r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this đŸ« 

17.9k Upvotes

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9.1k

u/Possible_Day_6343 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Im in Australia and the yonder pouches have been a thing for a few years now. Most students have an old phone they put in there and keep their real one. But no see through backpacks.

Edit - the yondr pouches have been discontinued (at least at my sons school) and now they just rely on a phone ban and confiscation to end of school day if you're caught using one in class.

2.5k

u/Ok-Bug4328 Jul 16 '26 edited Aug 11 '26

Hello world

228

u/plzicannothandleyou Jul 16 '26

No earbuds on the bus? Not allowed? Actual nonsense.

195

u/flyinchipmunk5 Jul 16 '26

Yeah lots of kids probably listened to music on the bus. I had a zune in high school and a cd player in middle school.

144

u/Local_Grapefruit_262 Jul 16 '26

Zunes lol havent seen that word in a hot minute

5

u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

I worked at an ad agency on the Zune account. They gave our team several of them as freebies and they sat in the breakroom for ages because nobody wanted them.

6

u/anbraxas Jul 16 '26

I was given 6 in high school by a guy on the dev team back in like 2006-7, had a ipod at the time and was blown away by how awesome it was in comparison. Gave 5 to friends and kept one for myself. All rocked them until Spotify came around. If they had come out before the iPad I honestly think things would have been differant.

8

u/-SHAI_HULUD Jul 16 '26

I remember liking the Zune more than the iPod when it came out.

4

u/Born-Entrepreneur Jul 16 '26

Nice little piece of kit and the media player software was actually really good

6

u/Significant-Bee5101 Jul 16 '26

Zunes gotta be one of the worst marketed products of all time.

5

u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

Trust me, we tried. Microsoft shut down anything interesting or fun.

6

u/EmboarBacon Jul 16 '26

Feel free to say no, but can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested here and I'd love to hear some the ideas your firm came up with.

3

u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

Oh gosh, I wish I could. It's been something like 20 years. I do remember our team trying to convince them to stop trying to mimic Apple vibes-wise, take more creative risks, and get crisper on their messaging as to why someone would want to pick Zune over the iPod. The consumer research we had access to showed that a lot of people didn't realize Zune was an MP3 player and thought instead it was a gaming device. People also disliked the name and women especially didn't like the brown color (for the record, I actually liked the brown, but then again brown's my favorite color, so no surprise there). I know there were a ton of factors, but personally I think the song library thing is what killed them. I also worked on the Nook eReader at Barnes & Noble, which is what brought them down as well. Nook just couldn't compete with Kindle in terms of content volume. They still make Nooks, I believe, but at nowhere near the scale B&N envisioned when I worked on that project.

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u/flyinchipmunk5 Jul 16 '26

Sad because the dac was very high quality at the time and honestly other than the fact you couldn’t use Apple Music with it, it was pretty good

2

u/Procrasturbating Jul 16 '26

The irony is they were probably the best player at the time. The name was awful, and Microsoft was as “cool” as Barney to late Gen X college students. Putting that on MS, not the marketing team.

1

u/rsta223 Jul 16 '26

My zune HD was still the best mp3 player I ever had

47

u/justintheunsunggod Jul 16 '26

Sad face... I miss Zune.

10

u/FeralPsychonaut Jul 16 '26

I fucking loved that thing.

5

u/ayuntamient0 Jul 16 '26

So much better than the iPod.

4

u/FeralPsychonaut Jul 16 '26

and Zune Music Pass was GOAT'd as fuck.

Pick my 10 favorite songs and get to keep them forever.

I had to return to the high seas when Microsoft ended that.

2

u/CoconutMochi Jul 16 '26

I'd still be using my zune hd rn if it hadn't been stolen

2

u/justintheunsunggod Jul 16 '26

I broke mine 😞 Rolled over and put an elbow right on the headphone jack with a big, chonky set of headphones. Snapped and deformed the jack. Damn teenagers.

2

u/samasters88 Jul 16 '26

God, same. I always had mine on me and lost it one day. I retraced my steps back to when I fell asleep at the movies watching The Number 23. It must have fallen out of my cargo pant pockets or something, but the theater said they didnt find it and wouldnt let me back into the theater later that day to look.

3

u/BlueHero45 Jul 16 '26

Hell ya, fellow Zune user. Their are dozens of us.

3

u/IzzyB00UwU Jul 16 '26

I used to watch happy tree friends with a dude who had a zune in the mornings back in high school. He was also the only person I ever knew who had one

2

u/doublestacknine Jul 16 '26

Bet you had the cool brown model!

1

u/flyinchipmunk5 Jul 16 '26

Nah it was red

2

u/daveismypup Jul 16 '26

Ah so you were one of the twenty people who had a zune, I wanted one so bad lmao

1

u/makos124 Jul 16 '26

As a bullied kid in school the ride on the bus with my earphones in while listening to heavy metal was cathartic. I remember my first MP3 player - whole 128 mb of storage LMAO

88

u/simonx314 Jul 16 '26

I don’t think they are saying earbuds aren’t allowed on the bus. I think they are saying the earbuds were noticed by a teacher, triggering suspicion the student lied about not bringing a phone.

5

u/OrganicTreestump Jul 16 '26

Holy nazi State

7

u/Real_Temporary_922 Jul 16 '26

Banning phones in the classroom isn’t an issue though. I think there’s reasonable levels to it, like you shouldn’t hold a high schoolers phone overnight imo. But if they require you to put your phone in a cubby and you sign a waiver saying you don’t have one, then bringing one visibly on the bus is just stupid.

2

u/OrganicTreestump Jul 16 '26

The fact this is even a thing is crazy. I went to school and if someone had there phone out they got written up. 3 write ups you in trouble. So people just didn't go on their phone. I graduated 2018

0

u/greg-the-destroyer Jul 16 '26

Haha! Jokes on you! I have a Walkman!

15

u/hopsafe Jul 16 '26

Can you read? The Issue wasn't that he put in music buds, but rather that he had signed a waiver, claiming to not have a phone at school. Which was disproven, because he couldnt wait, because he pulled out his earbuds.

0

u/Descrescendo_0710 Jul 16 '26

48 likes. Oh no.

2

u/ShadyMatrix Jul 16 '26

I read it as the student had signed a waiver/declaration to the effect they weren't bringing a phone to school. They gave themselves away when they popped in the earbuds getting onto the bus at end of day.

1

u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims Jul 16 '26

That's fine, the parent can drive their kid to school.

-1

u/ccoulter93 Jul 16 '26

Yeah what the fuck is this?

-11

u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

I'd beg the differ. It's rather strange to exclude yourself as a kid in a bus of known other kids. I could see them banning earbuds and such in an effort to stop dissociative behavior.
It's obvious people cannot handle modern technologlies (just picture 20-30 yrs old in public transport), so it's best to keep them away from it if it's not necessary.

Edit: It wasn't about the buds, I know. But I could still see myself supporting such a rule.

2

u/jacksonesfield Jul 16 '26

(just picture 20-30 yrs old in public transport)

like its not OAPs blaring shit from their phones because they can't hear it at any less than max volume.

-2

u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

I think that's also missing the point.
I was more referring to the, generally younger, generations all consumed by their wearable gadgets. They're all avoiding social contact intentionally.
To each their own, but it aint pretty when it's done by the masses.

2

u/emilitxt Jul 16 '26

Today it's phones. 30 years ago it was PDAs and MP3 players. 60 years ago it was newspapers. If someone doesn't want to socialize while on public transport, banning them from using their phone isn't going to suddenly change that.

Also, I believe you mean "anti-social behavior" not "dissociative behavior".

Dissociating or dissociative behaviors are when someone's thoughts, feelings, behaviors and perceptions of reality are disconnected with one another in some way. Dissociation is typically seen in certain mental health conditions such as Dissociative Identity Disorder or panic disorder.

Anti-social behavior, on the other hand, is behavior that is seen as a harmful or disruptive to society and impedes people's "pursuit of happiness" right. Essentially, any behavior that would be considered outside of the societal norm would be considered anti-social behavior -- so, for instance, a child choosing to sit alone and talk to no one on the bus versus choosing to sit with friends and socialize.

I guess, technically, you could use the term "dissocial behavior" instead of "anti-social behavior", but given how similar dissocial is so dissociate it would likely wind up causing more confusion to do so.

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u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

Well written,
My focus of the topic was on the development of children and how to stimulate regular social behavior (or preventing 'bad' ones). I think in my years there were walkmans and I'm sure you wouldn't have been allowed to use them in a schoolbus.
Can't really recall any kids walking around with these things. I was probably too low class and they were relatively more expensive.

I've just been experiencing more dissociative/anti-social behavior from people nowadays. For example a young couple moved in next door and they couldn't be bothered to make any kind of contact, unless forced (by exiting the house, accidentely almost stepping into them).
Have been seeing that a lot more recently, people almost completely shut in their own circles.
I'm not much for socializing myself, but I'm also not actively avoiding human interaction.

2

u/emilitxt Jul 16 '26

Personally, I think a lot of the social shortcomings we've been staring to notice in the younger generations can be attributed in large part to COVID restrictions. I mean, these are kids who, during an important developmental period, were forcibly removed from their primary social space (school) and were only able to access their peers via technology.

1

u/stefje82 Jul 17 '26

It's a separate issue, but very much true.
Covid hasn't been the best for society. I'd dare to see the impact on health was minimal compared to the damage to our society. (not speaking for the US, where apparently they fell like flies, if I have to believe certain Reddit groups)

1

u/RisingSunfish Jul 16 '26

hey have you heard of this thing called bullying

1

u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

I'm missing your point. Am I bullying for implying that excluding yourself from society with technlogy is dissociative behavior?
Just because something is there, does not mean you always have to have the privilege of using it.

1

u/On_my_last_spoon Jul 16 '26

No, they’re saying that the student may already been bullied and pushed to the outside. They’ve been ostracized for random made up reasons. Let the kid have their headphones!

1

u/stefje82 Jul 16 '26

Yea, I deleted my reply, because I thought I missed something about bullying.
There wasn't any kind of bullying mentioned / implied at all. Because someone might get bullied, they should be allowed to isolate themselves?
Still a weird stretch.. and we're talking about kids, who are still developing.
"aah a hard time? Let's exclude you so you'll fit in better later"

Weird.