r/bestof • u/R0YDonk • Sep 17 '26
[Xennials] Enshittification of cannabis?
/r/Xennials/comments/1wif9kd/what_cannabis_looked_like_in_the_70s/paauan9/346
u/Th3Mov3s Sep 17 '26
Weird how literally every old person that has tried smoking modern weed after not having smoked it since they were children in the 70s or 80s all, without fail, comment on how much stronger weed is now compared to then. This isn’t a cannabinoid tolerance or variation thing, it’s a “so much selective breeding has gone into creating the most potent weed feasible” thing.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 Sep 17 '26
Personally, I buy the strongest strain I can because I want to smoke the absolute minimum material to get the effect I want. I much prefer packing a small bowl and taking one or two small hits than rolling a cigar sized joint and putting 10 times the amount of smoke thru my lungs for the same result.
Just like anything concentrated, you just have to be a little more careful with it.
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u/fartonisto Sep 17 '26
The problem is the testing is garbage and there is no way the stats on the labels are correct. Also, there is so much more complexity to cannabis than THC.
I recommend that everyone get a dry flower vaporizer. It not only conserves weed, but gives a better high than smoking does.
I'd rather spend extra to get some really nice flower that was grown right and enjoy it far more efficiently.
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u/Metroidkeeper Sep 17 '26
It does not give a better high. It gives a less powerful, subtler, lighter high that lasts maybe half as long. There are many advantages to dry herb vapes, but strength is not one of them.
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u/sportstersrfun Sep 17 '26
My storz and Bickel volcano gets me higher than giraffe pussy. Highest I can get using normal flower. Only BHO out of a dab rig hits harder.
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u/Rocktopod Sep 17 '26
Especially if you're looking for a lighter, more cerebral high like OP is describing. Using a vape on the lower side of the temp settings helps with that a lot.
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago
Testing can be quite good. In California, for example, testing is very accurate. Every flower, vape, edible, etc. sold needs to be tested in a state-certified lab, using mass spectrometry and other analysis. They test for not just delta-9 THC %, but also other cannabinoids, terpenes, common contaminants like mold and heavy metals, etc.
Product labels must list total cannabinoids, as well as THC broken out by itself. The full report is available from the state’s database.
While it’s not impossible to game these a bit, outright fraud like having info on your labels that differ from test results, hiding contaminants, or that sort of thing will get your business shut down real quick. The government doesn’t fuck around with its vices.
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u/J_Pinehurst Sep 17 '26
Yeah, and companies bribe testing companies to inflate numbers. No, dude, that was not a natural 40%+, that's not how this works.
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u/bonerfleximus Sep 17 '26
Dry flower vaporizer is better than a bong? I have bitch lungs, only smoke ground flower out of a B
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u/eurtoast Sep 17 '26
Much much better. You stop smelling like weed and inhaling/blowing all that tar around too
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u/Sweetwill62 Sep 17 '26
You can get attachments to hook them up to bongs as well. Depends on the vaporizer.
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u/zefy_zef Sep 17 '26
I got a sticky brick and there's definitely a learning curve with it. I might get one of those ones that looks like a bat, put it in a dugout.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 Sep 17 '26
Yeah I really should. Just that they're expensive (for a good one anyway) and seem like a bit of maintenance, which doesn't interest me.
I really don't consume very much so that actual smoke doesn't worry me - 10 bowl hits would be a huge week for me. But the different effect might be worth a go.
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago
They can be pricey and take a little maintenance, but good bongs can be pricey, too, and take even more maintenance.
I would consider 10 bowls a week to be at least moderate or moderately high consumption. That’s hitting a bowl more than once a day, every day. At that level, a dry herb vape could be good for, if nothing else, improved lung health. Inhaling weed (or any foreign substance) will never be “healthy”, but not inhaling smoke and other combustion products will help a lot.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 29d ago
10 hits, so probably two bowls total and not big ones - we're talking ~0.5g or less. And that would be a banner week for me.
And that's a small metal pipe, not a bong. I'm a minimalist.
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u/SvmJMPR Sep 17 '26
Yeah when I smoked I was like that, then learned how buds THC percentage didn't mean much vs. cartridges so I switched to cartridges since they were easier on the lungs. And then I tried Live resin carts, man that was the strongest high since I tried wax one time.
Sadly I reached the age in my 20s that caused me to not enjoy weed as much and get frequent bad experiences. Going from live resin to nothing was a hard process man.
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u/rmbarrett Sep 18 '26
By that point you had probably blown your tolerance completely. Concentrates have fucked everyone.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 29d ago
Absolutely. I knew a guy who bought a dab rig. One dab would take me out for hours. He'd do multiple in a row. I thought MY tolerance was high, but that man would consume enough THC to put an elephant to sleep and seem totally lucid. The way concentrates build your tolerance is nuts
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago
Cartridges can be worse on the lungs than, say, a dry herb vape. The vape oil in them can have who-knows-what additives, and some carts have even been tested to have heavy metals in them that leach into the oil. These problems most often affect grey/black market carts, but can hit even legal carts since it’s hard to track what’s in them.
Even when there aren’t harmful additives, the THC distillate used in carts is most often extracted using butane and other hydrocarbons. While I’m not personally aware of any studies showing health hazards from this in carts, it’s not great compared to just flower and a heating element.
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u/SvmJMPR 27d ago
Dry herb vape can be the best case scenario if used correctly. I know because I had one. But I genuinely didn't enjoy smoking at sub-combustion temps, it was easier on the throat but I had to smoke so much longer and frequently to even notice a high. But I did appreciate how little it smelled compared to literally everything else.
Yeah carts are basically getting the worst of all worlds in terms of dangerous chemicals, not that the average weed smoker cares for their health that much. I even tried gas station delta 8 carts when my license expired, I'm pretty sure I wasn't weighing out the dangers lol. But if I were to smoke again, I would probably flowers since I feel that carts (specially live resin) fast-forwarded my intense anxiety, bad trips and consistently greening out. Didn't matter the strain, it was just too bad and too convenient.
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u/hudson27 Sep 17 '26
Absolutely this. When someone's used to drinking beer, you can't just hand them a mug of whiskey and hope for the best. I'm also in the small bowls club
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u/AreaPrudent7191 Sep 17 '26
I might be different from a lot of smokers, I think I'm a bit of a lightweight when it comes to weed. I dislike getting really baked - I pretty much can't think straight and become incapable of conversation. I think I'm the "couple glasses of wine with dinner to loosen up a bit" version of THC consumer - I can't keep up with the pounding beers crowd, let alone the tequila shots nutjobs.
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u/alblaster Sep 17 '26
Not a bad way to go. Kinda like using deet vs regular bug spray. Deep is stronger and more toxic, but you need less. Overall probably better than carpet bombing yourself in a foggy bug killing mist. Lol.
I usually just would buy what's on sale. I don't care that much most of the time.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 Sep 17 '26
My only concern is that what's on sale is usually on sale for a reason - people don't like it, or it's borderline dried out, or otherwise undesirable. I remember the last time I drove thru the local rez seeing a sign for $25 ounces! ($CAD) and thinking, I don't even want to know what kind of garbage that is.
I smoke so little, paying for top shelf really isn't costing me much on a monthly basis.
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u/alblaster Sep 17 '26
That's insanely cheap. I don't mind paying a little more. $35-45 an 8th is fine. Sometimes I go higher. Lol. Higher. Anyways yeah. I don't do ultra cheap anymore cause that usually tastes awful or it just doesn't do anything.
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u/rmbarrett Sep 18 '26
Rez weed isn't that bad at the price. It's just graded, after all.
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u/AreaPrudent7191 29d ago
I don't know what "graded" means. That is still unbelievably cheap, even next to the usual product you find there.
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u/rmbarrett 29d ago
Like arranged from best to worst. It doesn't always mean one end is bad. It just means less valuable. Needs to be sold for less money.
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u/djtodd242 Sep 17 '26
Yeah, one of the very small downsides to legalization in Canada, Ontario specifically (IMHO) is the race to grow the most THC potent strains allowable by law.
The selection for "mid" stuff has dwindled. It's what the market demands.
(this varies from province to province, so I can't speak for outside of Ontario)
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u/smallbluetext Sep 17 '26
I dont understand people who say this and im also in ontario. There is endless shit and mid weed for you to smoke. You dont have to buy 30% thc. Even if your dispensary somehow doesnt sell shitty weed, go to a reserve.
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago
I totally agree, and honestly think it’s just people whose only cannabis experience is having a few puffs in college being overconfident. They haven’t smoked in decades, then go into the dispo thinking they’re old vets because they would pass a single joint of ditch weed around a circle of 10 people.
So they go into the dispo and ask the budtender for a recommendation for the best weed. And of course the budtender is going to give them something with comparatively high THC because that’s what most savvy consumers want these days. Then the old stoner gets home and smokes a fatty or rips a big bowl or whatever, greens out, then goes around telling all their friends how the weed these days is terrible and how everything was obviously better when they were young.
It would be like if you would have the occasional Bud Light in college, then didn’t drink for 20 years. If you went into a bar and knocked back 3 triple IPAs, you’d be hating life. But that doesn’t mean beer today is bad, or is only out to get you shitfaced; it just means the person didn’t know how to judge the potency of what they were drinking or what their tolerance is.
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u/Th3Mov3s Sep 17 '26
We see this down in MN too. I have a buddy that smokes pretty regularly and he will specifically make runs to Michigan to get mid-low grad weed for like $80 an ounce. Lasts him ages and it doesn’t send him to the shadow realm like the diesel cupcake cocoa puff crunch bullshit does.
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u/josh_the_misanthrope Sep 17 '26
NB here, much poorer (working class) clientele here than say Toronto. The mids sell way better than the quads by a longshot.
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u/MiaowaraShiro Sep 17 '26
Also... if you haven't smoked since the 70's... you have no tolerance whatsoever so it's gonna hit you like a truck.
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u/MudReasonable8185 Sep 17 '26
Yeah you can really tell the people who have never smoked old school weed that was 90% seeds and stems lol. Weed today is like 10x stronger due to selective breeding and cultivation
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u/zefy_zef Sep 17 '26
Yeah, you can get some insane shit now, I usually try to get ~30% with at least +2% terps. Then you've got that infused shit, hol-ee. I usually get a pack of infused shorties and sprinkle them into my bowl like pixie stix.
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago
I use my dry weed vape (or sometimes edibles) nearly every day, but even I'm not a big enough stoner to go to concentrate (wax, rosin, hash, shatter, etc.). That shit will knock you into a new dimension.
Here in California, you can even buy pure THC crystals. I have no idea why you’d want to, though. It seems like drinking pure ethanol: only appealing if your only goal is to get as inebriated as possible in the most direct way possible.
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u/mcpasty666 29d ago
Once took some modern weed with me to a hunting camp, shared it with the old heads who were all in their 60s and last smoked in their 20s. You'd swear I'd given them nitrous instead of weed, just a great time. Went to bed, then got woken up at 4am by a commotion. One of them had decided he needed to work on patching the roof, immediately. He couldn't tho because the tar was cold, so he put the plastic bucket of tar on top of the wood stove to warm it up. It took 3 washes to get the smell of burning plastic out of my hair.
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u/chaddledee 28d ago
I think it probably is stronger, but this isn't a very convincing argument. Old people get worse hangovers drinking alcohol today than they did when they were younger. Doesn't mean the alcohol is stronger, it means their body can't process it as well.
As to why you hear it so much for weed and not alcohol, I'd bet most people drink pretty consistently over their lives whereas a lot of old stoners probably did it in their mischievous days then didn't start again until they retired/midlife crisis/it became legal locally, so they haven't perceived the gradual decline.
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u/Th3Mov3s 27d ago
AFAIK, there is no organ that processes weed that deteriorates over time like an old drinkin’ liver does. With weed I’d think the only thing in play would be your tolerance at the given time, so to me that’s pretty apples-to-apples if you’re talking about a boomer recalling smoking weed for the first time or infrequently as a teenager when they had little to no tolerance and trying it again in the present, also with little to no tolerance.
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u/chaddledee 27d ago
The liver is what processes THC and turns it into a psychoactive. Livers naturally deteriorate over time. Also, your metabolism decreases as you age, and you're more likely to have abnormal blood pressure. There's like a billion reasons why weed would affect older people more than younger adults.
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u/CoastRanger 28d ago
It’s still a beer vs whiskey thing, nobody invented any new cannabinoids. Use less and maybe look for 1:1 thc:CBD strains with 8-12% of each
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u/TheIllustriousWe Sep 17 '26
idk about all this. OOP is trying to act like indicas are automatically worse than sativas and growers are purposely flooding the market with them anyway, but everybody has their own preferences.
My wife and I both feel like sativas give us too much energy, which drives the paranoia feeling if we aren't doing something productive with it. Meanwhile, indicas let us just sink into the couch and relax, which is the feeling we're going for.
I'm sure experiences vary for everybody, and plenty might feel the opposite, but in any event I'm always glad when my shop has plenty of indica or indica-dominant hybrid for sale because that's what I genuinely want.
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u/Randomfacade Sep 17 '26
I mean, as someone who’s grown it before OOP is spot on about pure sativas being a pain in the ass to grow, we ended up killing ours because it grew to almost 7 feet tall and would have taken 6-9 months to finish flowering. Granted this was probably our fault as amateur growers but the indicas grew much smaller and were more forgiving.
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u/TheIllustriousWe Sep 17 '26
That part of it I totally understand, and don't disagree. I'm only pushing back on the idea that A) indicas are generally lower quality, and B) growers know this but are fine pushing for short-term profit over long-term market stability and customer input.
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u/sopunny Sep 18 '26
Or that somehow, this makes it impossible to buy sativa even at a higher price. Like the stuff is all mislabeled or something
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u/Forosnai Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
Considering how much variance there already is between people's endocannabinoid systems, and how relatively little research there is into the effects of terpenes and stuff yet, I wouldn't be surprised to find out this is another thing where some people are more sensitive than others.
As far as I'm aware, there's only a few actual studies so far, and all were pretty small. Off top my head, there was one from John Hopkins in 2024 that was double-blind, and tested limonene specifically. It found evidence backing the entourage effect being a real thing, though quite likely not to the extent it often gets presented as, which to me tends to sound a lot like essential oils woo-woo from some people. So it's probably a real thing in at least some cases, and in others it might just be along the lines of "lavender smells nice and people calm down when the smell nice things" rather than a particular biological reaction.
All that said, I also think people need to not think of "sativa" and "indica" as distinctly different plants somehow and rather as just a short-hand for the type of effect the terpenes and other cannabinoids have, which does seem to have some backing behind it, if perhaps not as much as people think compared to just your environment. Consistency in how those terms are used in marketing is another problem, too. My preferred "sativa" ones do make me feel more perky and energetic, but I'm perfectly willing to accept that's just because citrusy flavours/smells are energizing and not because there's a special chemical reaction happening in my brain. Or, maybe there is a bit of one, and we'll end up learning more with more research.
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u/TheIllustriousWe Sep 17 '26
I think you're right on the money. There's enough of a difference there that some can usually detect it, but there are also a million reasons why it might go unnoticed as well. How recently you've consumed, how much you generally consume, appetite, environment, mood, sleep (or lack thereof) all play their own roles, and I'm sure have a much bigger impact.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 29d ago
That's how I feel about alcohol, too. People act like alcohols have different effects, like how Tequila makes you crazy or gin makes you depressed... But I think that the situation that you're drinking in makes a wayyy bigger difference than the actual drink
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u/JacoDeLumbre Sep 17 '26
if you put limonene extract in your flower it changes the high significantly
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u/man_without_wax Sep 17 '26
You can discern taste differences but just google “can people reliably discern sativa from indica study” for me and take the results seriously.
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u/alblaster Sep 17 '26
I like sativas occasionally, but they feel like a mini acid trip. You can't just sit still. Hybrids are great if you wanna be a little social. For the most part I like indicas. They give the same feeling as if you just went for a good run or something and are just chilling on the after effects. Literally the exact same feeling, same chemicals.
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u/JacoDeLumbre Sep 17 '26
there is literally no mention of indica's being better or worse. they mentioned that indicas grow faster so businesses grow indicas so they could make more money quicker.
I don't really like pure "indica" or "sativa" effects either. for me the sweet spot is a hybrid with slight sativa effects, like Blue Dream or more recently, Yuzu Cherries.
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u/da_chicken 26d ago
What confuses me is that the economic pressures around illegal weed kind of necessitate a worse product for that. OOP is talking like the days of illegally transported weed somehow had better quality.
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u/Spudly42 Sep 18 '26
Personally, I disagree with the premise of weed being inshitified. If anything, compared to when I was in college and needing a dealer, now I can grow my own of any variety, including older ones. Many of us can attest that you can still find the older strains and they're still pretty spot on, like Blue Dream is exactly the same as it was 20 years ago, apart from maybe nicer when I grow it myself indoors. But in any case, the freedom that we have now compared to what you could buy back then isn't even remotely close to inshitified. Maybe if you're comparing 5 years ago dispensary weed to now there is some shift, but zoom out and compared to 50 years ago everything is way strong and way nicer. Compared to 20 years ago, the freedom to grow it myself gives infinitely more choice.
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u/Laserdollarz Sep 17 '26
In 2026, everything is a hybrid and OP is a lightweight lol
Source: 10 years in the cannabis industry
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u/MiaowaraShiro Sep 17 '26
Even if it weren't... there's never been an agreed on objective definition of sativa vs indica so it's all quite silly.
"Sativa" just means "cultivated" technically.
Even now it's just "this one feels like an Indica to me" and honestly... that's probably got more to do with how long it was let to flower...
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u/obiwanconobi 29d ago
Your last bit is the key to me. When I look up tutorials for growing and specifically harvesting, they all talk about the trichomes being cloudy being the best and if they turn majority yellow you get the "couch lock"
So if you let a sativa go yellow, then it will get you couch lock stoned no matter the terpenes?
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u/TheChickening 29d ago
I also had super upper trips with minor visuals Like some colors and forms and the most mellow sink into the couch trips from the same plant.
I think setting and expectation or placebo play a big role.3
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u/Boner4SCP106 Sep 17 '26
Always a good idea to trust the memories old people have about weed who were getting high in the 60s and 70s.
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u/HelpfulSeaMammal Sep 17 '26
The weed I smoked in 2006 was basically the same I smoke in 2026. The only real difference is that an ounce used to be $300 and is now $50 and you never see brick or mids anymore.
Weed wasn't medically legalized until 2008 in my state. You'd get some interesting strains every once in a while but I always chalked that up to someone growing from seed instead of cloning again and again.
There is some truth to landrace strains being unique, like Durban Poison is certainly different than your typical Runtz and GSC, but even in 2006 I feel like the headband and all that other stuff I was getting was more or less the same as what is available now.
The people who can't tell the difference aren't frequent smokers or their tolerance is ultra low where the THC is overwhelming all of the unique subtleties that each strain brings. They're not vastly different from one another, but a GSC will absolutely get you stoned differently than a Silver Haze.
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u/S3erverMonkey Sep 17 '26
The only things I've noticed getting stronger are distillates not really the plants.
People are out here buying pre rolls with live resin or something packed in there and acting like it's a typical j.
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u/HelpfulSeaMammal Sep 17 '26
"This preroll got me fucked up"
Yeah no shit it's trim sprayed with THCA and you're fucking ripped with no other cannabinoids for balance.
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u/ExIsStalkingMe Sep 17 '26
Every now and then, I get one of those ridiculous super infused prerolls because I just want to take two or three hits and be DONE
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u/S3erverMonkey Sep 17 '26
I live off edibles cause my lungs are messed up from the military. I'm kinda jellies.
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u/MiaowaraShiro Sep 17 '26
They're not vastly different from one another, but a GSC will absolutely get you stoned differently than a Silver Haze.
Have you considered that a GSC from one crop will get you stoned differently from a GSC from a different crop? Genetics isn't nearly as important as how the stuff is grown and when it's harvested.
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u/Laiko_Kairen 29d ago
The people who can't tell the difference aren't frequent smokers or their tolerance is ultra low where the THC is overwhelming all of the unique subtleties that each strain brings.
I've been smoking weed daily for over 20 years and cannot tell the difference. I was a gram-a-day smoker before switching to carts.
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u/gravitythrone Sep 17 '26
OOP writes like someone who wasn’t there. Sketchy plugs, cops everywhere, and massive variation in quality were the norm. If you were lucky to have a good hookup, it rarely lasted that long. Brown weed soaked in pesticide. Shake and seeds. Be thankful for what we’ve got today.
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u/alblaster Sep 17 '26
Imagine having a time machine back to that period and saying how easy good weed is to get and the variety and strength. People would be absolutely floored. Especially the legalization.
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u/drlari Sep 18 '26
People were talking about it back then! It was even on Dragnet: https://youtube.com/shorts/q5jxO_UdEzs?is=81jpD-ugkL62UWvs
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u/rpm1720 Sep 17 '26
Yeah that's certainly an opinion.
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u/terminbee Sep 17 '26
The "Afghan environment calls for indica, jungle calls for sativa because you might get eaten by a tiger" part made the whole thing lose credibility. People will get black out drunk in the jungle; nobody is cultivating their drugs to account for awareness of predators.
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u/Flobking Sep 17 '26
Yeah that's certainly an opinion
The difference between indica and sativa is mostly marketing. Also when you harvest. It's all based on the tricomes. If you want "sativa" you harvest when the tricomes are clear. If you want "indica" you harvest when the tricomes are milky white. If you want "hay" you harvest when the tricomes are orange. That is not recommended as it tastes like hay.
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u/goddamn_slutmuffin 28d ago edited 28d ago
Legit thought this would be a post about skunk strains being in everything. It's just some ignorant oldhead's generic, cliched rant about probably not being able to handle weed anymore and blaming growers for that.
Wait until OOP finds out about ruderalis...
climate/seasonal adaptionMother Nature is the ultimate enshittifier, I guess lol.Edit: Also, Kwik seeds and Angus have mixed views with some people claiming they were scammed and they offered poor or weak/falsely advertised genetics. Just wanted to add that bit. Also OOP only started growing weed 2-3 years ago, what an ego they have already 😂.
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u/Downtown_Ad2214 Sep 17 '26
There's no actual difference between what is marketed as indica and sativa, and the idea that sativa is head high and indica is body high is also just a myth.
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u/haroldthehampster Sep 17 '26
"The research shows that genetically it is impossible to prove whether a cannabis plant is an Indica or Sativa. There is no difference in the genes. “What our study mainly shows is that you should not just rely on those labels, but that you should look at the specific terpene profile,” says Van Velzen. “For example, cannabis labelled as Sativa often contains higher concentrations of single terpenes with tea-like and fruity aromas, while Indica samples generally contain higher concentrations of terpenes with an earthy smell such as myrcene, guaiol, gamma-elemene and gamma-eudesmol.”"
It should also be noted that the article references they are typically mislabeled anyway.
The recommendation for a terpene profile as well as its thc and cbd content is non-trivial for medicinal users.
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u/Flobking Sep 17 '26
There's no actual difference between what is marketed as indica and sativa, and the idea that sativa is head high and indica is body high is also just a myth.
Came here to say this. It's all marketing. There is a subtly difference in what is usually considered indica vs sativa. It's about tricome color at harvest times, not plant variation. You want "sativa" you harvest when the tricomes are clear, this is too early. "Indica" you harvest when the tricomes are milky white, that is the best time to harvest. You want "hay" harvest when the tricomes are orange/red, worst time to harvest. Weed tastes like hay.
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u/alblaster Sep 17 '26
I mean I can tell the difference. You saying it's all in my head? I really don't think so.
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u/milesamsterdam Sep 17 '26
I remember smoking regular weed (reggie, Mexican dirt weed, brick, Christmas green) back in the day when hydroponics were rare. It was not better. I did not see colors.
“I’ll take the Pepsi Challenge with that Amsterdam shit any day of the week!”
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u/ChanceSpiritual6993 Sep 17 '26
Enshittification is a specific term coined by Cory Doctorow and it describes the process of platform decay:
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.
Cannabis isn't a platform. It doesn't have business customers.
Tired of Redditors desperate to sound smart using enshittification because they think it just means "thing got worse" when what they're talking about is just run-of-the-mill shitty capitalism.
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u/ninjas_in_my_pants Sep 17 '26
THANK YOU. This shit is so dumb. I would call it the enshitification of Reddit comments, but THAT'S NOT WHAT THE FUCKING WORD MEANS.
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u/ChanceSpiritual6993 Sep 17 '26
And then morons trying to argue "it can mean whatever we want it to mean!!!!" which I would call the 'enshitification of the word enshitification' but like you said, THAT'S NOT WHAT THE FUCKING WORD MEANS.
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Sep 17 '26
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u/Malphos101 Sep 18 '26
Nothing scarier to a reddit pedant than the evolution of language in colloquial use. How can they get those sweet hits of dopamine if they cant pretend language stopped evolving exactly when they cemented their own proper lexicon?
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u/jdauriemma 29d ago
I completely empathize with this take and in most cases I’m not a prescriptivist. But this isn’t pedantry for its own sake. The term enshittification is a specific accusation of a particular and novel abuse of corporate power. When we allow its meaning to drift, we are giving platform owners a new hiding place. No longer does the term evoke a mental image of Mark Zuckerberg or Sundar Pichai. Instead it implicates every single degradation of quality, putting these multi billionaires on the same level as… the dudes making weed worse? I don’t want to let them off the hook. This is a case where correctness is important not because I want to be a dweeb about it but because I don’t want to give oligarchs a rhetorical hiding place.
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u/Malphos101 29d ago
I have never heard anyone use the word enshittification without implying the quality is decreased largely due to profit seeking motives.
You are hiding pedantry in a mask of faux concern and its childish. Stop it.
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Sep 17 '26 edited 29d ago
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u/ChanceSpiritual6993 Sep 17 '26
Words change and develop.
Yeah no shit, that's why I'm calling out when people are using it ignorantly so it doesn't change it's meaning to whatever the hell people want it to mean.
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u/jdauriemma 29d ago edited 29d ago
No, changing the term’s meaning dilutes its impact in this context. Enshittification is not “things getting worse.” It’s a specific economic phenomenon. When we let the term’s meaning expand, we give the platform owners a new hiding place: instead of naming their peculiar form of consumer abuse they can just blend in under “everything is enshittified.”
Not sure why you edited your response to mention me, just reply. I didn’t block you.
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u/Devario Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26
This is still incorrect. The process of growing and curing weed heavily affects the chemical composition of a strain to render the psychological effects different.
All weed has been crossbred and domesticated to grow easily and fast. The terms sativa and indica are useless.
Each users experience of weed is nuanced and unique. There’s no objective way to measure weeds effect.
Furthermore, any chemical analysis and “experience” that could result from concentrations of various THC, CBDs etc, are heavily influenced by the entire farming process, from growing to curing to consuming.
Weed is stronger now because it’s grown better. Full stop. The differences in plant strains are primarily cosmetic for the visual appearance of a plant.
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u/Broken-rubber Sep 17 '26
As someone that has worked in the cannabis industry both before and after legalization here in Canada, we've known for my entire career that "indica" and "sativa" are useful names to help categorize strains based off their flavours and effects but that they aren't actually different "species'.
The most important part of cannabis (and honestly all recreational drugs) is set and setting, then minor cannabinoid profile and then teprene profile. Customers tell me all the time that sativas give them anxiety but for most people they smoke sativas when they're trying to be social or outgoing and for many people that means getting high around people they're unfamiliar with or places they're uncomfortable. I tell my customers that if they smoked an indica and did the same activities they would likely be anxious too.
Minor cannabinoids are painfully understudied but things like CBG, CBN, CBC etc have shown to likely have more influence on the effects you feel than strain.
Finally terpenes, I used to believe that they were THE determining factor for cannabis flavour and effects but as more research has come out about minor cannabinoids I've started to think they mostly influence the flavour.
When it comes to edibles or vapes I truly believe that indica and sativa have nearly 0 distinction and specifically for edibles the industry has mostly agreed on that and you'll find only a few of producers still label the strain of their edibles.
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u/Jlocke98 29d ago
Most terpenes don't do much but eucalyptol, limonene and myrcene are pretty noticeable if you add a couple drops to a gram of concentrate
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u/rawbface Sep 17 '26
Nope, this is just some old heads whining about how everything sucks and reminiscing about how much better things were in their day.
I'm a Xennial, weed is much better today.
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u/Andoverian Sep 17 '26
Ehh, this all sounds like unfalsifiable Golden Age fallacy nostalgia, mixed with a heavy dose of orientalism and noble savage thinking. If they prefer sativa over indica that's fine, no need to make it into a whole thing
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u/kna5041 Sep 17 '26
I'm pretty sure weed grown now much more potent than the stuff they had in the 60's.
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u/WGEA Sep 17 '26
People taking words they just learned and applying them wherever they feel the need to complain.
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u/Alternative-Juice-15 Sep 17 '26
Haha that is mostly junk science and made up. It’s surprising people still believe that about Sativa vs Indica in 2026. Sativa isn’t “better”
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u/TocTheEternal Sep 18 '26
Meanwhile tribes in the jungles of SE Asia sought a much more cerebral experience because a tiger might eat you if you get too stoned
Ok...
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u/0Hakuna_Matata0 Sep 17 '26
I remember having to go hang out with shady sketchy people to buy weed in the late 90s. Sativas do help me in daytime smoking to actually do things like clean. Indicas as I have bought them tend to put me on the couch for night time tv/movie watching. Or a Saturday action movie marathon. I promise you the legal weed today is much much stronger than what you could easily buy in the 90s. And that’s not even counting the shatter and other products you add to the bowl.
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u/Bean- Sep 18 '26
As a 20+ year stoner I am very thankful for the way weed is now compared to when I was young. Anyone who thinks we had it better back in the day might be smoking crack instead of weed
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u/WilNotJr Sep 18 '26
Except the dispensaries have their own farms now. At least the one I go to, 1 of 5 with the name, has their own farm. They have Sativas and Indicas and hybrids of all sorts.
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u/cat_prophecy Sep 18 '26
Anyone who thinks weed was better "back then" is still smoking some bad shit.
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u/DamnableNook 29d ago edited 28d ago
Reposting my comment from that thread, because people here might not be familiar with the schtick of Elderly Stoners, and how stupendously unreliable they are. Young stoners are unreliable, too, but aren’t also fighting 50 years of faded memories of youth.
There’s no science there, just the usual stoner confidently incorrect statements based off something their uncle’s cousin’s landlord’s best friend once told them when they were 15. Plus more than a little, “things were better precisely when I was a teenager, and somehow the world got worse every year I got away from my teen years.” It’s a tale as old as time.
Even if you assume OP had the best intent, best-case they are going off 50-year-old memories from their youth (a period every person romanticizes). There is literally no way to experientially compare weed from then to now: cannabis is a plant product, and even cured flower has its cannabinoids degrade after a year or two. There would be no way to preserve weed from then and have it smoke the same way. Cannabis also doesn’t grow true to seed, so even planting a seed from a plant from then wouldn’t give you the same properties. You would have needed to clone a plant continuously for 50 years to compare the experience from smoking the two.
On the other hand, we do have genetic testing, mass spec analysis, and other types of testing, to characterize terpene profiles and other plant properties. Old stoners can say “weed was better when I was a kid”, but if they can’t tell you what chemicals were different, they’re just telling you fish tales.
I promise you, if there were some mythical way of getting you high (or stoned or whatever OP is calling it) that other growers weren’t taking advantage of, there would be a boatload of growers trying to cultivate those types of plants to stand out from the pack. Bottom-shelf brands will breed for only raw THC % and production, but top-shelf brands still boast of their flavor, terpenes, effects, etc.
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u/obiwanconobi 29d ago
Back in the 70s when I was young and happy, weed was also exciting! Now I'm old and depressed, weed is bad /s
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u/brandolinium 29d ago
This explains why I can’t take more than a puff of dispensary weed and used to share a joint with one person in highschool. Been saying for years that I miss swag weed, but this must be why.
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u/Whiskeywiskerbiscuit 29d ago
Yeahhh, this whole thing is pseudoscience. There really is no such thing as indica and Sativa, and you can get the same terp and cannabanoid profiles from anything on the market today. OOP is making shit up.
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u/Quick_Beam Sep 17 '26
I used to have to reject sativas from nor cal bc people wouldnt buy it
As far back as mid 2000s the quality difference in bag appeal was just to massive to over come
Companies like real seed co sell super old pure sativas that like op said take forever to finish produce lousy looking flower.
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u/ExIsStalkingMe Sep 17 '26
I have, literally, never had a different feeling from any weed I've ever had. It all makes me feel the same way, no matter what. This even goes back to before the strains stopped being pure one or the other. I don't know if I'm just the main character of Grandma's Boy, or if everyone else is falling victim to the placebo effect