> The only people who experienced slight increases in negative emotions when exposed to the words were those who scored high on moral elitism and a need for recognition. These specific personality traits reflect a persistent feeling of being a victim in social situations. For everyone else, the words had no measurable negative impact.
It might be my bubble, but I feel like more options are appearing. The Clicks Communicator, Unihertz Titan 2 Elite, Zinwa Q25 (new insides for a BlackBerry) and now also the Minimal 2. I'm excited!
None of the sequelae of that have really improved since then, at least as far as the first world is concerned. The foundations of universal surveillance were being laid down, but it wasn’t yet feasible. Police (transport security, border patrol, potato, pot-ah-to) ruffling through your belongings had not yet been normalized. You could transact with cash. People largely still sort of believed that talking to your political opponents would lead to better outcomes than making them comply under threat of government violence or unemployment.
(Plenty of things sucked, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that a lot of the fallout from the “war on terror” was still in the upper atmosphere.)
In general, whimsical stuff has been disappearing from software everywhere. 22 years later, I still mourn the demise of the "Cookies are delicious delicacies" message from Firefox's options menu. This might be a gross exaggeration on my part, but I genuinely believe that the long decline of Firefox as a browser started the day those words were removed. For me, that marked the moment when "the suits" started taking over.
