That isn't kafkaesque, that's just authoritarian.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2026
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This will ultimately be the death of retail stores.
Half the reason anyone wants to go to a store in 2026 is to have a good time shopping in person. If going to the store leads to any chance of a shitty experience? Fuck it dude, I'll just order online like everyone else I suppose.
I guess the stock boys and cashiers could just be like the olden groceries, where you bring your list and they fill it? Or, I guess more layoffs?
Walmart already does this with pick up orders I see as many Walmart employees with carts running around as I do regular customers.
The world would be dramatically better if about 10,000 specific people died
More will replace those fucks. The system is flawed.
It's so weird how little it takes to ruin a society
They were propped up by like 50 million lesser evils, looking after their own interests.
Yes, they are a power of their own now.
But still...
Self Checkouts are not even self checkout anymore. You go up and scan your stuff then 2 times out of 3 someone has to come over and approve that you scanned everything. At that point just open the normal lanes back up
And the supermarket systems still don't get right the prices for fruits. Which means you have to call another employee to enter the price for you.
I've walked out of Walmart before over wrong prices. I was just there to look at the camping section and see if they had any deals. There was a cooler on sale for 10$. I go scan it. 30$. I just left it there at the self checkout and went home.
9 times out of 10 if you ask the attendant for help they'll honor the price if there was a signage error.
I know but it's walmart. The attendant is handling 30+ self checkouts and I'm not waiting 10 minutes.
I literally stopped shopping at Kroger over this. If you're gonna accuse me of stealing every third item I scan because I use a reusable shopping bag instead of the single-use plastic ones, you aren't getting my business.
I think the only one more over it than me was the poor associate who had to keep signing in to watch videos of me scanning stuff.
Sorry Mr Ed, won't happen again sir. Please do not Gatling Gun me.
It's so annoying. I'll scan something big and the computer is OUT LOUD saying at me "BAG YOUR ITEM" like NO! I DONT WANT TO!
What is wild about all this is looking back to the old social contract and how it basically made this ~~fobitted~~ forbidden.
The best example is the movie minority report in which the had a fool proof way to 100% of the time predict the future.
I won’t spoil the movie, but the whole premise was that even if there was one instance of it making a mistake, and a innocent person was put on ice by mistake, then the whole thing had to be shut down.
And in today’s reality: all of big tech’s new tools make mistakes constantly, sometimes more than getting things right, and it’s still full steam ahead on the rollout.
MFW dystopia movies were too optimistic
I mean, even in that one case, it was accurate, just not in the way they thought.
kill the fuckers in charge or you're rolling the ~~dice~~ chamber every day.
Same can be said for the death penalty, but the GOP and even a lot of Democrats are for it. Even though they're are actual past cases of killing innocent people.
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Kafkaesque nightmares
I gotta read something besides The Metamorphasis because all I associate with that phrase is physical body horror of becoming a bug. Somehow I don't think that's what they meant here.
Kafka was most famous for pointing out that our current society is built on bureaucracy unto death. For instance how he have to fill out insurance forms while dying of cancer.
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You write just one book about a labyrinthine bureacracy and people use your name to curse organisational dysfunction forever.
A situations like this makes me use a form of Malapropism one would expect of a Dickensian society to bring about almost Orwellian situation. Makes you wonder when someone will use Chekhov’s Gun before it all gets Bowdlerized. Alas this Machiavellian paragraph is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian creature.
But seriously, that paragraph above reads like the scene in Blackadder when they meet the writer of the Dictionary.
Poor Machiavelli too. Everyone goes on about how he faked his death and “dark triad” traits, and he was just some bloke taking the piss out of the government.
I think that guy might have been trolling. He was imprisoned by the Medici family, amd then ended up writing a book to give advice to the princes? I think it could have been intentionally bad advice, especially after reading Sun Tsu.
I'm actually wandering if what he wrote in his book wasn't exactly what the Prince already did.
Because that sounds just like the greatest way to arse kiss a powerful person without being too crude and obvious, in order to get yourself a rich patron.
What would Machiavelli do? is a fine continuation of that energy.
If he was here today? I'm sure he'd kick an ass or two - that's what Machiavelli would do!
“As the Prince you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. Know even to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
Not a bug.
You'd think getting it easier to exchange money for items is the whole point of capitalism
I worked at my local Goodwill (they're split up by region). We kept a close eye on known shoplifters, but we couldn't say anything and even my boss couldn't say anything unless he literally saw them conceal the object then walk out of the store and never broke eye contact. They said the store could get sued if we stopped them and they had ditched the contraband in the moment we looked away.
I don't see why the stores discussed here should be treated differently. Someone needs to sue these surveillance stores until they stop automating false accusations.
The AI gets to accuse you based on a bad guess, while you have to file paperwork and surrender more personal data to prove you didn’t steal a pack of vitamins. »Innocent until proven guilty« is now a premium feature.
Innocent until proven guilty was always the highest tier wealthy only premium. Everyone else is expected to plea bargain down to a crime they didn't commit.
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