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My bowling alley renovated and now uses these string pins. They are awful, they keep tangling and jam more than their old counterpart, they are horrible to look
by birracerveza 3y ago
My bowling alley renovated and now uses these string pins. They are awful, they keep tangling and jam more than their old counterpart, they are horrible to look at, and there's a lot of instances of pins just dangling oh so subtly instead of falling down like they would without a string.
Terrible, terrible change. Maybe it's just my alley that cheaped out on it, but still not a good impression at all.
- JohnFen 3y agoI agree. I love bowling, but those string things are terrible enough that I won't consider using them again.
- ryandrake 3y ago[flagged]
- xmprt 3y agoThis doesn't seem like tech-based enshittification. If anything, this is a low tech and super simple (albeit not as satisfying) solution to the problem of replacing pins. We need to stop using that word before it loses all meaning.
- phkahler 3y ago>> We need to stop using that word before it loses all meaning. So we're going to take all the fun out of the word "enshitification"? How disappointingly meta...
- woah 3y agoNot a bowler, but this looks like the way you would expect things to work given how simple it is
- layer8 3y agoNo, this is exactly enshittification, degrading the end-user experience purely for profit reasons.
- verve_rat 3y agoDid you forget the part about not killing people?
- undersuit 3y agoSignificant cost savings. Having an employee die can be the death of a business.
- jollyllama 3y agoAnd that really gets to the heart of it. Safety-ism being played as a trump card is another great example. People confuse claims of enshittification with some kind of Marxist, class-based discourse, which in this case would be nullified by concerns for some worker, but that's not what it's about. Enshittification says that there can be no transcendent values, like aesthetics or adherence to tradition, but instead that money rules over all.
- itishappy 3y ago"Forget" might be a strong word for something not mentioned in the article or comment chain.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoLet's go back to the source, Cory Doctorow's article: Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification... It would seem not to apply here. Bowling alleys don't really have a two-sided marketplace; they don't have business customers to sell the fruits of abusing their bowling customers, if you could call subjecting bowlers to a more annoying set of pins "abuse".
- layer8 3y agoI don't see the business-customer aspect as essential for enshittification to happen. In the end, it's about the platforms wanting to maximize value for themselves, once they've captured the user base. A third party of business customers being involved, and maybe also abused, is rather incidental, and makes no difference for the users who end up with the bad experience.
- digdugdirk 3y agoThink of it as "tech" the industry, not "tech" as in "new technology". Its more related to the fundamental bravado of walking into an industry you lack a deep knowledge or understanding of, but still have a strong belief you can "do it better".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- api_or_ipa 3y agoBetter I say it before dang or another mod says it: Your comment, especially the unwarranted retreat to antagonistic expressions, doesn't contribute to a worthwhile discussion. I'd ask that you try to angle your comments to be more constructive.
- throwup238 3y agoHe forgot to put a little spin on it.
- Dylan16807 3y agoWhat in particular do you mean by "antagonistic expressions"?
- nsxwolf 3y agoI’m saddened to hear they’re being installed in real bowling alleys. They seemed like a good compromise for bars and movie theaters. I thought the idea was you can fit them in places that you ordinarily couldn’t. They are better than nothing but are not a substitute for the real thing IMO.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoI've tried it only once (one full round), and I always had a feeling, that the ropes were stopping/slowing down the front pins (directly hit), so they hit less of the pins behind them (the ones not hit by the ball directly). With a classic machine and the largest ball, slightly off center, but straight, the ball would take out one half, and the front pin or two would take down the other half of the pins... but not with the ropes attached. Maybe it was subjective, or just a different alley, but it felt worse for me.
- busyant 3y agoYep. My father has bowled in a league since the early 1970s—he’s 86 and still active and spry. This is his first league using stringed pins and he says everyone’s average is down. Pins that used to fall just don’t and it’s not as enjoyable. He said it’s his last year in a league. :-( Edit: his old alley went out of business during the pandemic. The building was purchased by a cannabis dispensary (Massachusetts). A new alley opened up down the road (the only alley in town) and they only have string bowling.