The tragedy of the commons is one of those sad realities, where so many things could be made better by being shared, but humans at the end of the day will be humans. It only takes a few selfish or stupid jerks to ruin some genuinely good ideas for the rest of us.
Someone asked “What genuinely useful thing has been ruined by stupid people?” and people shared their examples. From shared amenities to just good, old public spaces, get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own experiences and ideas in the comments section below.

#1

The internet’s potential for knowledge has been marred by misinformation.

Image credits: CrystalLark20

#2

State Parks, but more tainted than ruined. My husband and I hiked at two separate state parks this weekend and I was appalled. We saw dog poop, dirty diapers, water bottles, and food wrappers on almost every trail we walked. Also, for the love of God, NOBODY wants to listen to your music. Use headphones, you heathen.

Image credits: MT0502

#3

Pain medication. People with health issues suffer in pain ignored by doctors because junkies use our qualify of live saving medication to get high.

Image credits: Ok_Priority_1120

#4

Airbnb.

A cool, couch surfing idea that became a way to rent a spare room and save a little money on a hotel, got turned into a way to cut off housing supply and create a housing crisis, all by its own users.

Image credits: redsoxsteve9

#5

Every goddamed app on the planet wanting to have you turn on push notifications. No, I do not want my phone constantly going off at all hours of the day.

Image credits: The_Pastmaster

#6

One genuinely useful thing that has been ruined by stupid people is the online review system. Originally intended to help consumers make informed decisions and businesses improve their services, it has been flooded with fake reviews, both positive and negative. Some people leave one-star reviews for trivial reasons, like a package arriving a day late, or worse, they weaponize reviews to unfairly attack businesses they have personal grudges against. This misuse undermines the credibility of the entire system, making it harder to distinguish between genuine feedback and malicious or frivolous comments.

Image credits: Distinct-Champion_

#7

The environment. We should’ve been doing something about climate change ages ago. We’ve known since 1938.

Image credits: EpiphanyWar

#8

Google search

At the time, Google’s algorithm was a breath of fresh air compared to the dog s**t Ask Jeeves.

Now its results are just those who paid the most to Google followed by those that paid the most to SEO companies.

Image credits: inspectorgadget9999

#9

Plastic. Incredibly useful material.

Totally ruined by selfish people discarding it without a thought, corporations for prioritising profits over the environment, cosmetic companies for creating micro plastics, and governments for not doing anything about it!

Image credits: badmother

#10

Social Media. Spreading fake news, they are not thinking before clicking.

Image credits: Vixen_LoveMeDaddy

#11

Voting

Everyone who votes should pass a basic civics test. Stupidity is killing our democracy, as our elected representatives are increasingly manifestations of grievances and hatreds and not of our aspirations.

Image credits: Angry_butnotenough

#12

Emotional Support Animals and Service Animals. Contrary to popular belief, they are not the same thing at all and stupid people getting fake ESA’s has bled into it harming people with service animals. Only a medical professional can prescribe an ESA, not a website or “registry” and an ESA is not allowed in public spaces like a service animal. It just allows the animal to live with you in places that usually wouldn’t allow animals or pets.

Image credits: WhyY_196

#13

Antibiotics. Great for dealing with bacterial infections, not so good at dealing with viruses, and now we have antibiotic resistant bacteria because of overuse.

Image credits: Caelreth1

#14

The general idea of home owners’ associations.

Image credits: 24benson

#15

I’ll go first: essential oils. They smell brilliant, reduce stress & anxiety and help treat fungal infections, but all the anti-vax & ‘crunchy’ moms have decided they’re a magical solution to everything that is wrong with the world.

Image credits: QuantumLinhenykus

#16

Conversations.

People don’t understand that information isn’t just found on FB, Insta and other social media platforms

They repeat ridiculous things they see posted by someone they don’t know and state it as fact because “I read it”.

Common sense is gone. Critical thinking. Gone. People liking things doesn’t make it true. And this whole “ I feel like it’s true” BS has to stop already. Facts aren’t what you feel.

#17

Phone/mail/email
Used to be great ways of communicating.  Now there’s so much spam and scam communications that it’s pretty miserable.

Image credits: bluecaliope

#18

Public parks have been ruined by littering and vandalism.

Image credits: EmberMist21

#19

At least in my area, “Pick your own” farms. It used to be a way to get seasonal produce in bulk for a low cost because you supplied the labor of picking it. Then it became trendy to do. Now it is full of people and kids making a mess, damaging plants, picking unripe items or deciding what they picked isn’t “perfect” and throwing it on the ground, and eating huge amounts instead of buying. Farms have been forced to massively raise prices to compensate for the losses caused by people who have no business being in the field.

Image credits: DeaddyRuxpin

#20

The media.

Great journalists doing impressive, balanced analysis of the issues of the day that informed people was what we had.

Today, with idiots at the helm and solely being driven by advertising rather than content we get total BS that is dividing countries by being aligned to a certain political movement.

Image credits: CreepySquirrel6

#21

Online recipe blogs.

I understand the value of sharing experiences and the personal touch, but scrolling through pages of life stories and reflections on the changing seasons just to find the temperature for baking chicken thighs can be maddening. The recipe gets snowed under an avalanche of context and anecdotes. It’s especially tedious on mobile, where your battery life ebbs away as you swipe past the tales of childhood and pictures of someone’s dog wearing a chef’s hat.

What started as a wholesome platform to share kitchen wisdom has become a test of patience, where we’re forced to dig like culinary archaeologists to find the treasure trove: the actual list of ingredients and instructions. We’ve taken the concept of passing down recipes and wrapped it in the literary equivalent of a thick wool sweater — heartwarming, but not when you’re in a hurry.

Image credits: CrystalCutie2

#22

Reddit. Pretty much any online forum tbh. I just want to chat about jigsaws and guitars please stop calling me names.

Image credits: Rgeneb1

#23

Capitalism. You have a third or fourth generation of f*****g morons inheriting the company daddy built, suppressing competition and automating or outsourcing all the jobs. Then increasing prices to get an 8th consecutive quarter of record profits. Then they go get their government “loan”.

Image credits: AlwaysSaysRepost

#24

In my city there was this bike sharing project. Amazing for students and young people. Within 3 days (3!!!) all of the bikes (F*****G ALL OF THEM) got either stolen or badly damaged.

Image credits: love-unite-rebuild

#25

Driving. Arguably far from ruined but has the potential to be so much safer and better for all if it wasn’t for the recklessness and stupidity of dangerous drivers.

Image credits: Biggyzoom

#26

All the “something” sharing, car sharing/ Uber , room sharing/ airbnb, etc. A simple idea with huge potential to have a big impact in the way people use resources, all ruined by greedy people.

#27

The NHS. Deliberately wrecked by successive governments (mainly Conservative), who have destroyed our greatest source of national pride.

#28

Nature. Forest. The oceans.

Image credits: Nateddog21

#29

Food delivery. Tried to hand my buddy cash and told him I’d pay for pizza. He couldn’t find anywhere to order from without paying first through an app. People are stupid for accepting this as the new norm. Tipping before you receive the service? Delivery drivers seeing the tip before they take a delivery is ridiculous.

Image credits: cornerdweler

#30

Higher education.

Parents in the 1960s saw that a degree guarantees you a cushy and respected job with a corner office, company car, and hot secretary, so they made their kids ashamed of blue collar jobs, and pushed them into higher education.

Now the western (and probably most of the eastern) world we have overeducated population, with only so many “elite” jobs to go around, so many are underemployed.

Image credits: Life_Of_Vadim3

#31

Youtube. It used to be fun and a great place to get information and entertainment.

Image credits: Moon_Jewel90

#32

Bike paths, traffic calming, and pedestrian friendly design.

Us little people figured all this was a great idea and it was intuitively obvious where they’d do the most good.

Political hacks see the opportunity for glory projects, skip the obvious opportunities and areas of need, ignore local input, and blow though piles of money on reinventing the wheel (which they call “innovative” in the press release) and boondoggles in areas where there was no realistic demand or need for such amenities.

For the tiny few who do find the new construction helpful, maintenance will be neglected as the politicos set more money on fire chasing another shiny thing.

Image credits: knockatize

#33

Gas cans. I promise more gas is spilled today than was ever wasted in the past with normal cans that just had a spout.

Part of the problem is how the new cans are designed. They build them for a car and they work okish for that purpose. But who uses a gas can on their car? People want to fill motorcycles, or lawn mowers, or leaf blowers, and countless other small engines with small tanks where you can’t shove a weird foreskin activated 4 inch long gas spout into a tank 2 inches deep and expect it to work properly.

Image credits: OutlyingPlasma

#34

Digital media in general.

TV, Internet, Video Games – other than the latter one these media can be super useful.

But practically speaking screens have just become executive dysfunction induction machines that people use as an escape to never truly start living.

Screens have stolen so many years of my life it’s crazy.

Image credits: Aggressive_Formal_50

#35

Fully remote working.

Image credits: Ok-Option2231

#36

The United States of America.

#37

Roundabouts. Great idea, but people can’t seem to understand them. I don’t know what to expect, though, when most drivers don’t know what the red octagon sign means.

Image credits: __________________73

#38

I doubt anyone will see this, but “passing lanes” should’ve been in here somewhere.

#39

Flushable wet wipes. So many people flushing the regular non-flushable kind down the toilet and causing problems led to the idea that the genuinely flushable kind were some sort of scam.

Image credits: LampshadeWatermelon

#40

Tough one, but Google Wave.

It would have revolutionised user to user communication and collaboration, and most of the numerous failings of modern social media simply wouldn’t have been possible if we were all using wave to access it.

Wave was three things, a concept, a protocol and an app. The idea was the app was in the users control, the protocol was open so anyone could build an app to consume all the data.

The problem was, to demonstrate this, google threw together a horrible, unintuitive, lumpy java app and then (and what I think was a first for google) made an early beta of the app (which was nearer alpha quality) available to the masses.

The masses, being stupid people who didn’t read up on what wave was all about, they just played with the app and hated it, and therefore decreed that wave was dead before it even launched. Which was a real shame, as under the hood it was a real game changer.