Pointless inventions

It has been suggested that this template be removed from this article. (Discuss)

---

Pointless Inventions

While many inventions, like the wheel, condom, and shoe, serve the vital roles of making life easier, less bad, or more good, many inventions only serve to confuse, muddle, "craplify" or annoy mankind.

Origination of Crap

Little is known about why these useless inventions were invented, but preliminary interviews with mad scientists, advertising executives and strippers indicate that they were created to fill out the "spec sheet", and therefore give you, the consumer, a reason to throw out your obsolete, pointless inventions and purchase the "new and improved" version of the same crap.

Examples of Pointless Inventions

"New and Improved" Versions of Things That Were Good Enough Before

Self-Flushing Toilet

While theoretically a good idea (as most pointless inventions inevitalibly are), the self-flushing toilet replaces one minor annoyance with another.

To wit; touching the flush handle is gross...therefore it should flush automatically when necessary.

This is where it falls down-

1. Since it is designed to flush when you stand up after completing the "bombing run" it fails to automatically provide the occasionally necessary "courtesy flush".
2. Since it doesn't actually know when you are done it only flushes if you stand up after having sat (an presumably crapped) for a given amount of time, again preventing the "courtesy flush" if you had Mexican water, and need to get clear of the blast.

• The Fix
  • The hand operated flush could be replaced with a foot operated one, or if a high tech and foolishly expensive solution is required by code, perhaps some sort of mind operated flush could be engineered.

Self Activating Faucet

Works great if you're pale enough that the sensor can see you. If you're black, not so much.

• The Fix
  • Don't wash your hands after you pee; since you don't wash already, this won't put a crimp in your filthy ways, you disgusting pig.

Automatic Light Switch

In theory automatic lights save electricity by turning off when not needed. Unfortunately they think that turning OFF is a good idea if you sit still for several minutes.

• The Fix
  • Turn the light OFF when you leave the room, you lazy bastard.

Battery Powered "Manual" Razors

These typically come with eight blades, are disposable, and come with a battery-power motor. This motor causes the razor to vibrate, thus cutting into that mole on your cheek faster and more deeply than ever before. Joy! Plus you finally get to pay ten bucks for a razor that you use three times then throw away.

• The Fix
  • Get a regular no-battery manual razor and drink a bunch of coffee before shaving. This way you vibrate instead of the razor and you save a bunch of cash by buying the cheapo blades.
  • Or get a good electric razor. These don't cut as smooth as a manual razor, but you don't have to throw them away after a week and they won't cut into that mole on your cheek.

Premade Food

Products of this nature include things like premade salads and precooked bacon. BigFoodCo™ figured out that there are people too stupid to make salad. "Making salad is hard." the stupid people said, "It takes so much time mixing those three ingredients together. Plus I'm always cutting myself on tomatoes sharp edges. Is there anything that big business can do to help me."

Thanks to these people, you can know spend four bucks on a buck thirty worth of salad. Joy.

• The Fix
  • Set aside a few minutes each day to make salad. Seriously, it's not that hard.
  • Learn to cook. This bit is harder so start simple. Try heating some water.

Cars

Ford Capri 1.3 Litre

What point is a "sporty car" with such a gutless engine that my tortoise could beat it off the line ?

Ford Capri 3.0 / 2.8 Litre

What point is a "sporty car" with such crap rear suspension that it can't go around corners ?

Drinks where the Original was superior

Caffeine Free Coffee

To my mind coffee is just a vehicle for delivering caffeine into my bodily system. Why would I want the caffeine removed ?

Alcohol Free Beer

Okay I can understand the "you can't drive drunk" angle, but what is truly the point of drinking something that tastes so crap ? Either get a cab/bus/train/lift-in-friends-car/walk home from your watering hole or drink lemonade.

Housing

Bungalows with Loft extensions

Surely putting a room in the loft (attic) of a bungalow is an admission of failure of the original design. You've got a house now anyway, why not start of with a house in the first place ?

Cell Phones & Crap

All things in a modern cellular phone, besides the two way talking part, are added to justify you needing to get one, as the one you currently lease doesn't have all the new garbage that you'll never use.

Camera Phone

A phone you don't need combined with a crappy camera that, besides the pictures you take of your butt, you'll never use.

Invented purely to fill out the spec sheet because apparently, talking on a phone isn't enough of a reason to own one.

• The Fix
  • If you need a cell phone, get a cell phone. If you need a camera, get a camera. If you need both, instead of a celltel with a camera built in, get a camera with a cell phone built in - it'll be just as useless as a camera phone, but at least you'll be different than every other asshole - at least until they all get cameras with cellphones built in.

Text Messaging

Much like the camera phone, this too was invented only to fill out a spec sheet.

The idea behind text messaging on a celular phone is to replace something easy and fast like speech with the slow, laborious option of text (typed using the 12 or so keys of a phone keypad to replicate the more than 12 letters of whatever alphabet you happen to use). This means that one half of a ten second conversation turns into a four minute typefest.

• The Fix
  • Talk on a phone...type on a computer. Easy.

Cellphone & Interweb

All the porn of the internet on a screen the size of a stamp, with no mouse and no way to save! All for the low, low price of more than you're paying now!

• The Fix
  • Wait until you get home to download fakes of Scully from the X-Files, you sad, pathetic Trekkie you.

MP3 Players

Not all MP3 players are pointless, just the ones with more memory than you have songs. A 40gb harddrive for 4gb of music is, by definition, pointless.

• The Fix
  • When a "new" Ipod comes out, don't get it. The one you bought six months ago will do fine.

HDTV

The theory - more channels and prettier too! In practice HDTV will simply obsolete your whole A/V rack, for more crappy channels you don't watch in a resolution that's only noticeably better if you've got a giant screen.

• The Fix
  • Sorry, there isn't one. It'll be mandatory eventually and, since it is not backwards compatible with regular tv, you'll either have to rent another box from your cable company or you get to buy new shit.
  • Or you can go outside and get some sun, you pasty weasel...or read a book...or have a conversation with someone.

Cheese Graters

Wait how do you use this frickin thing?

Dude-ude noob-oob what-at are-are you-ou doing-ing

Excuse me?

You-ou heard me-e

Kp cya dude

Dude I'll just-ust see-ee you later-er

I'll stop the world and melt with you *gay keyboard background*

Hoo wahoo wahoo waaaaahoooo

Products Sold on Fear

Anti-Bacterial Cleaners

Soap works by lifting germs off of an object (like your hands) and, with the assistance of water, washing those germs down the drain. Thanks to the marketing of fear (Ebola, Anthrax scare, kisses from Grandma) you can now purchase soap that kills 99.9% of germs. Unfortunately the remaining .1% is immune to the killing power of the anti-bacterial goop and, after it multiplies, it requires a stronger goop to be killed next time. This means, essentially, that by unnessarily using anti-bacterial products you are helping to improve the germs that don't make you sick now; creating germs that will potentially make you sick later.

In addition mankind, while technologically advanced, still has the immune system of the filthy, filthy caveman. Exposure to germs is required to stress the immune system so that it doesn't panic every time it detects something vaguely germish. Without reasonable exposure you end up with hayfever and Crone's disease.

• The Fix
  • Wash your hands with soap and water, you filty pig...but don't go overboard. Anti-bacterial products are only necessary if you have a compromised immune system.
  • Go play in the dirt. It's both fun and the exposure to germs will, paradoxically, result in a healthier you.

Baldness Remedies

Designed specifically to support vanity (which is no longer a deadly sin, but is now a "profit center") while destroying the combover industry are various drugs and surgeries that guarantee to take your money while guarantee to grow hair (warning: guarantee not guaranteed).

• The Fix
  • If your self esteem is so tied to your hair that it's loss would mean the reduction or elimination of your "manhood", then you have no choice; they've got you by the short and curlies (or equivalent). If your life is about more than your hair, move on...

Erection Drugs

A pharmaceutical form of Grandma abuse these drugs let men be "able swordmen" well past the age when they should have given up on such foolishness.

• The Fix
  • If your elderly wife doesn't want it no drug will help. If she does want it, post the videos to "Youtube" you super freak.

Multiple Opening Condoms

A birth control method recently, disastrously, put on the wrong way.....And yes, it may have multiple openings, but putting it on the wrong way WILL be the biggest problem you'll face from the condom.

Everything in the "Accessories" Aisle of "Pep Boys"

4" tips, led washer nozzles and fake blow-off valves are the automotive equivalent of the tuxedo T-shirt. They advertise you as the loser that you are and, if in D&D, would be -3 versus honeys.

• The Fix
  • Save up your money, if it costs fifty bucks it's probably not worth buying.
    • Instead of zebra skin seat covers, save your money and get new seats.
    • Instead of a 4" tip, save your money and do the whole exhaust.
    • Instead of a fake blow-off valve, take the bus. If your ride doesn't have a turbo, a "whoosh" or "whip-whip" sound when you shift isn't going to fool anyone, especially when your shitbox still takes eleven seconds to get to sixty.
      • If you are into fortune cookies (and who isn't?) add "in bed" to the end of every sentence on this page (not literally of course, that would be vandalism). Hilarity is virually guaranteed to ensue! Or perhaps not. Fortune cookie humor, like fortune cookie fortunes, is relative.