Human ingenuity has created countless things that make our lives better but that has definitely been balanced with a whole lot of incredibly harmful inventions, too. Some things might even fit on both lists, as a lot of new inventions can seem like a dream come true — only to turn out to be horribly harmful after some study.
Redditor joddionnelly asked:
"What's the worst human invention ever made?"
Landmines
"landmines. cheap and easy to make, but they remain active and people forget where they put them."
- Youltold123
"There is also a thing called mine migration. The weather moves them around over time."
- Ferretoncrystalmeth
Anything Invented By Thomas Midgely Jr.
"Remembering the last time a thread like this came up, the correct answer is along the lines of leaded fuel."
- mrbios
"And CFCs. By the same guy apparently."
- MightySquishMitten
"Yep Thomas Midgley Jr. contributed to the death of an estimated 200 million people due to his inventions."
- antigrainer
Agent Orange
"Agent orange"
- MochaJ95
"Generations of families of people exposed to this are still struggling with the effects."
- Bunnybunbons
"That sh*t is still around in Vietnam too since they don’t disappear from the environment."
- Karasu18
"It disturbs me that everyone always talks about the soldiers exposed and not the vast quantity of innocent Vietnamese civilians exposed."
- Redqueenhypo
Planned Obsolescence
"Planned obsolescence."
- CreativeRip806
"This is a problem with a multitude of other global/widespread negative implications that we haven't even begun to fully experience. It's an issue that pisses me off more than any other."
- Cimmerian_Noctis
"I understand they need to regularly sell stuff to make money. But maybe we shouldn’t be producing products that end up in landfills by the millions every year."
- sketchysketchist
"You see all other answers, and there's always some good intent in there. CFCs made safe refrigeration widely available, fossil fuels have allowed a lot of progress, pop-ups were made in good faith, you could even argue that nuclear weapons have made the world safer..."
"Not planned obsolescence. Literally nothing good or good intentioned about it. Just a middle finger for everything besides the suits."
- Dahjoos
Nuclear Weapons
"In the end, I think nuclear weapons will be at the top of this list."
"We're only surviving currently because everyone has agreed that they wouldn't prefer to doom mankind to a fiery radioactive death."
"Don't you think it's only a matter of time before someone irrational decides to take everyone down with them?"
- MrAnonymous2018_
"Yes, I agree with you. Modern nuclear weapons take minutes to get to their targets, and are now harder to stop as they have dummy bombs that are launched with them, and they make an area uninhabitable for decades."
- Flakoring
"I the discovery and control of the nuclear energy is one of the greatest achievements in human history, however when people used this technology to make weapons they did a terrible mistake, it is one of the deadliest things ever invented."
- Little_Soldier_Bud
So-called Flushable Wipes
"Flushable wipes. These companies should be destroyed."
- LobstahmeatwadWTF
"Sorry I've never used or even seen one, what's wrong with flushable wipes?"
- DibaWho
"They are technically able to be flushed, but they are not plumbing-friendly. They are only 'flushable' in the same way Hot Wheels are, only in the most strict sense of the word. Since they technically will go down, the manufacturers label them 'flushable' when you absolutely should not do that."
- hitemlow
"They still write flushable on the packaging despite the fact that they have destroyed probably billions of dollars in infrastructure and make the worst mess to clean up that I can possibly imagine."
- Chasin_Papers
Lots of Chemical Weapons
"mustard gas is pretty nasty stuff."
- bread-of-time
"Back in the 70's I was looking after a WW1 vet who still had a wound on his leg from mustard gas."
- shazj57
"Yeah but nerve gas - and some of the other key-body-function-inhibitors that are out there - really put mustard in the backseat."
- iced237
"Got nothing on the semi-oily nerve agents like sarin. they coat sh*t and stick around."
- HuckleSmothered
Blinding Headlights
"Extra Bright 'Blinding' Headlights"
- bahauddin_onar
"Basically any headlights on pickups 2020 or newer because they're so freaking tall now too. Makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind look lame in comparison."
- Fartyfivedegrees
"At this point, I’m waiting for them to get tall enough for the headlights to go above my car"
- scolipeeeeed
Styrofoam
"I'll go with styrofoam. It's single use, takes 500 years to biodegrade, leaches carcinogens, and is f**king everywhere."
- Rhodie114
"Every time somebody litters, it breaks into 100 pieces, so you have 100 pieces to pick up."
- flodge123
"Let's also add that the sound of styrofoam is what Hell sounds like."
- biomech36
Making Problem Gambling Easier
"Casino slot machines that allow you to insert your credit/debit cards."
- CuriousCat55555
"Cruise ships now allow you to charge money to your room card right from the slot machine so you can continually play without needing to leave for more cash."
- atalltalltree
"And I thought having an ATM in the same room was scummy enough."
- LthlPnc
"Last time I was in Vegas, the ATMs at MGM wouldn't show you any info about your account. You could withdraw, but you couldn't see how much money was in your account."
- bucketofturtles
Bioweapons
"The most terrifying inventions are biological weapons. You can't see them and you die horribly. In the best case you die within minutes in the worst it can take hours or days. Or you don't die and there are permanent damages to you."
- Delta1136
"And through covid we have learned that since you can’t see bio weapons, 45% of the population will think they don’t exist and complain about losing freedom if you do anything to protect you from dying from them."
- JumboJetz
The Inability To Get Out Of Our Own Way
"A vicious cycle where we have the technology to solve our problems but can't because not everybody can agree on it."
- Coolius69
"It must be a real bummer being a super duper scientist or something."
"More often than not, they've got the answers. Just that no one wants to listen. Like screaming into a void every minute of your life."
- Deleted User
Everyone I Don't Like Is Wrong
"Adversarial thinking. The idea that 'we are right and they are wrong.' This is how every war begins."
- Deleted User
Antimatter
"Antimatter. We don't have very much of it, but the very idea of a substance that can annihilate matter is insane. For that matter, the colliders which can make it. The physics involved are terrifying."
- Rainbow_Dash_RL
"Has to be antimatter, it may cost trillions and we can only produce a very small amount but just imagine if technology advances and makes antimatter a weapon of war."
- STRONG-b00f-PaCk
While some of these answers definitely seem more joking than serious, they all represent a significant negative impact on our species and others, our society, and even our planet itself.
Some of those negative impacts were definitely intentional, like nuclear weapons, while others were entirely accidental. We truly had no idea how bad CFCs would be for our environment when they were developed; they seemed great in comparison to the toxic, flammable, or explosive coolants that were in use before their development.
It's important to understand that many of these horrible inventions didn't arise out of malice... but out of a lack of understanding.
We'd be lying if we said we haven't all made a poor decision in our lives. Whether it's letting a questionable ex back into our lives or pairing that shirt with those jeans, we all have a cringey memory to look back on.
But most of us don't have memories of inventing something terrible, let alone one of the worst inventions ever.
Redditor NPT1506 asked:
"What is the worst human invention ever made?"
Not Helping
"That little 'Press to Open' tab on Kraft Mac 'n' cheese boxes. That has been an effective way of opening those boxes exactly zero times."
- illusorywallahead
Caffeinated Pollution
"K Cups. The pollution of all that single-use plastic."
- AlabamaPostTurtle
Teeny Tiny Bits of Plastic
"Glitter. It N E V E R goes away."
- Mrherpaderptherapy
Going Obsolete
"Planned obsolescence."
"My printer one day just up and stopped working claiming I needed to replace a part. As it turned out, that part is meant to stop working when the printer reaches 5000 pages."
"I took the part out. There’s no damage or wear on it. So I ordered a 'reset chip' that reset the page count for that part to zero. Cost me $20 vs $110 for a replacement part."
"Later on, I found a way to enable tech mode on my printer to reset the page count for any part I want. Then again, the printer is old, and the WiFi stopped working a few weeks ago, requiring me to use direct WiFi, which sucks."
- ChronoLegion2
It's Getting Personal
"Serious answer: chemical toxins that have caused severe health problems."
"Personal answer: HP printers. F**king pieces of s**t."
- Unadulteredmilk
Unholy Packing Solutions, Batman
"Styrofoam is pretty abominable in my book, especially for things like takeout food that’s destined for the trash within minutes of use."
- tokage
'Nuff Said
"Child beauty pageant events."
- SuvenPan
Profit for Who
"For-profit prisons."
"Which leads to state prosecutors who are beholden to them. This increases the probability of being charged with a crime you didn't commit, under the plan that you're too poor to defend yourself and will plead out."
"They can't make a profit without prosecutors feeding them an ever-increasing supply of prisoners (plus parolees and probationers in "offender-funded" programs). It's a recipe for the corruption of our justice system."
"Private prisons are arguably foreign enemy assets."
- omgnesh
Addictive Pay-to-Win Games
"Pay to Win Games, especially mobile games."
- JustARandomOrange
Questionable Hobbies
"Cigarettes. They never should have been made."
- UrMooother
Transformative Gases
"Possibly leaded gasoline. It poisoned billions and left multiple generations more violent and less intelligent."
- dcdttu
Reminders of War
"Landmines. They don't just disappear once a war is over. They'll stay around to kill some kids playing. Awful things."
- CaptainMcAnnus
Bodily Weapons
"I’ll say Nerve Toxins/Chemical Weapons. I find few things worse than a weapon that literally gives you the slowest and most agonizing death possible."
- RidingRiptide
Chemical Warfare
"Chemical Warfare."
"While nukes are horrible beyond imagination, humanity learned to avoid them as a way to ensure their own survival, it's wise, but egoistical nonetheless."
"Chemical weapons on the other hand traumatized the f**k out of the survivors and the ones who called the attacks and got to see the aftermath. They were so horrible that many soldiers deserted after using them and many went mad."
"Throughout the last century, we successfully banned almost all of those: the 1925 geneva protocol, the 1980 chemical weapons convention, among others, but I'm afraid when the next generations start to forget the horrors of chemical warfare, it will resurface in the likes of what's happening with fascism."
- raduannassar
From modern inconveniences to climate changing inventions to the literal stuff of war, there are serious contenders here for the worst invention in human history. It would be hard to choose just one.
Just because it can exist doesn't mean it should.
Not every idea is great. Still, through sheer will power, convincing, or luck, some people are able to get their worst ideas off the ground and into reality. Worse of all, people will actually buy these inventions that don't make any sense!
Redditor u/animatelego asked, "What is the most useless invention you have seen?" and many people pointed out products that just don't make sense.
10. If only weight loss was that easy
"Those old vibrating belts that you would put around your waist to help with losing weight. That's my first memory of thinking something was a ploy to take money from people through useless gimmicks."
9. Thanks robot, didn't see that there
Giphy"So in my Giant store, they have a robot that randomly turns on and rolls around the store looking for messes, and when it finds one it just stands there, and does nothing. Just standing there waiting for someone to clean up the mess"
8. My grandma wore one for a week
"Whatever that bracelet was that supposedly balanced one's chi."
7. Rubber bands are practically free
"You often see this advertisement about the wrist band that gives you electric shocks as a punishment if you try to break a bad habit, like smoking. This is called aversion therapy. Well, this electric shock wrist band has no magical sensors to detect when you are doing what you want to stop and you have to push a button to give you the electric shock.
If you would just use rubber band around your wrist and let it slap on your wrist as a punishment, you would basically get the same result for a fraction of the price of the electric shock band."
6. Just make sandwiches like a normal person
"Last year for Christmas my insane aunt gave me a breakfast sandwich maker. I sold it before I used it, but the instructions made it look like you had to cook everything first, and then you insert the food in some slots and it will stack them up to make a sandwich. Stupidest thing I've ever seen"
5. I can't think of a practical reason to have a fridge that plays music
"These refrigerators with Bluetooth and pandora. Why."
1. Someone is finally taking a stand against cocktail napkins
"Cocktail Napkins.
They completely fail at their purpose.
- It doesn't keep the bar dry.
- They turn into a wet pile in just a few minutes.
- They stick to the bottom of whatever you're drinking (unless, like a troglodyte, you put a bunch of salt on it).
- Also, in some locations, they just blow away.
Next time you see someone open a bunch of cocktail napkins, think to yourself: '100% of that will be thrown in the dump, after unsatisfactorily fulfilling their mission'"
Remember when we thought the internet was going to revolutionize the world?
It was going to change our everyday lives.
And it did. Oh, technology... but did it lead us where it should have?
Sometimes invention is a hardship.
Much to our chagrin.
Redditorscrabbleking1966wanted to know which life creations that were meant to bring about innovation actually brought about chaos by asking...
"What great invention has turned out to be a curse?"
Boomer Trouble.
"Those damn phones - boomers 2019."
WEERDMEMES
"Boomers are on their phones now more than millennials ever were. Every single boomer I know just reads Facebook during dinner and it's absurdly rude."
shadowmask
Beep Beep.
"Cars are a blessing and a curse. So many people die from car wrecks. Yet I cant imagine not having them. Yeah their value is almost immeasurable but they can and often do cause so much death and destruction. I think we forget how much of a death trap they really are or at least they can be."
Lukealloneword
Micro Successes....
"Microtransactions. Before its creation, publishers and developers were able to take their time making amazing games that everyone loved and they only costed 20-60 dollars. They were successful."
"After their creation, developers and publishers suddenly couldn't support themselves and constantly released rushed video games stuffed with microtransactions 'just to stay afloat.' It's not true, but that's what microtransactions do to people. They need more, more MOOOOOOORRRRRREEEE."
"It's a curse."
Bad Air.
"The Vape. It was supposed to be a device to help you stopped smoking, instead, it brought more people to do it."
Colonel37Sean
War Materials.
"Nuclear weapons."
Nighttime_traveller
"Even the people in the process of inventing them knew they were a curse."
"'I am become death, destroyer of worlds.' - Oppenheimer upon seeing his theoretical research turned into an enormous ball of plasma and gamma rays."
Revolution!
"Communism."
depshet
"Revolution from the ground up is what is needed, unfortunately it came from the top-down undermining the very rights of the people it aimed to protect."
tomatoaway
Bless Us....
"Religion, it has started way too many wars and caused way too much death. I'm not just thinking about Christianity, Jews aren't blameless they have done some things and Muslims are definitely not blameless at least as a whole because of all their radical members that they have (not all Muslims are radicals) but the people who blow up buildings and commit acts of terror for their god and their religion. Also The holocaust happened mostly out of the hate the nazis and Hitler had for the Jews."
Cursed Webs.
Giphy"To everyone saying internet is a curse. Stop it. At its worst the internet is morally neutral and at its best it's a universal database for nearly all the information in the world. The internet isn't a curse. The idiots who use it in bad ways are."
jelly-filled-ham
Big data and Data science.
"Big data and Data science. The early days (90s-early 2000's) were great. You could find anything you wanted to learn, anything you wanted to buy, communicate across he world, and pretty much everyone had the same ads and potential experiences."
"Now big data is being used to track every darn thing you do, and machine learning is being used to increasingly create echo chambers. Even worse, the corp world is using big data and machine learning to automate jobs people actually enjoyed doing, and may be the cause of the next big jobs crisis."
cowanon7
"The cold improved medical science, food preservation, and health in general. Of course it destroyed the ozone layer. Fun fact: one of the core inventors, also invented leaded petroleum. Thomas Midgeley Jr. His final invention was a pulley system to support him due to polio. He ended up being strangled in it."
CarNoob1337
The Famine.
Zyklon A. It started out as a extremely effective pesticide that caused no harm to the plants and had an extremely noticeable smell to let you know to back away because it was toxic. And then in ww2 the Germans took it and removed the smell and turned it into zyklon B the infamous gas used in the gas chambers in concentration camps and death camps. (Side note zyklon A was invented by a Jewish German scientist who also invented the first mass market fertilizer and pretty much saved Europe from a massive famine)."
m8key
Oh the Plastics....
"The plastic."
jkthor_9
"We overuse plastics and suck at recycling. Plastics definitely have a bunch of medical impacts that have advanced society."
"But we have over used plastics and can't clean up after ourselves. And they're finding micro plastics in fish now. The dire consequences of our plastic litter may not even be apparent for a couple more generations. It will cause a disruption of food chains and entire ecosystems."
HairyColonicJr
In Everything! Everywhere!
"High fructose corn syrup in everything!!"
SithLard
"Sugar in everything. HFCS is a red herring, and virtually no different healthwise than plain old sugar. Plain old sucrose sugar is, by definition, 50% glucose and 50% fructose. Most HFCS is sold as either HFCS 42 or HFCS 55, being 42% fructose and 55% fructose, respectively."
CutterJohn
Before the gin....
"The cotton gin. Before the gin, picking the seeds out of cotton and separating the fibers was a labor intensive process that made cotton too expensive for the mass market. When it was invented, demand for cotton boomed as the price started to come down and slavery boomed with it."
"There was a lot more traction for abolition until that happened. Instead slavery increased and we had to fight a war to get rid of it. A time whose social repercussions can still be felt today, to put it mildly."
ahfuq
Interweb Issues...
"The internet. When it became common, it was basically all of human knowledge in one, easily searchable database with instant results. Instant, global information and news. You could write a blog post or tweet and if it went viral, you'd get the same reach as international media conglomerates, overnight."
"Finally, everyone could easily fact-check, learn new things, debate with others. The potential was staggering. Today, the internet exists only to amplify polarizing bull."
'You get online only to find your own personal echo chamber, custom-tailored to suit your own view of the world, regardless of how far from reality that view is, and you'd find others to agree with you and reinforce what you already have decided to be true. Free speech has been weaponized for propaganda and profit."
"Man landed on the moon with a fraction of the computing power found in a twenty-year-old phone, and now that same power helps us argue that the Moon landing was faked and the Earth is flat. We have instant access to the total sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips, and we've never been less informed."
nrtlbwlitw
The MP3.
"The MP3. At first a great format, now a relic of the early 2000's that sounds inferior to CD's and records, yet we still insist on using it despite FLAC being far superior. Led to music being mastered and people dropping proper sound systems. Unlike video, where we thrive to get the sharpest, most dynamic image possible, music seems to content itself to la compressed dynamic range, low end quality sound and tiny speakers."
SiriusXAim
Gas Ways.....
Giphy"Leaded petrol and CFC gas. Incredibly both invented by the same person."
Cwlcymro
Dark Materials
"Zeppelins, they looked so cool. They are a given landmark in steampunk aesthetic, most recently I saw them in His Dark Materials and honestly I would have liked to see them fly around. But they were pretty useless, they were easily affected by strong winds. Hindenburg disaster was the nail in the coffin. Also they were mostly used for Nazi bombs."
aRkdtk
Progress doesn't always meant improvement.
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