat would be as popular as chicken."
momobeth
Chicken Nuggets Loop GIFScooped Away
ice cream GIFGiphy"Are Dippin' Dots still the ice cream of the future?"
The4StringSamurai
"Well, they're definitely not the ice cream of the present."
teh_maxh
Hot Wheels
"Segway."
No_Firefighter9295
"They completely underestimated how much we design cities for cars (especially in America) and how unwilling anyone is to change this."
"Look at the 15-minute cities concept. All these people are claiming isn't about population control. Can't even get pedestrians, bicycles, and cars to play nice with each other, let alone something like a Segway. Which is a shame, because if we designed cities for bikes, and segways, we might end up with something quite interesting and useful."
cobarbob
Redundant
"Quibi. It’s like they forgot that we already all had YouTube…"
Dubz1781
"I got the 3-month trial, and it was really weak. I like the idea of 10-minute shows with a new episode a day, I often watch movies I've seen before that way. But it's impossible to deny nobody was asking for it. And the dramas didn't feel like serials, it felt like awkwardly short full episodes, complete with characters standing around reminding the audience of what happened last time, which I'd just watched."
"The reality shows felt like 2 minutes stretched painfully to 10. So yeah, weird concept, the shows didn't really meet the concept anyway, and oh yeah all of the ideas were really half-baked. Here's a horror show set in different states, with legends we just kind of made up. Idris Elba competes with a NASCAR driver to do stunts basically invented for NASCAR drivers. Anna Kendrick made friends with her ex-boyfriend's sentient sex doll."
Maninhartsford
Get a Honda
"The Tata Nano. The company set out to build the lowest price new car in the world, and it succeeded. Unfortunately, newly middle-class Indian families didn’t want the stigma of owning the world’s cheapest new car, so sales never came anywhere close to expectations."
JournalofFailure
"Not a complete failure. It failed because the new chairman of the Tata group didn't see its potential and cash revenue. This led to a boardroom coup with an earlier chairman which led to disclosure that the car was not doing that great. This led to people not wanting nano car and subsequently, it stopped manufacturing in a few years."
jeetendraprasad
Big Fail
New York Yankees Reaction GIF by MLBGiphy"Lytro. It was a light-field camera that allowed you to change a picture's point of focus after taking the image. It had a cool design and neat features capturing an Apple-like aesthetic of form and function. Huge failure but I was obsessed with them for a while."
SchnifTheseFingers
I can't remember half of these things.
So that should tell you everything.
Do you have any to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor LineOfDeath wanted to discuss the times the hype has failed is.
"What was supposed to be 'The Next Big Thing,' but totally flopped?"
Snuggies. Did snuggies really take? I don't think so.
Salt Only
Hungry Potato Chips GIFGiphy"Crystal Pepsi, New Coke, orange juice and toothpaste flavored Lay's potato chips. Edit for correct Pepsi variant."
Thrillhouse74
Stop Pushing
"Amazon’s shopping buttons. They pushed really hard for those and I never saw the point."
GarrettSLB
"They originally announced those on April 1st. They said it wasn't an April Fools joke, but I'm still skeptical."
"I saw plenty of social media posts from people saying 'hey this is a joke, but I kind of want it.' I think Amazon saw those and took a shot at making it a real product. I bought one for toilet paper and put it in the cabinet where I keep spare rolls. You take the last roll out, you press the button. It actually kinda worked."
HairHeel
Be Bigger
"Not entirely relevant, but I liked the trend where everybody wanted the smallest cell phone possible. For 20 years cell phones got smaller and smaller. Often being the main selling point of the phone. Then all of sudden you could watch videos on your phone, and almost overnight the trend reversed to 'larger is better.'"
Buttsquish
Oh 2012
"KONY 2012."
careshel
"The Kony 2012 video got so much exposure it was unreal. It was plastered across every web page you looked. In hindsight, I have a feeling it had the same powerhouse that brought you the Trump 2016 Campaign, and some of the revolts in second world countries that were chiefly orchestrated via the internet."
hoodha
"I still remember when people were sending out pictures of Carl Weathers in Predator instead of Kony as a joke."
Darmok47
Face Back
ninja turtles GIFGiphy"Man I remember as a kid seeing the Ninja Turtles and Dick Tracy use video coms and thinking it was so cool and wanting one for myself and now if someone facetimes me I have a panic attack."
sofakingclassic
How can you go wrong with Ninja Turtles and Dick Tracy?
Oh Costco
Costco GIF by hero0fwarGiphy"Not sure if this one has totally flopped yet, but I noticed while in Costco the other day that there are no longer any curved TVs. If Costco is no longer carrying them then I think we can assume they're going the way of the dodo."
MrEngin33r
New Life
"My friend who studies Medicine had to install Second Life about two years ago for a class meeting. I don't get why they couldn't have used Skype but ok."
jojajtyu
"As a CS student I wondered wtf second life was doing on all the lab PCs. I thought it was some kind of joke until people with PHDs started talking about how great of a collaboration tool it was. It wasn't."
shryne
"Believe it or not, second life actually still has a decent following. My brother makes a decent living making custom clothing, accessories, and weapon models and skins for sale at in-game marketplaces."
Djdubbs
Time Constraints
"McDonald's pizza."
BuckNutley
"The issue here was time. The pizzas were actually a huge hit. The issue was how long it took them to cook relative to everything else. One person in a family orders a pizza and everyone else is done eating before the pizza is done. Former slave to the golden arches."
Estcstbi
"I remember not caring about the time they took. They were absolutely heavenly. I think they really cranked up the sugar and salt compared to most pizzas out there but it made such a difference."
russellamcleod
Deathtraps
"Soap Shoes. These were like normal shoes, but you could grind on rails with them via an indent in the sole. If you heard of these things from somewhere that wasn't Sonic Adventure 2, please tell me where? And please tell me where I can buy a pair?"
"I had a pair of these and they were deadly around stairs. The indented arch was a slippery smooth hard plastic, and I never realized how much I place the arch of my foot on the edge of each stair when descending them. Without fail, my first step on any stairs would result in my foot shooting out from under me."
btowntkd
That Click
Dj Waffle GIFGiphy"Tbh, I miss mini discs. They were great."
askingxalice
"And the satisfying mechanical click you'd hear whenever you shut the lid. Man I miss my minidisc! I gave it away to one of my high school buddies."
trackonesideone
Wow. That's a lot of failure and nostalgia.
RedditorMissMona_69 wanted to talk about all the people we can longer be face to face with.
"What types of people have you no respect for?"
I can't stand hypocrites. I lose all respect there.
WTF?!?!
"People who fake mental illnesses for attention."
Booklovercoffee2019
"SO TRUE. In middle school, I had a friend who faked mental illnesses (not 100% sure but at least 99.9% of the things they said were self-inconsistent). Screwed up my perspective on mental illness and I'm still trying to change that."'
the31stsemiprime
Definitives
"People who don’t understand the difference between opinion & fact and assume that their opinion is a fact."
BurghPuppies
"For some reason I see a crap ton of this in a horror movie group I'm in. Horror is such a subjective genre with many various subgenres and the amount of people that just absolutely crap on movies and state their opinions as fact is annoying as hell. Of course the music groups I'm in do the same thing too."
PeeB4uGoToBed
Thanks Ma
"People who can't admit they are in the wrong and sidestep by blaming you for something that happened years ago."
SwerdlowM
"My mom does it to me too. If she screws up, she blames me, and once proven wrong, she immediately brings up how I screwed something up from like 14 years ago, and somehow uses that to make me feel like it is my fault."
Beastie730
Liars
"People who take advantage of old, senile people. What caliber of piece of crap must you be."
Bugger_my_puppet
"I used to work in supportive housing for folks with various disabilities, one day a client came to be crying because he didn’t have rent for the month. The reason?"
"He was scammed by someone pretending to be from social security. They called him to say that he had to pay back money from a (fabricated) overpayment or he would go to jail. It was extremely sad. Also saw lots of lonely elderly folks get scammed by internet 'girlfriends,' F**k scammers."
livehorribly
Be Clean
"Litterers."
ihopeurpillowiswarm
"YES! Here is where the true rage comes in! I live in a beautiful city and the amount of litter is revolting. It makes me so angry. I never chuck anything on the damn floor as there will undoubtedly be a bin nearby. It’s just laziness and carelessness."
UglyFilthyDog
Why do people litter? It's so gross. Save the world.
The Real Truth
"People who speak 'truth' without trying to understand perspectives outside their own."
SkulldersIre
"Along those lines, people who describe themselves as 'brutally honest.' Nah, chances are you're just an a**hole."
caesar____augustus
Order Up
"People who are rude to wait staff and people who leave their shopping carts around the parking lot."
tokenlesbian21
"I have always believed there are two types of people, those who return the cart to the corral and those who don’t. And this simple action tells me more about a person than a 2 hour long conversation."
acableperson
Look In
"People who have no introspection and always play the victim."
Memesthecat
"So I see you have met my brother. In the process of being sentenced for armed robbery but he still blames his pregnant gf with some bs about how it was to support them and regularly busts out the alligator tears to get our mom to put money on his books."
No_Quantity4955
Wages
"People who crap on retail workers or lowest wages just to feel better than them with no reason, screw them all."
Ismaelum
"I had a coworker like this, dude was brainwashed into believing the franchise license and stock when the giant corporation had very negative company health and it reflected... Most popular chains in retail encourage low wage and try to establish an odd seniority hierarchy."
Mundane-Candidate101
Big Puffs
"People who smoke around children, especially in the same car."
monkey-food
"I 100000% agree with you and I’m a smoker. I don’t care if it’s cold, raining, windy, hot I’m going to stand my a** outside and have a smoke. I don’t smoke inside my house and I never have."
Fine-Bet
"I think you’d like to meet my neighbor that lives downstairs. She smokes all day long with an infant strapped to her chest."
Eyfordsucks
Well this is a long list of nonsense people. Steer clear.
